Gwen Davis Warns of Threat to Libraries

In New York City, many of the 58 branch libraries are now open only two days a week.

In Detroit, proposed budget cuts threaten to close the city library completely.

And in San Francisco, seven of the 27 branch libraries have been downgraded to reading centers, which means they will have no librarians on staff.

Many of the nation’s libraries are in trouble. And that troubles best-selling author Gwen Davis.

“Unfortunately, most people don’t realize what a crisis there is,” Davis said in an interview Tuesday at a fund-raising dinner for the new Newport Beach Central Library at the home of Jim and Barbara Glabman.

The library crisis, Davis said, is an issue “that strikes me to the heart. I mean, it’s appalling! It’s disgusting. It’s obscene. Everyone’s carrying on about what constitutes obscenity. This is my definition of obscenity: A library’s closing.”

The dinner, of which the Glabmans and Pat and Carl Neisser were co-hosts, was one in a series of fund-raising dinners sponsored by the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation to develop financial support for building the new library.

The city of Newport Beach is providing $6 million, and the private sector has been asked to raise $1.5 million for the new 52,000-square-foot library, which is scheduled to open in early 1993. The foundation, according to member Carl Neisser, has reached nearly 60% of its goal.

(The library crisis so far has bypassed Orange County public libraries and Newport Beach. City librarian LaDonna Kienitz says the city decided to not cut library services or hours at the central library or at the three branch libraries, where the amount of circulated materials has increased nearly 20% over the past year.)

Among the 56 guests who dined on the Glabmans’ patio were Laguna Beach author T. Jefferson Parker (who, like Davis, spoke briefly at the dinner about his writing and the importance of libraries); Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and his wife, Emma Jane; Tom and Marilyn Nielsen; Bill and Elaine Redfield; Barbara and Ben Harris; Tom Rogers, and Peter Phillips.

Davis, whose novels include “The Pretenders” and her latest, “Jade,” was invited to attend the dinner after foundation members heard her speak at the Round Table West book and author luncheon at the Balboa Bay Club in June.

As she has been doing in recent months, Davis had devoted part of her talk to the nation’s library crisis.

“I tell you,” she conceded, “it feels wonderful to feel this passionate about something.”

The longtime Beverly Hills resident who now lives in San Francisco recently formed Writers Who Love Libraries, a committee of authors designed to raise public awareness of the threat to libraries.

Founding members who have agreed to lend their names to the committee, Davis said, include William Styron, Jules Feiffer, Tom Wicker, Charles Champlin, Eric Lax, Joanne Greenberg and Mary Higgins Clark.

In addition to increasing public awareness, Davis said, the committee plans a letter-writing campaign to ask “the really heavyweight, high-profile writers to donate at least a small percentage of their royalties to try and help the afflicted libraries.”

Three authors “who came forward right away with offers of royalties were Champlin, Eric Lax and Joanne Greenberg,” said Davis, adding that her friend, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, has also promised to donate a percentage of the royalties from an upcoming children’s book she has written.

Davis herself said she plans to donate half of the royalties from “Jade.”

Added Davis with a grin, “If Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins kick in, we might actually be able to do some real constructive work in saving libraries.”

Davis also suggests that people write to Gov. Pete Wilson, “who proposes cutting library funds by a third,” and to President Bush, who has proposed cutting the funds to libraries from $143 million to $75 million.

As Davis sees it, “this humane and purportedly illuminated society is gradually losing its sense of priorities.

“We had a (military) parade in Washington that cost $12 million to celebrate a victory that wasn’t. . . . That $12 million might have been used to house our homeless or keep our libraries open. We glorify war and close our libraries. Something is rotten in Denmark.”

And it’s important, Davis stressed, to take action now in saving the nation’s libraries.

“You have to do it now before they cut the budgets,” she said, adding that she would like “to get Gen. (H. Norman) Schwarzkopf to donate a percentage of the $5 million he is receiving for his memoirs. I’d like to ask him for some money to preserve some libraries in Washington. That would be appropriate.”