Area Libraries Checking Out Creative Ways to Survive Cuts : Budget: Branches that have survived permanent closure find new methods to maintain community interest amid the latest reductions.

The memory of the dismantling of Villa Carson burns clear in the mind of Julie Fu as she toils in the Gardena Mayme Dear Memorial Library.

On a bittersweet occasion just a few weeks ago, staffers from other branches of the Los Angeles County library system picked up furniture, books and other materials from Villa Carson, one of two South Bay branches closing because of budget cuts.

“It was very traumatic,” said Fu, head librarian at Gardena Mayme Dear. “You put so much care and effort and then one day all these people come in and take all the stuff away. It gives you a feeling like when you’re bankrupt and they take your house away.”

Under this cloud of uncertainty about future funding for the libraries, Fu and other branch librarians strive to keep their “houses” in order, hoping their branches don’t go the way of Villa Carson, the Dominguez office in Carson and other idled branches. The Manhattan Heights branch also was targeted, but the city of Manhattan Beach plans to pay the costs of the branch at least until June.

To offset a $10.2-million cut, caused in part by state funding cutbacks, the library closed 10 of its 92 branches last month and reduced hours in the rest. The cutbacks also gutted the library’s acquisition budget, which dropped from $7 million a year to $1 million.

Library patrons expect the same level of service and resources, so librarians face the tricky task of trying to maintain community interest even as branch hours diminish and diversifying collections evaporate.

For Gardena Mayme Dear, the cutbacks came in the year in which it commemorated 80 years of service, growing from 2,100 volumes when it was organized by the now-defunct Wednesday Progressive Club, a women’s social group, to more than 100,000 volumes today.

Despite the bleak outlook for libraries, Gardena Mayme Dear found cause to celebrate: At the anniversary ceremony in December, the library dedicated an 80-foot mural of children’s storybook characters that was donated by the support group Friends of the Gardena Library.

A collection of 100 storybooks was also dedicated in memory of the late Mayme Dear, past president of the Friends of the Gardena Library, a longtime library supporter and mother of Mayor Donald L. Dear.

Fu said such public events help remind people of the library’s existence, a tactic ever more vital as the library system copes with the fiscal hardships.

A look at Gardena Mayme Dear, the third-busiest in circulation checkouts (behind branches in Culver City and Hawthorne) of the 20 branches in the South Bay and West Los Angeles region, provides a glimpse at how libraries are trying to nurse the wounds of the budget ax, said Ruth Venerable, area manager for the region.

The branches have tapped the business community for periodical subscriptions and regular donations, hunted for discarded books and other materials at area bookstores, and pressed citizen support groups for more fund-raisers, Venerable said.

“Various libraries are all trying to be creative and thinking of different ways of how to get help,” said Fu, who has been a librarian for 20 years, the last four at Mayme Dear.

Occasionally, she must scramble for quick resources.

“You say librarian and everyone thinks of someone sitting in a back room reading a book,” said Fu, taking a break one recent afternoon from working the telephone trying to persuade local businesses to pay for the subscription to a Korean-language newspaper. “But you are part salesman, part negotiator, part publicist, part everything.”

Determined to see that service does not suffer too much, Fu has planned a number of ways to keep library service on par.

Among other things, Fu has instituted a program in which patrons can honor a friend or relative by buying a book for the library in their honor. The book will include a decorative stamp listing in whose name the book was purchased.

Worried that she would not be able to keep up with the expensive foreign magazine subscriptions--some sell for $6.50 a copy--Fu arranged for a local Japanese bookstore to donate unused periodicals.

The Friends of the Gardena Library has extended its used-book sale indefinitely, generating about $300 a month. That and other fund-raisers provide the branch about $9,000 a year, president June Gerber said.

Still, the systemwide cutbacks have been felt. Library hours were cut from 59 hours per week to 50 last month. A librarian who retired last year will not be replaced. The library is ever more dependent on donations of materials, especially in foreign languages, because money for new acquisitions has been slashed.

But the doors will remain open, Fu said, at least for the foreseeable future.

Fu figures Gardena Mayme Dear has a lot going for it to help it survive. Its circulation is high; since 1988, the number of materials checked out has tripled to just more than 300,000 per year. The number of visitors has increased 68% in the same period, to 237,662. It has a large specialized collection of Japanese and Korean-language titles--larger than any other branch library, and there is no other large branch in the city.

Yet for Fu and other book lovers, the mere thought of closure stirs anger.

“I can’t think what could be more important to me,” Fu said. “It’s like closing a supermarket--you need it for your daily food needs. This is more intangible than food, but it’s another aspect of life.”

Since he began learning English seven years ago, patron Mike Escalante said he has come to the library to leaf through newspapers and books on philosophy and history.

He too frets over the loss of libraries. “People are going to go ignorant because there’s no money,” he said.

“There are so many influences on the human mind nowadays. Where can you go to find objective information?” asked Gerber.

“It was always a very busy place,” said Tom Park, a local weekly newspaper columnist and the city’s unofficial historian.

The Gardena library was born in an elementary school classroom in the fall of 1912, the work of the Wednesday Progressive Club and supporters from the business community and elementary school.

It moved into its own quarters the following year, later joining the Los Angeles County library system as the 57th branch.

It broke with the county system after acquiring land in Los Angeles city for a new building, but rejoined the county in 1951 when the city system said it could no longer afford to operate the library, especially since so few Los Angeles residents used it.

The library moved around a lot, with its current building on Gardena Boulevard dedicated in 1964.

Shortly after taking over the library in 1988, Fu reconfigured the place, aiming to make it more comfortable and easier to use.

Reflecting on the times, Fu finds some irony: “Library business goes up during a recession. One lady told me, ‘Believe it or not, this is my only entertainment.’ ”

At the same time, the poor economy indirectly has forced the cutbacks as the state tries to make do with less funds.

“It seems the situation is worse than before, because this is not just the library being affected, it’s everybody,” Fu said.