SUNLAND : School Opens Library in Shop Room

Shop Room 43 at Mt. Gleason Middle School is now a library, filling in for the original facility burned by thieves who did $250,000 in damage.

“It was the librarian’s nightmare,” said Nancy Reich, library media teacher at the Sunland school.

The fire, which destroyed 11,000 books and 300 videotapes, occurred almost two years ago, and only now has the school been able to give students a library again. Shop Room 43 had been stacked to the ceiling as a storage room, but after some hard work it opened last month as a library.

“It’s been bad,” said Esther Vasquez, a sixth-grader. “We’d have to look up an animal, and our teacher didn’t have the encyclopedias.”

There is no timetable for rebuilding the library. The Sunland-Tujunga Community Coordinating Council has taken up the cause, trying to raise funds and collect donated books.

“And, if anyone wants to donate any old Apple computers to use, we’re desperate,” said Diana Sanchez, a library aide with the school for 16 years.

“We couldn’t save anything,” Sanchez said. “The heat melted the windows at the far end of the room.”

About $675 in donations have been collected, including $500 from the Sunland Women’s Club, said Helen Lear of the coordinating council. Supplies and old magazines are also needed.

About 6,500 books have been collected. Of those, 1,500 books still have to be catalogued, said Reich, a coordinating librarian with the Los Angeles Unified School District at the time of the fire. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the school can call Reich at (818) 352-1466.