Time Running Out on Library’s Sunday Hours : Downtown: Popular time at the Central Library may end soon. Private funding is about to cease, and the union opposes keeping the facility open an extra day.

Sunday afternoon at the Los Angeles Public Library in Downtown has become a happy tableau of families pushing strollers through soaring rotundas, teen-agers playing computer games at handsome wooden carrels, and children reading books under panoramic murals.

The renovated and expanded edifice has the welcoming air of an intellectual shopping mall, with escalators taking patrons up through a sunny atrium into departments whose glass fronts seem to make them boutiques of history, literature and science.

But these leisurely weekends may be ending soon.

Private funding from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, not public dollars, is keeping the financially strapped library open on Sundays. All the money from the $100,000 grant will be used by the end of March.

Moreover, the librarians union wants the library to close on Sundays and has told its members not to volunteer for Sunday duty. The union argues that even without Sunday duty, librarians are overworked, with 21% fewer librarians systemwide than three years ago. The union also says that on Sundays, when reference desks are staffed mostly with branch librarians relatively unfamiliar with the Central Library collection, the public gets substandard service.

“Having (the library) open on Sundays is a public relations stunt,” said Ivan Corpeno-Chavez, president of the librarians guild.

If so, the gimmick seems to be working.

On Sundays, dozens of people line up by the fountains outside the library’s Flower Street entrance before its doors open at 1 p.m. On a recent weekend, many patrons were distressed to hear that Sunday hours may soon be ending. Although the library is open Saturdays, they said Sunday hours provide a precious resource on the only day they have time to come. Parking is cheaper and traffic is lighter on weekends, and other Downtown attractions nearby make even a long drive worthwhile.

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More than 2,000 people visit the library on a typical Sunday. That is fewer than on weekdays, even adjusting for the shorter Sunday hours. But usage is heavy; the library checks out nearly twice as many books per hour as on other days. When the library reopened in October, administrators decided to leave it open on Sundays for the first month to help showcase the renovations. The added hours proved so popular the library has been open on Sundays ever since.

Gloria and Chris Ondatje, waiting outside the library doors, said they come about twice a month, always on Sundays because of their work schedules. For this couple, the library has a sentimental attraction. Twenty-eight years ago, they met and courted here.

The library’s resources helped Gloria Ondatje make a career change from banking to teaching, and she was here to research lesson plans for her classes with developmentally disabled children. Her husband was studying export opportunities overseas in hopes of starting his own business after he retires from a job with Los Angeles County.

Gloria Ondatje argues that Sunday hours are so crucial that they are worth a sacrifice on the part of library staff. “If they’re librarians and . . . enjoy serving the community, they have to give more than an ounce.” If not, she says, “maybe they shouldn’t be in that position.”

Many people use Sundays at the library to do serious research, while others enjoy it for a family outing.

Lonna Balderas and her family drove from Lancaster, despite earthquake-damaged freeways, to see the newly renovated Pershing Square, visit the Grand Central Market on Broadway and enjoy the library. Her 13-month-old son grabs enthusiastically at a three-foot-high picture book in the children’s section.

“It’s very important to have Sunday hours. Sundays provide a great opportunity for families to spend quality time together in a beautiful building,” Balderas said.

City Librarian Elizabeth Martinez said that is an important role for the library. “I think we’re changing Sundays in Downtown L.A.,” she said. Several nearby restaurants have opened on weekends to serve library users, she said.

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But Corpeno-Chavez of the union argues that revitalizing Downtown is not the job of librarians, and that their first priority should be connecting the public with the vast resources of the 2.2-million-volume library as effectively as possible. That is not happening on Sundays, many librarians say.

The quality of service goes down on Sundays, they say, because most of the people staffing the reference desks are relatively unfamiliar with the collections. Most staffers at the Central Library do not want to work Sunday as a sixth workday, so the majority of librarians are visiting from branches in order to expand their knowledge and earn overtime pay--in defiance of the union’s instructions.

Although librarians are professionally trained to be able to negotiate any collection, those fluent in a specialty can find sources more quickly for patrons, and help them find resources less familiar librarians might miss.

In the business and economics section one Sunday, three reference librarians scrambled to help long lines of library users. Dan Strehl, who works full time in the section and is thoroughly familiar with the section’s 40 computerized databases and print collections, quickly referred a patron looking for listings of companies producing specific chemicals to a specialized directory. He knew off the top of his head where to find a list of the best prospects for export to Israel, and quickly helped a high school student doing a paper on the history of Coca-Cola. His two colleagues, children’s librarians visiting from branches, frequently had to ask him and each other for advice.

“As a user, if you come on Sunday you don’t get the best value for your money (as a taxpayer),” Strehl said. “The collection represents a significant public investment, so it’s a waste if you get only 10 cents of information when there’s $400 out there.”

Sunday duty is on a volunteer basis and merits overtime pay. But the union’s chief objection is that Sunday may become part of the regular workweek at regular pay. Pay is a major point of contention since union members have been trying to renegotiate their contract for 2 1/2 years.

Another big problem with being open on Sundays, Corpeno-Chavez said, is that “it gives people the impression that everything’s OK at the library when we’re reeling from cutbacks.”

The library got some good news Friday when the City Council approved a request from Martinez to free up 80 positions that have been frozen for several years. Although that will partially ease the staffing crunch, it will probably have no effect on Sunday hours.

While Martinez lobbies the city for more resources and the library’s private fund-raising arm seeks corporate donors, the library is mulling a variety of options. One thing Martinez is considering is asking taxpayers to contribute more.

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Such a strategy might seem outlandish in tough economic times, but last year Pasadena showed that many citizens are willing to support their libraries. Voters decided overwhelmingly to tax themselves $20 per house and $13 per apartment each year in order to keep branches open and maintain the main library’s Sunday hours.

Los Angeles Library Commission President Gary Ross said raising taxes would be “my last choice.” However, “it is very, very necessary that something that plays this pivotal a role be open on Sundays,” he said. “It’s vital to the city’s cultural life.”

Other options being considered, Ross said, include attracting endowments by naming libraries after donors, allowing people to donate $1 through their water bills, and providing on-line catalogue and lending services to other library systems for a fee.

Still, at a time when law and order is on the minds of many voters, libraries are finding themselves a tough sell.

“Money is being taken from us and given to cops,” Corpeno-Chavez said. “(Are) more cops going to make this a better city?”

Library boosters argue that giving children a safe and educational place to spend time on evenings and weekends is basic to improving public safety. The library is starting a program called Teenspace to address the interests of teen-agers and help them learn about careers and college.

“A lot of kids spend their time in the library. If they did not have the library they’d be on the street,” Gloria Ondatje said.

On weekends, baggy-trousered teen-agers seem to be enjoying the library as much as grandmothers and small children. The library offers them not only books, but computers, videos and audiotapes, as well as storytelling hours and lectures.

“The library is the only public institution open to everyone all these hours, and free,” Martinez said. “There is no alternative to the public library, period.”