Libraries Sad Testimony to Middle Class’ Lack of Caring : There isn’t enough money to provide adequate books and staff. Those who can afford to patronize bookstores have forgotten the rest of the population.

I have a policy about books. Since I don’t want to be buried under a pile of them during the next earthquake, I don’t allow bookshelves in my bedroom. More important, I purchase only books that enchant me enough to read over and over again. So whenever I want to read a new book and rate its “buyability,” I do what I was taught to do in my childhood. I go to my local branch library. But these days, in this Valley, that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Just the other day I needed a biography of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, and discovered that it was available only at the Central Library downtown. My local branch didn’t have any books on Wesley or Methodism at all.

Recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Education ranked California libraries 47th among the 50 states in total public library books, 47th in full-time librarians per capita and 40th in public library collection expenditures. The state that used to be among the best of the best has now reversed that moniker. Now copies of such major newspapers as The Boston Herald and Washington Post are unavailable at my branch. Of what use are new research terminals if they only lead to dead ends?

Of course, it’s not the library’s fault if they don’t have everything they used to. Their budgets have been slashed to the point where multiple copy buying is nonexistent and periodicals must prove their worth by usage. Southern California’s libraries depend on a hodgepodge of financial assistance that includes tax revenues, government allotments and, more recently, corporate sponsorships.

How did we let this happen? The politicians plant the bulk of the blame on 1978’s Proposition 13, which cut local revenues tremendously to the benefit of then-current homeowners. Consequently, the city library system receives only 7 cents of every property tax dollar. It’s our fault, the middle class’, for taking our library system for granted. I guess once we grew out of needing them, we figured so did everyone else.

Don’t believe me? I read the public’s real attitude toward libraries in the sudden influx of “super” bookstores in the Valley. I recently spoke to a super-store employee (who shall remain nameless) who told me that her store was used by the more affluent parents in the West Valley to provide their children with books to review for classes or to read for extra credit. If you’re wondering what happens to the children in today’s poorer families, that’s why Ben Franklin started the public library system in the first place. It sounds to me as if his idea is slowly being abandoned.

For the community as a whole, libraries are nondenominational places to congregate on a quiet evening and share the out-of-town newspapers or specialty magazines. They are places to learn that silence can be useful. Libraries teach affluent children to share and teach impoverished children that there can be bounty in the world. Actor Burt Lancaster, who came from new York’s East Harlem, once said that he and several of his childhood playmates “would have ended up in Sing Sing if it had not been for athletics and the public library.”

In these times of budget slashing, let’s remember those words. That ought to be easier than finding them at your local public library.