More Communities Are Placing Public Libraries on Campuses

Aiming to save money and perhaps get more books in the bargain, the Capistrano school district has joined a national trend by hooking up with Orange County to plan a shared library in Ladera Ranch.

The idea of shared school-public libraries seems to be gaining in popularity, experts say. Californians can expect to see more such proposals after passing a $350-million library bond measure last month. A clause in the measure gives funding priority to joint projects--although the interpretation of that wording is still vague.

In Glendale, school and city officials are pooling their resources to revitalize a densely packed, mostly poor neighborhood around Edison Elementary School that would be centered in part on a joint-use library.

With state and local funding, the groups hope to finish the project in late 2002. The joint-use library would be attached to the elementary school, said schools Supt. Jim Brown.

Getting the project accomplished has been a challenge because of prohibitions on whether school districts can build on land owned by cities, said Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), who represents the area. He’s working on legislation that would ease some of the barriers Glendale has faced.

“This is the wave of the future,” Wildman said. “With limited resources and limited space in urban areas, joint use really allows us to consolidate our resources for the community as a whole--and maximize them.”

The ventures often work well. But other school-public libraries have been beset by problems that range from irksome to frightening.

At a similar setup in San Jose--a library branch on a high school campus--whenever there is a fistfight or weapon found at the school, the site is locked down--barring the public from the library. In other places, the elderly or parents with young children have felt uncomfortable walking past crowds of rowdy teenagers to get to the books. Public library hours have been restricted. City librarians have been ordered by principals to preside over study halls or detention for students. Experts also worry, given the intense concern over safety at schools, about strange adults visiting campuses.

The two types of libraries even profess distinct missions. One works to support school lessons, giving students some of their first primers on Internet usage and information gathering; the other provides a diverse collection for everyone from leisure readers to film buffs.

The two systems can also offer different salary levels, with union-represented school librarians often making more than their public library peers.

“The general consensus is they have been tried and have not been successful except in very unusual settings,” usually small, close-knit areas, said Shirley Fitzgibbons, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science, who has researched combined libraries. “For a community or a state to go into this as a panacea for all the money they haven’t spent on school libraries for the last 30 years--that’s promising something that can’t be done.”

In her research, Fitzgibbons found roughly 180 combined-use libraries nationwide. Separately, the state estimates that California is home to between 30 and 50 shared libraries. It’s hard to pin down numbers because new joint libraries are planned and others disband quickly.

Capistrano planners say they will address many security and access concerns in the library, expected to open in 2003, by having separate floors for students and the public--and separate entrances--at the $14-million, kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Ladera Ranch school.

Ideally, that would allow everyone access to a book on tape or magazine all day long while keeping interaction between students and the wider community to a minimum. The planners intend that neither students nor residents are given short shrift.

They have an ally in Ken Hall, an influential education consultant in Sacramento. Hall contends that combined projects are the best way to invest the public’s money in libraries. Many of the concerns presented by critics strike him as pretexts for the real worry: job protection.

“Maybe it’s very callous on my part, but I’ve evaluated every one [of the concerns raised] and I can’t find one of those arguments persuasive,” Hall said. “If those librarians put as much time into trying to make joint use work as they put into saying why it won’t work, I think [shared libraries] would work.”

Certainly, shared use success stories exist, Fitzgibbons said.

Shared libraries once predominated in sparsely populated rural areas, where neither schools nor communities could scrape up enough resources to create libraries of their own. The concept dates back at least 100 years, Fitzgibbons said.

“The ‘50s were the heyday” of joint use, said Beverly Goldberg, senior editor of American Libraries magazine, published by the American Library Assn. “Nowadays, it’s the old-fashioned business model--cut out the waste. . . . It’s perceived by the powers that be that these will save a lot of money--with one building instead of two. Somehow, it doesn’t work that way.”

Ladera Ranch would be the Orange County public library system’s first foray into joint use, and many details remain murky, including whether students and teachers would get dibs on materials during school hours and whether the library would be staffed by the school, the county or both. Officials haven’t settled on where to put children’s books, but they are playing with the idea of two different collections, one on each floor, said Cary Brockman, Capistrano’s facilities manager.

The first floor, a library and media center for students, will be unavailable to residents while class is in session. The upstairs library will be open to the public all day. After school, both floors of the building will be available to everyone, said John Adams, Orange County head librarian.

For security, the library will be built on the perimeter of the campus near the school parking lot, offering easy access to parking spaces but guarding against unsanctioned tramps across campus.

Those provisions don’t satisfy Elliott Duchon, a Riverside County school administrator whose office handles Orange County facilities consulting for the state Education Department. “They will have to undergo some serious safety considerations to make it work” and ensure children’s safety and privacy, Duchon said.

The county will pay $1.5 million toward the library--fees collected from Rancho Mission Viejo LLC, Ladera’s developer. The Capistrano Unified School District’s financial contribution is hazier, because the library’s cost is included in the $14-million to $16-million price tag for the new school, said David Doomey, the district’s assistant superintendent for facilities planning.

Both Ladera students and residents could reap benefits from the plan. The community, which probably couldn’t support a library on its own, would get one. Students would be able to choose from about 15,000 books, rather than 2,000 or so.

*

Times librarian Sheila A. Kern contributed to this story.