New Capistrano Library Takes a Page From the Past

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

The cooperative would be the Orange County public library system’s first foray into a joint-use institution.

The idea of shared school-public libraries is gaining 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 library projects--although the interpretation of that wording is still vague.

The ventures have worked well in some cases. But other school-public libraries have been beset by problems that range from irksome to frightening.

In San Jose, for example, where a library is located on a high school campus, the public can’t use that branch whenever a fistfight or weapons discovery at the school causes a lock down.

Elsewhere, the elderly or parents with young children have complained about 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 school safety, about strange adults traipsing across campus.

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 plans, 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 about 180 combined-use libraries nationwide. Separately, the state estimates that California is home to 30 to 50 shared libraries. It’s hard to pin down numbers because new joint libraries are planned and others have quickly disband.

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

Ideally, that arrangement would allow everyone access to a book on tape or magazine all day long while keeping interaction between students and the wider community at a minimum. Officials stress tight planning so neither students nor residents are given short shrift.

They have an ally in Ken Hall, an influential education consultant in Sacramento. Hall contends combined projects are the best way to invest the public’s money. Many of these concerns 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.”

Once Popular in Rural Areas

Certainly, shared-use success stories exist, Fitzgibbons said.

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

“The ‘50s were the heyday” of joint-use, according to 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.”

Many details remain murky about the Ladera Ranch library, 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 collections, one on each floor, Cary Brockman, Capistran’s facilities manager.

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

For security’s sake, the library is to be built on the perimeter of the campus near the school parking lot, where it can also be guarded against unsanctioned trips across campus.

But 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.

Ladera students and residents could both benefit from the plan. The community, which likely 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.

In south Glendale, city and school officials are pooling their resources to revitalize a densely packed, mostly poor neighborhood around Edison Elementary School with a $35-million project revolving around a school, park, library and community center.

With state and local funding, the groups hope to finish the project in late 2002. As envisioned, the joint-use library would be attached to the elementary school, which would be in the expanded Pacific Park, said Supt. Jim Brown.

A more ambitious project is under way in San Jose, where the city and the state university are sharing the $174-million cost of building a nine-story library to be shared by residents and university students alike.

The library, scheduled to open in 2003 with separate city and university staffs who will serve all equally, will be “a living laboratory” for combined university-public libraries, said Jane Light, San Jose’s city librarian.

The San Jose library system already has a branch on the crammed campus of Independence High School on the east side of town.

That pairing has presented more challenges, Light acknowledged. The occasional fistfight or the presence of a weapon on campus sends the school into lock-down--with staff blocking outsiders from the parking lot. “If a mom with two preschoolers in the car is told, ‘Sorry, we have to shut down for a few hours, if you want to come back then,’ many won’t come back,” Light said.

Joint Efforts Elsewhere

Difficulties large and small afflicted shared libraries in Kansas City, Mo., and Louisville, Ky.

In Kansas City, seven of 14 branch libraries used to be in schools specifically designed for sharing library space. That decades-old system is no more.

As the city grew more urban, and students were bused in to its high schools, many residents started feeling alienated from the joint-use branches, said city Library Director Dan Bradbury. Parking was scarce.

Some senior citizens and parents of young children--libraries’ key daytime patrons--said they felt too intimidated by roughhousing teens to venture into the branches. Even though librarians worked for the city, not the schools, some principals treated them like employees, assigning them to watch over detention or study halls.

A study eventually determined it would have been more cost-effective to ferry books to patrons via taxicab than keep the branch open. With the help of new library funding, the system was disbanded.

An uneasy alliance persists in Louisville’s one joint-use branch at a middle school.

The library houses children’s and adult collections. The adult books are behind locked doors during school hours, when only children use the library and school employees staff it. After 3 p.m., the city staff takes over, the doors are unlocked and anyone can come in, said Craig Buthod, city library director. School employees only work day shifts and city employees have the weekend and evening shifts.

“I would not design a setup like this again,” Buthod said.

The poster project for joint-use projects sits in Olney, a rural community of 3,500 in north-central Texas.

A combination of community soul-searching and vast dissatisfaction with lackluster school and public libraries led to the creation of the Olney Community Library and Arts Center in the 1970s.

The result, a library of 31,000 volumes and networked computers, is the envy of larger communities. The center, on a campus with an elementary, middle and high school, is headed by Library Director Jeanie Spivey, a former teacher and current school district employee.

Here, every niggling detail is pinned down, from finances (the school district pays two-thirds to three-quarters of operating costs) to keeping adolescents away from adult novels during school hours (young-adult books are marked with red dots, so when preteens bring dot-less books up for checkout during class time, they are told to try again after school.)

The computer system Olney uses is one for a group of schools, so Internet access is automatically filtered. The one time a stranger sidled up to a teenage girl, a staff member just phoned the girl’s father--a police officer, as it happened.

“I’ve had people call me and ask how it works,” Spivey said. “The main thing, I’d say, is: Do your homework. Don’t do it because someone wants to save [the cost of] a building. You’ve got to have a unified community.”

Times librarian Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.

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Public Library on School Grounds

A public school that would house a combination public library/school in Ladera Ranch is raising questions about whether saving money compromises campus safety. Public access to the children’s library could also be a concern.