Libraries

[Steve]

Los Angeles Libraries Experience Renaissance With Computer Use

Rebecca Fairley Raney
NY Times 5/31/98


LOS ANGELES -- In 1992, Elizabeth Martinez, the city librarian at
that time, held a meeting that few people on staff can forget. She
told a room of horrified librarians that by the next year, the card
catalog, with its five million cards meticulously typed and filed
over the years, would be fully automated. 

A lot of librarians decided to retire. The ones who stayed, however,
are witnessing a renaissance in the city's libraries driven by the
digitizing that frightened some members of the old guard. People are
lining up on the sidewalks in the morning, waiting for the library
to open, and when it opens, they run for the computers. They keep
more than 1,000 terminals busy every day at 38 of the city's 67
branches. Now, cards from the old card catalog decorate the walls of
the elevators in the central library downtown. 

The experience of the Los Angeles libraries is being repeated
throughout the nation. A recent study by MCI LibraryLINK, an MCI
initiative to connect libraries to the Internet, showed that the use
of a public library for Internet access has grown more than 500
percent since 1996. It showed that 16 percent of respondents
accessed the Internet from someplace other than home, work or school,
and that nearly half of that group logged on from the library. 

Those numbers translate into 5.6 million people who had accessed the
Internet from a public library in the six months before the survey.
Other results show that 46.8 million people accessed the Internet
from home, 38.3 million from work, 22.9 million from school and 12.5
million from somewhere else -- public library access accounting for
nearly 45 percent of people who logged on from "somewhere else." 

Numbers like these come as no surprise to library workers -- people
who for years have been enduring the words of doomsayers who said
computerization would eliminate the need for libraries. The
doomsayers were wrong. The crush of information has made librarians
more important than ever. 

"I've worked in public libraries for 30 years, and I see what's
happening now as the best time ever for libraries," said Susan Kent,
who is now Los Angeles's city librarian. 

She is well aware that libraries are moving closer to the public
spotlight as one way to close the gap between those who have
computers and those who do not. Kent said the Los Angeles library
system, the third largest in the nation, is ready for that
spotlight.

>From the turning-point meeting about the card catalog in 1992 to the
recent opening of the 38th "virtual library" computer center in
Chinatown, the Los Angeles Public Library has propelled its
popularity through the computer revolution. 

It's a story of disaster, hard work and a Hollywood ending. In a
very real sense, the wiring of the library rose from the ashes of the
arson fires that destroyed a wing of the central library. The first
fire, in April 1992, destroyed 375,000 books and damaged 700,000
more. The lost collection was valued at $14.2 million. In September
of that year, another arson fire destroyed 25,000 more books. 

After the first fire, Tom Bradley, who was mayor of Los Angeles at
the time, made a phone call to Lodwrick M. Cook, the chief executive
officer of Arco, stationed in the Arco Towers across Flower Street
from the burned-out library. The mayor asked for help. He got it.
Soon corporations and foundations were scrambling to assist. 

Born from the disaster was the Los Angeles Library Foundation, which
has raised $16 million since incorporating in 1992. The foundation,
bolstered with steady support from dozens of entities including the
Getty Foundation, the Gluck Foundation, the Goldwyn Foundation,
Microsoft and Wells Fargo, has supported the sophisticated
computerization of the library system. The city budget for libraries
has increased steadily in the last decade as well: in 1990, the
library budget was $38 million and this year, it has reached $45
million. The city has paid for virtual libraries in 10 branches
since 1996. 

Now, at computer terminals at the library, people have Internet
access. They have the card catalog. They have word processing
programs and printers. They have access to 1,000 periodicals. They
can call up information from more than 500 high-priced commercial
databases, information stored on CDs such as the full text of
newspapers, full-text reports on corporations by financial analysts,
encyclopedias and detailed health data. Access to the CDs is smooth
and seamless from library terminals with a response time of two or
three seconds -- a technological feat that the librarians were told,
a few years back, couldn't be done. 

"There's more demand than supply," said Joan Bartel, director of
information technologies and collections. "We could probably double
the numbers [of computers] and still not have enough." 

The digital thinking has extended to the library system's Web site.
>From their homes, people can search for books, place them on hold
and even specify where they want to pick them up. Soon, Bartel said,
the system will allow people who reserve books online to receive an
automatic phone call when the book is available. 

The Web site is designed to reach people who haven't had occasion to
visit libraries -- another case of computers bringing people in.
Meanwhile, the computers in the libraries continue to drive up the
traffic. 

Sylvia Galan, librarian of the city's Echo Park branch, reported
that for the first time in her career, she's so busy she occasionally
loses phone calls that have been placed on hold. Her branch, on a
Wednesday afternoon, was filled with a demographic librarians have
rarely seen: teen-age boys, lining up at the computer terminals.
They leave the library with books, too. 

Located a mile west of downtown, Echo Park is a point of entry for
immigrants, most of whom come from Mexico and El Salvador. The
library offers Internet access and special CDs geared to help people
on the waiting list for amnesty programs improve their English. The
most popular books at the branch have been children's picture books
in Spanish. 

In addition to the crowd of male teen-agers who haunt the libraries
these days, Rosa Rojas, who calls herself "a humble Colombian old
lady," logs on at Echo Park every day to read the news from Bogota
and to see the "beautiful pictures" of the Vatican.
Thirteen-year-old Yanell Nava searches Yahoo for information about
Michelangelo to study for finals. She has no computer at home and
said the students never use the computers at school. 

Galan, the librarian, watched the crowd with delight. 

"Virtualizing the library for a community like this is so profound,"
she said. "We are it. For people to be dying to get into the library
-- that's our dream come true. I never dreamed we would have the
gang kids in here. But we do." 

And they behave. In a community where city council members hold
forums to address violence, Galan is watching even the gang members'
interest in learning piqued by the availability of computers. It
builds pride, she said. 

More and more, Peter Persic, director of public information for the
library, is hearing people in the city talk about the potential of
computers for "moral salvation." Every time a new branch is wired, he
sees a frenzy of excitement and gratitude in the community in which
the branch is located. 

At the recent opening of the virtual library in Chinatown, children
came out by the dozens, and they had a question for every man who
showed up in a suit: "Are you Mr. Zee? Are you Mr. Zee?" 

"Mr. Zee" is Tien P. Zee, chairman and president of the Intex Corp.
and benefactor of the virtual library in Chinatown. When he appeared,
the children kept shouting "Thank you!" They wanted his autograph. 

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company 





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