Via email from Save NYPL:
After eight (!) years of delays, the replacement for Donnell Library will open next Monday (June 27) at 10am. If you are free that day, please join us as we remind NYPL officials that the opening of the new (significantly smaller) library is no cause for celebration.
Beloved for its children’s literature and foreign language collection, the Donnell Library was one of NYPL’s most heavily used circulating branches. But in a trial run for the defeated Central Library Plan, Donnell was sold to private developers for a pittance in 2007 and shuttered the following year. The deal was hatched in secret, and no public review preceded the sale.
The new replacement library is less than a third the size of Donnell and has been shoehorned into the basement of a luxury condominium-hotel, where rooms start at $850 per night. The special collections will not be returning.
Unfortunately, we can’t bring back the old Donnell. But with your support, we can prevent further sales of our libraries. Let’s rally to remind library executives and elected officials that public libraries belong to all of us!
From LAist, the shop at the Central Library, closed since last January has reopened and is a great place to buy everything a booklover wants. Check it out!
The library board in Newfoundland and Labrador announced sweeping changes to its services Wednesday, adopting a regional library model which will see 54 branches close in the next two years.
The board met Tuesday to discuss how best to deal with a $1-million loss in its annual budget, a cut made in the provincial budget.
In a statement, the board said 41 libraries will remain open, and 85 per cent of residents in the province will still be within a 30 minute drive of a remaining branch.
Susan Neuman, a professor of education studies at the University of Michigan who has researched the use of libraries in poor versus middle-income areas around the country, said, “In low-income areas, the time people spend in the libraries is often much longer than in middle-income areas and it’s a lot different.”
“This is where they do their job applications, where they do their gaming, and where they read and do all of their information-related activities. It’s where the kids do their homework,” Neuman said.
But Reyes-Gavilan’s ambitions go beyond bricks and mortar. He wants to put the D.C. Public Library at the forefront of American libraries, to be a model for the nation by embracing a “hacker” culture that treats library patrons not as passive consumers of information, but as creators. His mantra is “libraries are not their buildings,” but “engines of human capital.”
Alexander is more careful than most.Half of the current cardholders at the Biblioteca branch owe money, and most — 65 percent — are barred from borrowing materials and using computers because they owe $10 or more.
San Jose’s charges are exponentially higher than comparable cities like San Francisco, where there is no charge for late materials for users 17 and younger and a charge of 10 cents a day for adults.
“Fifty cents a day for middle-class families is a slap on the wrist,” said Maria Arias Evans, the principal of Washington Elementary School in San Jose, which is behind the Biblioteca Latinoamericana. Given the choice between paying fines “and putting food on the table and a roof over the children’s head, it’s a no-brainer: It is better not to check out library books.”
Mayor Kenney's ambitions $600 million "Rebuild" plan is aimed at fixing up many of those aging libraries and repairing run-down recreation centers.
The six-year initiative also calls for reorganizing space in some library buildings and creating new space in others.
The proposed makeover involves adding pre-kindergarten classrooms in some library branches as part of another major Kenney initiative: His goal of adding 10,000 "quality" Pre-K slots for 3- and 4-year-olds by 2020.
Diaz, who has since paid off his penalties, is not alone. The city's library system is facing a staggering and mounting $6.8 million in unpaid fines across its 23 branches -- the most library director Jill Bourne has seen in nearly three years on the job. That figure is roughly five times the amount of unpaid fines racked up a few years ago in Chicago, a city nearly three times San Jose's population. It also exceeds unpaid fines at public libraries in other major Bay Area cities such as Oakland, which has $3 million in outstanding fines, and San Francisco, which stands at $4.6 million.
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