B. Robson asked for clarification of a couple library issues. I hope this
helps.
1) The Library was built to hold 1.6 million books, and it now holds 2.5
million. Due to overcrowding, 85% of the collection is inaccessible to the
public (or more accurately, 85% of the collection can only be accessed by
the public going through librarians). I believe Robson's question is "Why
is so little accessible if the building was meant to hold 1.6 million
books?" There are two parts to the answer. First, as computers become a
more and more standard part of libraries, they displace a lot of books. In
other words, when the library was built in 1961, it was designed to hold 1.6
million books and zero computers. Today, it holds 2.5 million books and 70
public computer terminals. The second part is that our library, like
virtually every other library in the country, was not designed to display
its entire collection -- nor would a new library. In the new library, ~1.5
million books and ~150 computers would be immediately accessible, a vast
improvement over the ~375,000 books currently on display.
2) Robson also asks whether we could decentralize the system by moving
culturally appropriate parts of the collection out to the branches. To a
large extent, this is already happening. If you go the Franklin Library,
for example, you will find many books in Spanish and Somali; it also houses
significant Native American and Hmong collections. These decisions were
made to reflect the interests of the diverse Franklin neighborhood. This is
true of every neighborhood library.
There are limits, however, in our ability to move books out of the Central
Library. As I said above, the Central Library houses about 2.5 million
books; collectively, the 14 neighborhood libraries house about 0.6 million
-- and, for the most part, they are full to the brim. To really move the
collection out into the neighborhoods would require a much, much larger
investment in building new branch libraries. Right now, the Central Library
is able to function as a hub to the system, holding most of the books and
distributing them where they are needed -- both throughout our system and
via loan to neigbhoring counties and across the state; for operational
purposes, this is more efficient than having multiple hubs.
Finally, it is a misconception that we are asking for a "Cadillac" system.
The problem with the library is not that it's a Neon. The problem is that
it's a Model T -- or some other model that is out of date, expensive to
maintain and undersized (that last one may not be true of the Model T;
you'll have to forgive my limited car vocabulary).
To go back to the Franklin Library, our space capacity is 49 people;
recently, due to the popular Homework Helpers program and other
library-based activities, Franklin has frequently had 100+ users at a single
time. As a result, we've been told by the Fire Marshall that we are going
to have to start limiting admission to this public library. This is just
one example, but there are others like it. The point is that what we're
asking for is not extravagant: it's an appropriate response to the real
needs of our community.
Colin Hamilton
Executive Director
Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library
612/630-6172
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
