Main Library may be bookless before opening
By LIESEN SLANDER Daily Planet Slave
In order to raise some much-needed quick cash to complete construction on its new $246 million building, the Main Library will hold a book sale next weekend.
But this isn’t your average cast-offs and out-of-dates-type of book sale. This one’s more akin to an everything’s-gotta-go, 50-percent off-kind-of blow out.
“We’re selling every book in the place,” said Head Librarian Paige Turner, just after getting a parking ticket. “We’re desperate. I don’t know what else to do.”
Turner said the library had been “abandoned” by the City Council, which refused last week to contribute any more money to the long-delayed, still under construction project.
“The council and the public asked for these things, then refused to pay for them,” Turner said, who had just gotten a parking ticket. “This has gotten completely out of control.”
By “these things,” Turner said she meant the endless list of additions and modifications, added mostly by the council at the behest of city department heads, but also a few by voter initiative and special interest groups too.
“It’s crazy,” Turner said. “I mean, how are you supposed to open an aviary without birds?”
Asked how a library can open without books, Turner replied, “We can always get more books. The people who live around here have lots of books. I’m sure they’ll be glad to donate them at a later date, if and when the library ever opens.”
City Councilman Gary Pander said he admired Turner’s “gumption” in solving her own budget crisis in a new and creative way.
“I wish this city had more like her,” Pander said, adding that the move once again makes Santa Monica an example setter. He doesn’t see a problem with no books in the library since it really won’t be used for reading much.
“Nobody reads books that much anymore, do they?”
Pander also said he wasn’t concerned about the city ending up with a bookless library, partially for the reasons given by Turner but for others too. These include a $13 million study recently commissioned by the city, which found that most of the library’s books wouldn’t sell to the general public anyway because they were rated as “too boring.” In addition, the consulting firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe found that most of the books that would sell were “easily replaceable.”
20D,“That study really sealed it in a way,” Pander said. “You barely even need books to open a new library these days. But you do need a lap pool.”
As supporters like to point out, it is also the only library ever to have its own hockey/indoor football rink, dirt bike track and conservatory.
The sale will take place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Members of the Library Board, their families and rare book dealers with the right connections will get first crack at the collection in a closed “viewing” on Friday.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2003. Read the original PDF.