Libraries have become more than just a quiet place to read
By MARK BROWN mbrown@suntimes.com January 24, 2012 12:38AM
Library employees and supporters protest the closing of library's outside the Beverly Library, 1962 W. 95th. Monday, January 23, 2012 | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
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Updated: February 25, 2012 8:22AM
I spent a shivering couple of hours Monday morning with Chicago Public Library workers protesting outside the Bucktown-Wicker Park Branch.
There was hot chocolate and picket signs. “Honk if you love libraries,” was the most popular, judging by the constant refrain of horns sounding along Milwaukee Avenue.
The library, of course, was closed, as all branch libraries will continue to be closed on Monday mornings in Chicago for the foreseeable future.
Closing them was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s call, although this particular location is among the half of branch libraries always closed on Monday and Wednesday mornings under the alternating schedule instituted by Mayor Daley two years ago.
That was when the library system first slashed its hours to 48 a week from the previous 64 in a cost-cutting move.
It’s a sorry state of affairs for a great city, a problem not even half-solved by Emanuel’s announcement over the weekend that he will reopen the branches for half-days on Monday afternoons starting next month.
There are 76 branch libraries in the city, and nearly every one is an oasis of sorts for our urban neighborhoods.
Maybe there was a time when a library was just a quiet place to read.
But these days a library is a safe haven for a kid to go after school until a parent gets home from work.
It’s where the unemployed can pursue a job search and where those who can’t afford a computer or had to give up their Internet access at home can check their email.
Branch libraries are where young moms bring their pre-schoolers for reading programs and where homeless people wait out the day until they can return to the shelter.
It’s where block clubs and CAPS meetings find an empty meeting room, and yes, it’s still where kids do their homework and where anyone can find a good book.
Tom Stark, 46, librarian at Budlong Woods, probably summed it up best when he told me, “For many people, it’s the only free, educational, informational and recreational resource they have. That should be a priority in this time of economic hardship.”
For some reason, though, libraries have popped up on the mayor’s radar as a logical place to cut. Looking at it from his perspective, I suppose he’s cutting everywhere he can, and there’s no reason to exempt libraries when even police are taking a trim.
But I think part of the problem is the library system has been one of the better-operated city departments for a while, with less featherbedding and political influence than was the case in other agencies.
As a result, library cuts pretty quickly start taking real services away from real people at a time when they most need them.
Library workers say Monday mornings are usually a very busy time in the branches.
“At most locations, there’s at least 20 people standing outside every day waiting for the library to open,” said Carl Sorrell, a library associate and president of the library employees union, AFSCME Local 1215.
Librarians do not have a reputation for having a particularly aggressive union. But AFCSME, which represents some 3,500 city workers, about a fourth of them at the library, has taken a harder line than other unions against concessions — even to avoid layoffs.
Emanuel wanted the library workers union — which includes everyone from $91,000-a-year branch managers to $11,000-a-year part-time pages — to make concessions that would have allowed him to close the branches on Monday and Friday mornings and avert layoffs.
Unionized library workers haven’t suffered a pay cut during the downturn and are scheduled for a 3.5 percent raise this year along with other AFSCME city employees.
Still, they feel they’ve given up plenty by absorbing staff cuts that have resulted in most of their branches operating with half the employees they had four years ago.
The librarians told me they don’t want to be in a fight with Chicago’s new mayor.
“We want to make him our friend. We want to help him understand how important library services are to the people,” said Annie Ayres, a veteran children’s librarian at the Near North Branch.
“It just seems bizarre to us: longer school days but shorter library hours,” Ayres said.
It does seem strange, doesn’t it?
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