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Where Are the Books
Imagine a world without books.
Your friendly telephone companies PacBell, Pacific Telesis, (Telesis
from the Greek, the purposeful use of natural and social forces; planned
progress; New World Dictionary, 1972), has done just that. They call
the plan "Building the House of the Book." In PacBell's vision of
the library, "If it's not in here, maybe it doesn't exist."
(This was PacBell's motto for their Yellow-Pages until a few months
after this article was written.) They even made a video: Library of
the Future (© 1988). In this 12 minute vision, they show us a world
where women are computer slaves, librarians are history, books are gone,
and technology has replaced God. This film is not for children. This movie
is not for smart people. This movie is the plan. Visit the New Main. Ask to
see Brooks Hall. Expect to be denied. Nearly half of the library's
collections are there.
Inside
the new building, nearly 60 per cent of the library's remaining books are
in closed-stacks, hidden behind locked doors.
You can't see them or touch them.
The building itself
is hostile to books. Conveyor belts eat the books. Old, rare books, once
kept in locked, dust-proof cases, are now kept in the hell of Brooks Hall
with the rats, the underground humidity and the feral cats.
Of the building's 363,247 square
feet, over one third is useless for either books or computers. THEY spent
$46 million of your money on non-book functions: atriums, light wells,
television and sound studios, galleries, a coffee shop, a gift shop, and
some big metal art. At $365 per square foot, there are 20,000 square feet
of space used for nothing. NOTHING. That's $7.3 million right there. That's
20,000 square feet of space guaranteed to help bring about the PacBell
vision of "The Library of the Future." The most expensive room of
all is suspended four stories in the air, three floors high inside,
enclosed in glass and steel; containing perhaps the most precious books to
remain in the PacBell House of the Book: the nation's telephone books.
Cruel joke or dire prophecy? After all, remember: "If it's not in here
perhaps it doesn't exist."
 This new library was planned; it
was no accident. In a 1987 planning study conducted by library consultants
Becker & Hayes Inc. , it is made clear that books and periodicals must
go. The study states, "The library will pursue and active "weeding"
program in the next two decades to extend the useful life of the
facility."
It also states that, "up to 50 percent of the material
could be located off-site." Enter Brooks Hall-here the plan becomes
reality. So while the voters in 1988 were being sold the grand
"world-class" library, for which their millions in tax money were
necessary, the planners were planning their "Library of the
Future." You have already paid: Which future did your money buy?
Where Is The Money
 Over 71 percent of San Franciscans
approved Proposition A in 1988 to provide $104.5 million for the New Main
Library which would double the existing footage. This was money just for
the new building. To furnish and equip the building, a public-private
partnership, The Library Foundation, was contrived. Here's what happened...
Steven A. Coulter: Entrepreneur Extraordinaire
Today's Library Commission
President, Steven A. Coulter, has been on the commission since 1988, with
one brief interruption under mayor Jordan. In addition to his duties on the
commission, supposedly representing the public, Mr. Coulter was the
cheerleader in charge of raising money for the Foundation. On April 12,
1996, a week before the new library opened, Coulter told a global audience
via 15 national and three international satellite downlinks from the
College of San Mateo (blacked out in San Francisco) that the Foundation had
raised $34 million in private donations to furnish the New Main Library.
Coulter said, "We have 17,000 donor families, institutions,(&)
foundations. We have raised just under $34 million in private
money..." In the Friends of the Library 1996 Annual Report, Coulter's
$34 million had become only $22 million. What happened to the other $12
million?
In exchange for its legal right to
exist, the Foundation promised to raise $300,000 annually for the library.
In the first year of that agreement, the Foundation raised only $54,000. In
a twisted quid pro quo, the Foundation then charged the library $150,000
for its services. That's a Deficit of $96,000 this year. Add to that the $1
rent on their spacious new offices(which cost you the taxpayer $365 a
square foot) and you've got on hell of a raw deal.
By the way, guess who Steven A.
Coulter works for? He's the leading vice-president for Pacific Bell, the
Area Director for Pacific Telesis of Northern California, and the San
Francisco Director for Pacific Telesis Group (the grant-giving foundation
of Pacific Telesis). In the old days, before the "Library of the
Future," this was known as an illegal conflict of interest. Ethics?
Remember. "If it's not in here, maybe it doesn't exist."
Kenneth A. Dowlin - Legacy of
the Fall Guy
Dateline: San Francisco. On
October 17, 1989, San Francisco was rocked by a major earthquake. At the
Old main Library, thousands of books fell from the shelves.
This event
provided City Librarian Ken Dowlin with a dream of dreams. From this
earthquake, Dowlin derived a New World Order for his books and collections.
He would completely re-organize the library to accommodate his own vision.
Instead of moving quickly to restore services, Dowlin and the Library
Commission decided to use the opportunity to make major changes.
Dowlin's strategic plan called for
a three-tiered approach. The Alexandrian Project would result in a new
building; the Herculean Project; that he described as the "cleaning
out of the Augean Stables," and the "Mercury Project," which
would consist of an integrated computer service allowing public access via
computer modems to the library.
In 1989, with books on the floor,
Dowlin applied to The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) for a
grant of $1million. With this money, no matter what he told the feds, he
would initiate all three of his Greek inspired points of action.
Herculean Project - Purging the
Books
As Dowlin gazed upon the fallen
books he decided to "collapse" their categories. This trashing of
the Dewey Decimal System he called "leveled access," a folly that
remains in place today. The result was to complicate public access to the
books. He heaped hitherto skillfully organized and indexed collections,
e.g., sports, poetry, labor issues, etc., into large unmanageable
super-categories. He moved the libraries periodicals, many being completely
unbroken runs dating from the 19th century, into an abandoned hospital in
the city's Richmond District. Another Foundation Booster and library
commissioner, Dale A. Carlson, vice-president of the Pacific Stock
Exchange, helped orchestrate this shell game, arranging for the covert
facility with the aid of Senator Barbara Boxer. For his efforts, those
miles of stacks became known as the Carlson Stacks, a term of derision
defining the separation of the books from their public. Today, much of this
material, primarily due to citizen and librarian resistance, has reached
the temporary shelter of Brooks Hall.
Mercury Project
With his $1 million in Federal
relief funds, Dowlin bought computers. His ultimate choice was a Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) supercomputer that drove his online Public
Access Catalogue (OPAC). It's cost to date $14 million and counting. It
seems than rather than ask the public for the money to buy the system, he
made a midnight deal with DEC. But if the computer was to be financed, then
the (city's) Board of Supervisors should have voted on it. They weren't
even consulted. Today this system is user Unfriendly. It can't be
adequately updated because of its age. Ask anyone you know who has tried to
use OPAC if it worked for them. A recent fill-rate study shows that patrons
found only 37 percent of the books they were looking for. A writer to
Harper's said, "Vast sums of money have been spent on new technology
of dubious value. The excellent old-technology of the book is being
sacrificed to that end."
The Alexandrian Project & the
New Main Library
Ken Dowlin's plan called for
building the New Main Library as a communications center-the Alexandrian
Project. We know, of course, that the Library of Alexandria, the greatest
library in the greatest city of Ancient Egypt, was destroyed. Containing
the works of Plato, Socrates, and other famous scholars, {The Library of
Alexandria was burned} - its many pagan books and manuscripts were
completely destroyed by people who would not tolerate them in their new
world. Apparently Ken Dowlin, the architect of the phone company's
"Library of the Future" felt much the same way. Books must go.
Computers must thrive. It's ironic that Dowlin chose to name his program
for a Library whose books were destroyed.
A number of Dowlin's metaphors
were mixed. He should have seen himself not as Mercury, the messenger of
the gods, but as Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. Early in 1996
Dowlin's wings would melt as the library's budget hemorrhaged money. Dowlin
would resign. The builder of dreams spent nine years creating the Library
of the Future. It took just nine months for his political wings to melt,
resigning under public pressure he fled in his Winnebago camper to points
south. Today, the "New Ken Dowlin" is running for President of
the American Library Association. If he wins look for this
"visionary" to spread his work around the nation at the expense
of the printed world. (note: Dowlin lost)
Mayor Brown's AUDIT - NOT!
In June of 1996, library critics
called for an audit of the public library. In January 1997, at the time of
Dowlin's well-publicized resignation, the audit began. Unfortunately the
audit would not answer the critic's questions: "Where are the
Books?" and, "Where is the Money?" Willie Brown assigned a
management consultant, Elizabeth C. Reveal of Coda Partners, LLC of
Washington D.C., who in California was unlicensed, unregistered, and not
certified to conduct an audit. And some of the same library administrators
who created the problems in the first place were assigned to her audit
team.
The public called for an audit to
establish what the libraries assets are and how it had been spending its
money. But an auditor is only as good as the information made available to
her. We know that funds were diverted from the book budget to buy
technology in violation of city laws. We know that the library eliminated
by attrition the lower level working staff who were needed to provide
services and at the same time increased the amount spent on upper
management positions. One of the findings of this audit was that the
library was in trouble because of personnel costs, when in fact, a full
third of the budget was devoted to technology. A $10.2 million Management
Support Services line item paid for over one hundred unbudgeted
technology-support positions.
The audit largely by-passed Brooks
Hall. (The same) Brooks Hall where, as we all know, One MILLION books are
stranded. The day before the audit's release, the audit dream-team met with
Mayor Brown and the City Controller, the City Attorney, Steven Coulter and
his Commissioners, along with corporate spear-chucker and Board of
Supervisors President Barbara Kaufman. They created a PR slogan: The
library was "a victim of its own success." This was a lie. SFPL
spent over seven years preparing for success, and in fact, was prepared for
more patrons than they currently have.
Responding to the "victim"
headline, one writer to the San Francisco Chronicle offered this retort.
"It's like that old joke.
A man murders his parents and pleads to the
judge for mercy because now he is an orphan." When active citizens,
some of whom had studied the library's finances for over a decade, cried
"Foul," they were told to beat it. After all, in this audit, as in
the Library of the Future, fiscal responsibility like ethics and citizen
involvement is obsolete. Don't forget: "If it's not in here it
probably doesn't exist."
Coulter's Citizen Advisory
Committee
On March 4, 1997, Steven Coulter,
a.k.a. Mr. Phone Company, proposed at the Library Commission meeting that
he appoint a "Citizen Advisory Committee on Collections
Management."
Mr. Coulter initiated this unusual
step to counter and at the same time kill the public's input in resisting
his outrageous takeover plan for SFPL.
Even some of his most vocal
supporters couldn't swallow this one. What Coulter was actually proposing
was a hand-picked committee without any democratic process. This would lock
out both the public and the librarians from deciding which books would be
"tossed" and which new books would be acquired-as well as where
within the library the new books would live.
Every "citizen's
advisory" committee or City Commission have the same problem: they are
hand-picked individuals - mostly selected by the Mayor - who do not
represent anybody but the interests of the Mayor and those funding his and
the political machine's electoral war chests.
Twice blocked and with the public
ninety-eight percent against him, Coulter still forced this issue onto the
Library Commission's agenda, with a six to one vote. There is no precedent
for the appointed representatives of the public to delegate their
responsibilities to their private and/or their corporate friends (that was
nine years ago - today it is obviously much different). If Coulter's
Citizen's Advisory Committee becomes a reality, you will never be
represented on it, or by it. This tactic is not only distasteful, it is
probably unconstitutional. {This too failed after the public loudly began
to resist}
Beginning With Proposition E in
1994
In the Spring of 1994, four out of
five voters, thrilled with anticipation at the unveiling of the New Main
Library, approved Proposition E at the ballot box.
In doing so they amended
the Charter to double the library's budget and quadruple the book budget.
Their action made the San Francisco Public Library System, the wealthiest
in the nation. The libraries $17 million budget became a $36 million
budget. Poverty was no longer an issue at the Public Library.
As the adage goes, "Be
careful what you wish for."
Upon first learning of this development,
Ken Dowlin, then City Librarian, was heard to say: "That's more money
than we could ever spend." As in nearly everything else, he was wrong.
In the 1995 budget year, the library not only spent its $36 million, it ran
up a $6.2 million deficit. This resulted in at least three appeals to the
Board of Supervisors for supplemental appropriations. But even these
buckets of money were not enough. The administration and the commission
also diverted the $4.5 million annual book budget to defray the soaring
costs of Dowlin's technological delusions. That money was supposed to be
for books and the staff to make them accessible. In fact, book budget
purchases have been cut every year since fiscal year 1994/1995, the period
when the book budget was quadrupled. For most of 1996 book purchases were
frozen.
PacBell's "Library of the
Future" has an insatiable appetite for public funds. The phone bills
for SFPL topped $860,000 in 1995/96. This year's figures are unavailable,
but since another hundred computer terminals have been added, bringing the
total to 400, one can assume that internet access fees, where the bulk of
the costs to the public occur, have only increased. When the business plan
excludes competition, you can hear Ross Perot's "giant sucking
sound," In this case that refers to PacBell/Pacific Telesis {now
AT&T}. They just can't get enough. But the funds aren't there. Maybe
that's because, "if it's not in here, maybe it doesn't exist."
(NOTE: On May 14, 1997 Acting
City Librarian Kathy Page asked for and received another $2 million
supplemental appropriation from the Board of Supervisors to cover on-going
operating expenses. The budgetary chasm is deepening)
PACBELL/PACIFIC TELESIS: Pirates
on the Bay
In a bold and daring move, Pacific
Bell and pacific Telesis threw in their lot with Coulter/Dowlin to forge a
new "Center for Information Technology and Communications." SFPL
was to be the Petri dish, a national showcase for high technology and
communications, which is the principle underlying the architectural design
of the library. In fact, PacBell/Pacific Telesis are only more mundane
profits. The telecommunications/ computer companies are plundering the SF
Public Library, the City and every other public institution by overselling
their products, connecting unnecessary new technology to services rendered
by them and are cashing in on civic interests. This is a
"business" Mr. Coulter, as a high executive works for PacBell,
knows very well.
City laws mandate competitive
bidding for services. Yet Coulter/Dowlin bought first and told the public
later. Telecommunications contracts were not open to competitive bid. For
this reason alone Coulter should resign. He and his rogue administration
have subverted the City's legal requirements in that important area. The
libraries finances are the victim. You are the victim. Most importantly
your children will be victims unless serious changes are made-by the
public.
The Libraries1996 Annual Report
says, "In just one month of operation, the library's internet address
was accessed 64,000 times." This figure which represents 780,000 hits
annually, gives us a measure of the heavy internet traffic generated at the
library. The profits to the phone company come with access charges to those
calls, both for connecting and disconnecting access. That profit includes
incoming and outgoing calls, both voice and modem. That's one hell of a lot
of money, which your institute generates for Mr. Coulter's employers. I
wish we could say more about these costs. We can't. the contracts are
undisclosed.
The new library was designed to be
a high-tech showplace which could service the digitized, telephone-modem
accessed information economy which the telecommunications giants foresee
for the 21st century. The long-range costs are staggering. For example
there is the digitization of books, often referred to by technical
advocates as a potential substitute for the printed word. Digitization has
its place; particularly when it comes to preserving works printed on
acid-based paper, which dissolves. But the costs forbid mass applications.
If just the San Francisco's Public Library's photos and maps were
digitized, based on the Library of Congress cost-benefit projects, this
project alone would cost more than $500 Billion and would require 40 years
or more to complete. When will San Francisco have an extra 500 billion
available for anything, much less for its library? And the real
complication involves the copyright laws which are the actual reason why
most things are not digitized today. Remember this the next time you're
told, "All books will be available on line." That's pie in the
sky.
Computers are a natural part of
any modern library, but at what cost to you and me? The prudent and
resourceful library planner would have gotten the most appropriate
technology at the best price. One wonders how the 75 databases within SFPL
meet this criterion. There may be money in this for digitization and
telecommunications firms, but as for library patrons and taxpayers looking
for practical and useful solutions-hey, "If it's not in here, maybe it
doesn't exist." If the best interests of the users is not the driving
force behind the huge investments, then corporate welfare is the real
reason behind the plundering of the Public Library.
THE NEW LIBRARIAN
The San Francisco Public Library
employs hundreds of skilled, professional librarians. Some librarians have
vocalized the problems and resisted the Library of the Future. A new term
has been added to the lexicon, "guerrilla librarian." This
defines efforts to save books from destruction, hiding them in personal
lockers, or stamping them so that they appear to have been in recent
circulation. Other librarians have gone along to get along. Over 250,000
library books were weeded from the library in 1995; many old, rare, and
last copies. These books and periodicals did not walk by themselves to the
Department of Public Works dump trucks that took them to landfill. They
were carried. Individual librarians have stood up and said, "Yes, I
did it, and I hated it."
When book-weeding reached the
national press, it temporarily came to a halt. The administration quit
tossing books and developed a more public relations-oriented approach.
They
began Adopt-a-Book Giveaways," held every Friday afternoon. When this
new form of book disposal was focused on by the press, this practice also
ceased. Today thanks to the courage and determination of those guerrilla
librarians and the library critics, books intended for disposal are stored
in Brooks Hall. But they're in huge untidy piles, hidden behind a plywood
wall especially crafted by administrators to hide the crime. Let's call it
the Wall of Shame.
Responsibility for collections is
a basic part of any librarian's job. It is one of the professional
standards in the industry. Yet, if the librarians had gone public with
their administrator's marching orders early in 1995, the killing would have
stopped. This situation required more than discussion, more than petitions;
the situation required dedicated and concerted action. This did not happen.
Today, the library remains in crisis, and the collections remain at risk.
The administration is waiting for public scrutiny to lessen so that they
may finish dumping the books. Acting city Librarian Kathy Page, who was
responsible for seeing that the new library could hold all its books,
failed. Today, she hints at a plan to close individual floors of the new
library to add shelves. That's why the Library's Audit contains only one
bland sentence about Brooks Hall-if the public knew of the miles and miles
of books and periodicals stranded there, that public would also know that
such a plan was architecturally impossible. Unless of course, most of those
collections were tossed. It's up to the librarians to stop her.
The librarians must rise and bring
a clear and final end to the destruction of the collections of the city of
San Francisco. Of course jobs are on the line, but so are professional
ethics, professional standards and the librarian's commitment to their
public. It's not just what they should do; it's what we pay them to do.
SOLUTIONS
San Francisco is currently beset
by several dangerous and divisive issues at Civic Center. At the core are
divisions over the Asian Art Museum's intended use and adaptation of the
Old main Library, a classic Beaux Arts building. Some of this controversy
has been caused by the fact that Brooks Hall contains over a million books
that need a home. On April 23, Mayor Brown told the San Francisco
Chronicle, "Since the year-old New Main Library, doesn't have enough
space for books and periodicals, the Old main should have been kept for
storage." Like the Asian Art Museum, which began with a huge private
collection donated in the 1940's, Brooks Hall's collections also deserve a
facility. It has been suggested that the Old Mint, located at Fifth and
Mission Streets, on Newspaper Row," should be utilized to relieve the
pressure. Another plan involves tearing the odd-shaped back off the new
library on its Hyde Street side, and adding five floors of additional
stacks. Unless and until leadership form the Mayor is demonstrated with
clear, decisive action, the crisis will continue.
But even if the new buildings
assigned to correct the damage done are obtained, that will in itself be an
indictment of the preposterous, incompetent way in which the local
political machine governs San Francisco: New York, Los Angeles, and Boston
somehow kept their old libraries for research and collections when they
built the new ones. Not in san Francisco - the City That Knows How. At the
time of Proposition E they promised to build a new library with double the
physical space. Well before we had about 250,000 square feet; now we have
only 183, 814 square feet out of a potential space of 365,000. The
remaining 179, 433 square feet is devoted to meeting rooms, auditoriums,
book shops, cafes, light wells, stairways, or other functions not directly
related to the library.
This city needs its citizens to
rescue its library from the clutches of corporations, corporate fronts such
as the Library Foundation, and one-term politicos who would possess and
destroy this public institution, founded in 1878.This library over the
years has received donations, priceless collections, and outpourings of
good will. Its benefactors expected their gifts would be cherished And
enjoyed down through the generations. In addition, San Franciscans have
poured tax payer dollars into this institution, only to see it watchdogs
destroy its treasures and its good name and sell the remainder to the
highest bidder.
Who Watches the City's Watchdogs
In May of 1996 the San Francisco
Civil grand Jury returned a damning verdict.
"In the KMPG-Peat Marwick
Strategic Plan for Information Technology" (1996), the City Controller, as
the City's chief fiscal officer and auditor; does not currently maintain
adequate budget records or budget information concerning city computer
assets. The inability of the City to collect an inventory of what computer
assets it owns is a serious problem. Without such an inventory the city
cannot know if theft occurs or how to plan for upgrading equipment.
The city's annual budget request
process does not adequately address how much is spent on computer
technology. The City Controller is unable to determine how much of the
General Fund is appropriated to computer technology due to inadequate
accounting procedures.
When asked by the Civil Grand
Jury, "How many PC's are owned by the City and County?" No city official
could answer this basic inquiry. (Since) a property inventory control
number must be drawn from a specialized city fund it is logical to assume
that a master inventory should exist.
Total city spending on information
technology, likewise, is a mystery. During the mid-1980's a study prepared
for the Mayor's Fiscal Advisory Committee indicated that $60 - 90 million
was spent on technology annually. Interviews with key city officials
revealed estimates that this amount is now closer to $20 million. (it) is
estimated city spending (is) about $100 million per year.
When asked by Civil Grand Jury,
the controller was unable to an estimate of technology expenditures stating
that departments do not follow standard budget accounting when it comes to
purchasing computer equipment or services.
Neither EIPSC (Electronic
Information Processing Steering committee) ... nor the Controller knows how
many computers are owned by the City. There is no uniform vocabulary and
there are no unified accounting methods to track the acquisition of
computer equipment and services within the budget process."
The City did not respond to these
dire warnings. In March of 1997, the same national auditing firm, KMPG-Peat
Marwick, sent a 34-page letter to the Mayor and the City Controller, Ed
Harrington. On April 23, 1997, Peter Byrne of the San Francisco
Investigator used a public records request to obtain this letter which
should have closed down the City of San Francisco. Instead, it was hidden
from the public, the press, and even from affected department heads.
Some of those affected departments
include the City Controller, the City Treasurer, the Assessor's Office, the
Mayor's Office, the City Attorney, the Airport, the Water Department,
Community development, Employee's Retirement System, the Port Authority,
Worker's Compensation, Contract Retentions/Liens Payable, Data Conversion,
and DPW Accounting.
Locally, neither of these two
reports from KMPG- Peat Marwick-including sub-reports from Williams, Adley
& Company, Chek F. Tan, Hood & Strong; and Deloitte & Touche-seemed
to merit a story. On May 6, the Examiner ran a two-column puff piece by
Leslie Goldberg on page A-3, entitled, "Auditors chide City for its
bookkeeping." This article downplayed the looming disasters. These two
reports taken together describe a city in fiscal chaos ready for
bankruptcy.
The 1996 report opened the door
for a serious audit of EIPSC and thecomputer technology of the City.
A
serious audit of the library would have laid open the core problems which
underlie the city's financial problems. For this reason politicians caught
in their webs of deception, could not allow a "real" library
audit to go forward. Mr. Coulter as one of those politicos, is particularly
vulnerable to any allegations of fiduciary failures.
These are real dollars, your
dollars, (and) just like the library's books; your money is at risk-this
City's fiscal credibility is at risk. The City's four year, $19 billion
dollar budget is on the line in this affair. Can you afford not to question
what is really going on?
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