The Library Book

In the late winter, Orlean spent time with Eva Mitnick, the head of Central Library who was just selected to direct the new division of Engagement and Learning—a job Mitnick had long wanted. The new division would manage how the library interacted with the public through volunteer and summer reading programs. All of its services were aimed at recent immigrants. Los Angeles Public Library is one of the first to create this service, which it launched in 2016. Other libraries have modeled their own programs after this one.

Mitnick’s day starts at nine o’clock in the morning. On this particular day, she met with members of the Department of Health to discuss the factors involved in having a homeless clientele. The group discussed how to look for bedbugs and lice and detecting symptoms of tuberculosis. During her tenure, Mitnick made some changes to eliminate misconduct at the library. She eliminated work carrels, which some patrons were using to have sex or to abuse drugs. She insists that no one really needs a private workspace in a public library.

Mitnick also works with social service agencies to provide services to the homeless. Orlean was present during one of the days in which homeless people showed up looking for benefits, such as bus passes. Orlean admits that she’s always felt “scared of the air of menacing unpredictability” that she senses around the homeless (286). She helped by writing down people’s names and listing the particular benefits that they needed. One of the men whom she spoke to was handsome and “as immaculate as a dentist” (287). According to Orlean, he didn’t look like someone who should have been homeless. He told her that he used to own two properties, then made a series of bad financial decisions that resulted in him living in his car for the past five months. He insisted on keeping his gym membership, where he could maintain his habits of showering and shaving.

Orlean remarked on what a wonderful voice he had. She recorded him speaking on her phone, then emailed the recording to someone she knew who could send it along to people who hired voiceover actors. She imagined that the man, whose name was David, would be discovered, which would result in his no longer being homeless. Orlean never saw David again after that first meeting.

In 2010, nearly 300,000,000 Americans used one of the nation’s 17,078 public libraries and bookmobiles. More than 90% of them believed, according to a survey taken that year, that the loss of their local library would negatively impact their communities. Younger people use libraries more than older Americans do, and nearly 66% of them believe that the library contains resources that they cannot find on the Internet. People under 30 are also increasingly working remotely, which means that they need good, free workspaces—a benefit that the library provides.

Library services have been particularly important in ensuring that those who live in remote areas have access to books. In 1936, the Works Progress Administration started a Pack Horse Librarians unit. A group of horsewoman rode throughout the Kentucky mountains, “delivering more than thirty-five hundred books and eight thousand magazines monthly” (290). In 1956, Congress passed the federal Library Services Act, which provided funding for nearly 300 bookmobiles that served rural towns. Globally, there are 320,000 public libraries. Most are in buildings, but some others are mobile. Depending on the location, books may be transported by bicycle, helicopter, boat, ox, elephant, or camel. Donkeys and mules are the animals that are most often used to transport books and periodicals.

In 2013, Orlean attended the American Library Association (ALA) conference, which is the largest of its kind in the world. That year, it took place in Chicago. Orlean liked the book displays, but was particularly drawn to the various gadgets that many people might not realize librarian need to perform their jobs. Several months after the ALA conference, Orlean traveled to Aarhus, Denmark for Next Library, an international biannual conference that explores the ways in which the library will evolve in the new century. In each session, attendees discuss ways in which libraries can provide more services while still serving as a repository for books. Orlean spoke to a Nigerian librarian whose library provided art and entrepreneurship classes. She spoke to another from Nashville who just started a seed exchange and hosted a theater troupe.

While in Aarhus, Orlean spent time with Deborah Jacobs, former head librarian at Seattle Public Library. She now directs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries Initiative. The Gates’s were supporting public libraries before they organized their charitable foundation. Their efforts started in 1997, with their determination to get every American library online. The couple then founded the Global Libraries Initiative in 2004. At that time, 65% of the world’s population had no Internet access. By the time the program ended, in 2018, the Global Library Initiative devoted 20 years and $1 billion on libraries, librarians, and literacy programs around the globe. Jacobs was happy that, even though the Gates Foundation would no longer provide libraries with funds, they were determined to continue the programs that they initiated with the benefit of the couple’s fortune. Still, there was usually never enough money.

In Cleveland, Orlean visited OverDrive, “which is the largest digital content catalog for libraries and schools in the world” (297). Steve Potash founded the service in 1986, when OverDrive sold diskettes and CD-ROMS to those in the publishing and book distribution business. Los Angeles Public Library’s digital collection, like that of many other libraries, exists on a cloud operated by OverDrive. Cleveland Public Library was the first ever to use OverDrive for e-book lending in 2003. By 2012, OverDrive lent 100 million books. The Japanese conglomerate Rakuten soon offered $410 million to acquire the company.

Potash strikes Orlean as more of a librarian than a tech maverick. The lobby of OverDrive’s headquarters is enormous and high. In the center of the library, there is a ten-foot-square screen displaying a world map. Every few seconds, a notification bubble pops up in an area of the map, showing the name of the library and the title of a book that has just been lent from a library’s e-book system. Orlean wonders if systems like OverDrive will become the new libraries, while the buildings that we now call libraries will simply be homes away from home. 

In 1991, it looked as though Central Library would move back into the Goodhue Building and the new wing would be opened. The civil suit against Harry Peak continued, as did his countersuit. This time, Harry maintained his latest alibi—he had a wart treated at the time of the fire. What was different was that Harry seemed increasingly disengaged from the case. He also had numerous medical expenses, but he refused his attorney Victoria Chaney’s requests for bill receipts and the names of the doctors treating him. Peak had a new boyfriend, too—a man named Alan whom he now lived with in Palm Springs. He was also considering a new career as a medical assistant, in the interest of having more stable work. Harry said that he enjoyed training for the job, but he disliked learning to draw blood. The students, he claimed, practiced on each other and used the same needles.

In July 1991, Harry finally appeared in Chaney’s office. He looked emaciated and his good looks disappeared. He showed her an affidavit from his doctor saying that he had “severe hepatitis and an enlarged liver and spleen” (304). The report claimed that he would not survive beyond the next six months. Harry’s sister Debra believed his story about his having shared needles in the medical technician class. Neither Harry nor his family were comfortable with his homosexuality, and this explanation allowed them all to avoid the likelihood that he contracted HIV as a result of a sexual encounter. Harry’s former lover Demitri Hioteles recalled that Harry one day asked him if he heard something about “some kind of gay cancer” (305). Hioteles dismissed Harry’s latest story, assuming it was yet another thing that he was making up.

The city’s attorney, Leonard Martinet, conferred with Victoria Chaney and got the court to move the trial date up to September 12, 1991. Martinet, however, hoped that the city would drop its suit against Harry altogether, given that he was now dying of AIDS. Going after Peak for money would make the city look bad. City officials agreed, settling out of court for $35,000 on October 2, 1991. Unfortunately, the money was quickly gobbled up by Harry’s medical bills. At the time, “the most basic medications for HIV/AIDS cost close to five thousand dollars a month” (306). Harry died nearly two years later in Palm Springs. 

Every year, on January 1, the city of Pasadena hosts the Rose Parade. The Los Angeles Public Library includes its own float in the parade. In 1993, its float theme was “Entertainment on Parade.” A giant bookworm reading a newspaper. Elizabeth Martinez, the new city librarian, rode beside the bookworm. The headline on the newspaper declared that Central Library would reopen in October. As the fateful date approached, the library held practical book-shelving parties. Hundreds of volunteers unpacked 2 million books and stacked them on new shelves.

After the library reopened, over 10,000 people arrived in the library’s new Tom Bradley Wing to sign up for their first library cards.

As for Harry Peak’s case, its conclusion never resulted in discovering who or what started the fire. Orlean herself finally accepted the ambiguity of the case. The only things she knew for sure was the Central Library suffered from a terrible blaze and that a ne’er-do-well young man became implicated in it. Orlean thought, too, of her mother, who died while Orlean was writing The Library Book. Orlean sensed that, if her mother could have chosen a profession, she would have become a librarian.