The Library Book

Arin Kasparian was a server at Subway when he applied for a job at the library to please his concerned mother. Kasparian was in his mid-twenties when Orlean met him and said that he was happy that he made the decision to apply at the library. He planned to become a children’s and young adult librarian. In 1997, library school administrators noticed that applicants were becoming younger, more diverse, and many of them were male. Part of the appeal lies in salary and benefits. Librarians make good money, particularly in larger systems, such as that in Los Angeles, where entry-level salaries start at over $60,000. There is now even a comic-book series about a librarian based on the life of Seattle-based librarian Nancy Pearl. Similarly, Nelson Torres, another employee, had never been much of a reader. He took a job at the library while in high school and has remained since. Kasparian told Orlean that, when he first saw homeless people in the library, he was afraid of them. Now, he knows many of them. It makes him feel good that he can serve them, too.

When Central Library closed, no plans were set for its reopening. Insurance covered some of the repair costs. The estimated cost of replacing the destroyed books, periodicals, and patent collection was $14 million. The cost of restoring damaged books was still unknown. What everyone did know was that the funds didn’t exist. Additionally, Jones noted that many of those books that were destroyed were out of print or had to be ordered from 700 different sellers.

Lodwrick Cook, the head of ARCO, cochaired the “Save the Books” campaign to raise funds to replace lost books. Cook also offered Jones and his administrative staff ARCO’s offices as workspace. The librarians, accustomed to operating on a narrow budget, was “awed by the luxury of ARCO’s offices,” while the ARCO staff found the librarians sophisticated and learned (116). ARCO also provided the campaign with $500,000. Other donations soon came in from the J. Paul Getty Trust, best-selling author Sidney Sheldon, and Dr. Seuss. Some donations came in the form of book volumes and sets. Louis L’Amour’s widow donated her husband’s complete works and the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs donated many of the author’s works. Actor Charlton Heston hosted a cocktail party to raise funds. The cause drew the city together.

One day, someone had the idea of putting on a telethon to raise funds. Gene Scott, the pastor of the Pentecostal Westcott Christian Center, offered to host the event in his church’s enormous auditorium. Scott had a large audience. The monetary goal for the fundraiser was $2 million. Celebrities participated and read passages from their favorite books. In the end, the telethon exceeded its goal. 

Los Angeles established its first public library in 1844. It started as a reading room at a social club called Amigos del País. When the social club became indebted, the reading room closed, but the town’s interest in having a reading space persisted. In 1872, an association worked toward opening a library. One of the association’s members, John Downey, donated space in a building he owned called the Downey Block. Its outdoor area was reserved for the auctions of indigenous people. The library opened to the public in January 1873, but membership came with a five-dollar fee. This limited the space to the rich. Also, no children were permitted to enter. Though the library was popular, some people worried that having so many people in a small enclosed space would lead to the spread of disease. Influenza, smallpox, and typhus were rampant at the time.

The city’s first librarian was a sickly asthmatic named John Littlefield, whose smoking bothered patrons. His successor, Patrick Connolly, was an alcoholic painter whose tenure only lasted for a year. Mary Foy, an 18-year-old young woman, was hired as Connolly’s replacement. This was at a time when libraries did not permit women to have library cards and they were only allowed to occupy the Ladies’ Room. No other library in the nation had a female head librarian. Only 25% of all library staff members were women.

Foy was a serious and effective administrator. However, “when the mayor who appointed her left office in 1884, the library board voted to remove her” (126). They claimed that she no longer needed to work, now that her father made enough money to care for her needs. Her successor, Jessie Gavitt, quietly ran the library, as did her successor Lydia Prescott. Then, in 1889, Tessa Kelso, an Ohio-bred newspaper reporter, was appointed to the position of head librarian. Kelso was single, smoked cigarettes, and had no experience working in libraries. She came in wanting to modernize the library. She wanted it to serve as a place where people could be entertained and educated. Kelso raised the number of library cardholders to 20,000. She also allowed children over the age of 12 to use the library, as long as they maintained good school grades. She ensured that immigrants and rural areas were served and moved the library to a more spacious building in the new City Hall.

Kelso’s lack of training with libraries encouraged her to seek highly-trained staff members. She hired Adelaide Hass, a champion bicycle racer. Together, they established one of the first library schools on the West Coast. She also expanded the library’s collection to 300,000 books. Kelso came under fire, however, when she ordered a controversial volume—Le Cadet by French author Jean Richepin. Methodist minister Reverend J. W. Campbell started a public vigil for her soul. In response, Kelso sued him. Kelso argued that she wasn’t responsible for the controversial book selection. The book committee approved all new acquisitions. She also maintained that acquiring the book reflected her right to free speech. Kelso won the suit, but public opinion and the library board were now against her. Kelso then sued the city for not reimbursing her for past travel expenses. The city gave her the money, then asked her to leave her position. Kelso resisted at first, but eventually relented.

New head librarians included Clara Bell Fowler and Harriet Child Wadleigh who tried to move the library to a bigger space, but there were no funds to make that happen. Meanwhile, the city’s population continued to expand, meaning that the library had more patrons. When Wadleigh’s husband struck gold in their backyard, she left the library and was replaced by Mary Letitia Jones, the first city librarian who graduated from a library school. Jones was “serious, efficient, and innovative” (129). She also allowed children as young as 10 to enter. She hired African American librarians to serve in neighborhoods with large black populations. Finally, she increased circulation to 400,000 books annually.

Around this time, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie launched a project in 1890 in which he committed to building libraries around the country. He recalled how, during his boyhood, he was disappointed that he couldn’t afford library dues. He decided that he would fund the construction of free libraries in communities that would agree to continue to support them through tax revenues. In 1905, the head of the library board, Isidore Dockweiler, asked Jones to resign, saying that the library would be better served by a male librarian. Jones resisted and got the support of 1,000 women who signed a petition in support of her. Jones eventually gave in and left Los Angeles to take a position as head librarian at the Seven Sisters women’s college Bryn Mawr. Dockweiler chose the journalist and adventurer Charles Fletcher Lummis to succeed Jones. Even in the 19th century, Jones’s firing was a surprise because women ran most of the nation’s libraries. However, the women were offered lower pay, regardless of their level of education.

Lummis arrived in Los Angeles in 1885 to take a position as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He was a reporter in Ohio and decided to walk cross-country to his new post. Lummis was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1859 to a widower father who was a stern Methodist minister. He attended Harvard where he befriended Theodore Roosevelt. He was a poor student but excelled in sports and card-playing. He was also known as “the man with the longest hair on campus” (133). He eventually dropped out to write for newspapers. Lummis married instead, but still read and wrote a lot. He had a preference for poetry and printed his own book of poems on birch bark. The book that resulted, Birch Bark Poems, was praised by both Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and sold thousands of copies.

Lummis was an eccentric dresser and a self-promoter. He decided to walk across the country to get to know the nation better. Before leaving his home state, he convinced a local newspaper to print his travel diary, which he would write as a weekly letter. Lummis walked 30 miles each day and wrote about what he saw or did during his walks. He described meeting real cowboys and learning about indigenous cultures. He recounted being robbed by hoboes in Missouri and trekking through mountains in New Mexico. There were instances in which he risked starvation and was deprived of water. He picked up a companion in Colorado—“an abandoned greyhound puppy that he named Shadow” (135). Tragically, the dog got rabies and Lummis had to shoot him. Other newspapers picked up Lummis’s column. Sometimes when he entered towns, crowds arrived to greet him. By the time he arrived in Los Angeles, he was a celebrity.