April 4, 2012
Opponents of radical NYPL renovation coalesce
by Kelly Burdick
A controversial $350 million transformation of the New York Public Library’s research library at 42nd (see the earlier MobyLives report) has a new opponent: In an Inside Higher Ed column, Scott McLemee flatly says that the project “needs to be stopped,” going on to explain that “The belief that every pre-existing cultural and intellectual expression must be digitized or else downgraded is destructive. The time has come to challenge it clearly.”
One part of the NYPL’s “Central Library Plan,” the transformation of the 42nd research library calls for more than 3 million books to be removed from the library’s historic stacks, with perhaps a million volumes being moved to off-site storage in New Jersey. The vacated space would be transformed, in the words of The Nation’s Scott Sherman, into “a giant internet cafe.” The full plan, which also calls for selling off two NYPL facilities, is detailed in Sherman’s must-read December investigation and in a March radio interview.
To voice opposition, McLemee recommends this Facebook page, which is gathering a group of like-minded scholars to “Defend the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.” Another avenue is through the NYPL itself, which has belatedly invited public comment on the project.
Without public protest, the plan will surely go forward unmodified. As the New York Times reported in February, the NYPL board has already approved hiring British architect Norman Foster to design the 42nd Street transformation. And the larger Central Library Plan keeps getting worse: not only are the most controversial parts of the proposal unmodified, but plans for two new circulating libraries — one on the Upper West Side and one in Staten Island — have been abandoned.
“I am by no means hostile to e-reading, which certainly has its place,” McLemee writes.
But that place is wherever you happen to be doing it, at the time. The reading possible at the 42nd Street library is far more location-specific. It is a distinct kind of public-intellectual space… [But] obviously this is not just a New York problem. A campaign to oppose this tendency is well overdue, and we might as well start now.
Kelly Burdick is the executive editor of Melville House.
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7 Comments
Of course members of the cultural elite are against the democratization of knowledge; it threatens their hegemonic control and authority over determining the course of dominant culture. If they let just anyone access digital versions of our culturally history, some oppositional researcher might supplant the existing state with new or better ideas.
Ha! The 42nd library is one of the world’s great democratic institutions
— anyone can walk into the library and ask for anything, even
priceless archival items. But it’s not a circulating library; it’s a
world-class research facility, its peers private university libraries.
New York also has branch libraries, including one across the street from
the research library, which the NYPL board wants to sell.
If you do research and are not a university student or faculty member,
this is one of the reasons to live in New York, free access to the
NYPL’s three research libraries. It comes from an era when cities used
to do big things, like provide free college eduction (at CUNY until
1975).
This debate is about whether to destroy the usefulness of this facility
(at a cost of $350) — and close another research facility, SIBL —
while at the same time neglecting the 80 or so branch libraries run by
the NYPL. It’s too bad the real cultural elites won’t support these
facilities, where job training, internet stations, DVD checkouts, ebook
lending, etc really happen. (Most of them are also located in
neighborhood where people live, as opposed to in midtown, a corporate
la-la land.)
It’s a shame you don’t understand any of this. What’s in the research
library wouldn’t magically appear online or suddenly be accessible to
everyone—as you suggest—it would be shipped to New Jersey and gather
dust.
There is a strange phenomenon at work here that reminds me of James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler points out that in response to bad urbanism we often get green space rather than good urbanism. In this case, rather than better libraries, we get fewer libraries. And it’s done at great cost. Why does anyone think that library improvement means computers and collaborative spaces? And fewer books? I think there is something to be said for solitary research. It has a fairly good track record. Currently, 43% of respondents on the NYPL site want more very quiet spaces. Once you give something up it can be difficult or impossible to get it back.
A few points on this plan that you seem to have left out:
1. Extending late night hours to eleven from eight, and possibly more frequently than twice a week.
2. A library that can handle a great volume of patrons 4 million projected users, up from 1.5 million.
3. Promised off site retrieval in 24 hours, down from five days.
Sorry, you lost me when you equated the traditional library model with hegemonic control of information and cultural elitism. I mean, come on. Libraries are the original democratizers of information.
Sure — lots to this plan, which will cost a billion dollars all told. Increasing hours at the branch libraries is very important.
As for the off-site retrievals: right now most of the books are in the 42nd building, and it takes less than an hour to get materials. 24 hours is a much longer wait. As for the patron question: it seems to me that a research library shouldn’t entirely be measured in the number of people served. The gains you mention above likely come from combining the mid-Manhattan branch with the research library. My own view is that the mid-Manhattan branch, which serves many, many people, ought to be retained and renovated—not sold to the highest bidder.
I think what you are also missing is that the NYPL will do whatever it wants. Where were all of you when they closed the Donnell Library and sold it to get $60 million to add to the funds for the main library they are about to destroy? That great library of 80,000 sq feet in excellent condition was demolished in the last few months. It was claimed by the NYPL people that it would cost to much to renovate but they would not let any of its constituency see the engineer’s report. Now the scaffolding is going up around the MidManhattan. No public hearing. Your City Council does not think the public has a right to one about the NYPL. Tax payers are the major source of funds. Whoever said in the not too distant future no one will need to connect to the internet through the library was 100% correct. The NYPL already limits the amount of time you can use one, depending on the branch, and it’s not much. Marks has also added to the mission of the NYPL that it should be a job center, teaching people to write resumes and providing the comp;uters for them to access job boards. This is not the library’s job. Have you read the NYTimes ridiculous editorial about 3 weeks ago on the subject? The reason it was so benign is that the real estate industry is behind the closing of the Donnell. They are the Times’ largest source of ad revenue. It will make them feel justified by closing branches and turning them into hotels or condos by converting the NYPL to a circulating library-democratizing it. They are also closing and selling SIBL, the research library that is only 16 years old. Where is the outrage? We were screaming about this in 2008.