Rhode Island Library Association is sponsoring a Legislative Day February 9 on the second floor of the State Capitol building from 1:30 - 4 pm. Come and personally meet with your Representatives and Senators to make a case for Rhode Island libraries. As the economy bottoms out, so does library funding, but use increases. Rhode Island libraries are trying to help more patrons in more ways with fewer hours, less staff, and diminished resources. The library is much more than just a place to borrow a book, and we need to remind people of that.

The slide show from the RILA Snapshot project will be presented to illustrate the wealth of resources, services, and programs that Rhode Island libraries provide to their patrons.

Come show your support!

P.S. There will be snacks.

About a hundred and twenty library staff are going to get layoff notices this week.  Not that they’re all going to be out of a job, thankfully; the library is starting to transition the nine neighborhood branches to city control (and ultimately, it seems, to the non-profit Providence Community Library, though the mayor hasn’t actually said that yet.)  That’s a good thing, since the current library administration has been totally inept at maintaining the branches beyond periodically threatening to close them.

The bad thing, and one that a lot of people didn’t see coming, is that the Library is now threatening to close the Central building downtown to the public.  According to PPL rep Tonia Mason, the library would be unable to keep the building open for regular services if the city is running the branches.  (How a non-profit that’s been around since 1878 and has a giant endowment couldn’t manage the funds to keep one building open is beyond me. But that’s what she says.)

The Mayor would like the Library to hand over the Central building, too–with the mayor correctly pointing out that the Central library is the neighborhood branch for Upper South Providence and Federal Hill*–and the Library trustees, to the visible dismay of administrators, voted Thursday to consider it.

more »

This is very last-minute, and probably the least exciting of the many, many developments at the library this week, but the Friends of the Smith Hill Library are having a book/bake sale right now. (But hey, tasty news is better than possible layoffs and the closing of the Central library to the public, right? I’ll have more on that later, if you haven’t been following…)

Smith Hill is one of the city’s busiest branches, in one of its most down-trodden neighborhoods, so it’s totally worth buying some delicious baked goods to support all the Friends group there does.

Smith Hill Library
31 Candace St.
Until 2pm?

[*nb: The Sebadoh album cover is the first thing I think of when I hear the word bakesale; it has nothing to do with the quality of the baked goods themselves.]

After three years of not having a library, the people in Washington Park will have reason to rejoice on Monday when their renovated library branch re-opens.  (Of course, under the library administration’s plan it’s scheduled to close again in after June months, but, um, let’s be optimistic?)

There’s a celebration scheduled for 6 pm next Thursday at the branch, which is on Broad Street.  There’s also a friends of Washington Park Library group forming, so you can find out more about that, too.

If you’re interested in knowing what’s going to be happening to your local library branches after June 30th, you might want to check out the forums sponsored by the Providence Community Library over the next couple of weeks.  You can hear from both the Providence Community Library and members of the current Library system to hear their respective plans for the future of the branches.  The city should be making their decision by next month about who should be running the branches (although if they’ll actually be doing that in a timely manner remains to be seen.)

The forum at Rochambeau happened a couple of weeks ago (and was pretty crowded, as you can see), but here’s the schedule for the rest of them:Tuesday, February 3, 6:30 to 7:30. South Providence Library.

• Wednesday, February 4, 6:00 to 7:00. Smith Hill Library
• Tuesday, February 10, 7:00 to 8:00. Mount Pleasant Library.
• Wednesday, February 11, 6:30-7:30. Knight Memorial Library
• Tuesday, February 17, 6:30 to 7:30. Fox Point Library
• Wednesday, February 18, 6:30 to 7:30. Olneyville Library
• Thursday, February 19, 6:30 to 7:30. Wanskuck Library

Pubilc library use is up as much as sixty-five percent over the past year, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Tonight at the Rochambeau LIbrary, members of the Providence Community Library will be having a roundtable discussion about the future of Providence library branches.

Tonight
7 pm
708 Hope St.

I don’t normally use this site as a political platform–unless it’s to promote the politics of dancing and/or feeling good–but there’s been some crazy library developments lately.  And by crazy I mean stupid.

Two weeks ago, the library board voted to close four branches in the city–Fox Point, Olneyville, Smith Hill and Wanskuck–and to abandon plans of ever reopening the branch at Washington Park. (Actually, about a third of the board voted to close the branches.  The other two-thirds didn’t bother showing up to the meeting.  Only two members of the board didn’t vote for the closings; not coincidentally, they’re the board’s only two publicly-appointed members.)

more »

The board of the library will be meeting at noon today to discuss the fact that they have less than two weeks to decide how they’re going to keep themselves afloat.  By contract, they only have until the 31st to approve a plan for a “sustainable system.”

Since the economy is collapsing around us, it might not be that surprising that lots of people are rediscovering public libraries as a free means of entertainment, but if the PPL gets their way many city residents will be out of luck.  The sustainability plan includes closing four neighborhood libraries (in Smith Hill, Olneyville, Fox Point and Wanskuck) as well as keeping Washington Park from ever reopening, even though the city just renovated it and people in the neighborhood regularly protest about it.  So if you’re one of the many, many transportation-deprived kids or elderly people in those neighborhoods, you might be out of luck come the next fiscal year.

The board meetings are open to the public and take place on the third floor of the central library (on Empire Street).  Hopefully some people will show up to let the library know that closing branches is lame and that they could, I don’t know, maybe try fundraising at some point.

Next month it will be THREE YEARS since the Washington Park branch of the library closed. The old library, located near the south side entrance to Roger Williams Park, has been renovated, and has a new roof and shelves just waiting to be filled with books; the temporary location, in half of the old Benny’s on Broad Street, has been closed because of (probably very justified) fears about the building’s air quality.

In October of 2006, Save Our Branches, a group of Washington Park residents, staged a read-in in front of the library.  Everybody brought a book and read aloud, to show that the people of Washington Park actually care about reading.

Over two years later, there’s going to be another read-in.  Bring your own book, since the library doesn’t have any for you.

Saturday, 12:15pm

(Also, if you feel like library-hopping tomorrow, it’s also the Holiday Bazaar at the Smith Hill branch on Candace Street; that goes from 10am to 2pm.)

Today’s the first day of the Providence Public Library’s annual book sale.  If you want the best books, you can pay $15 to get there at 1 this afternoon, but then it opens to the public at 4.  (nb: I have a feeling the $15 might be worth it, actually, because the books are priced to move and you know what those book dealers are like…)  Tomorrow and Saturday it runs 10-5, and then Sunday it’s only open to non-profits and charities.  Last year I picked up some cool German Agatha Christie translations, as well as a bunch of other things that I’m completely incapable of reading.  Yay!

Tonight’s a book sale and bake sale sponsored by the Friends of the Smith Hill Library.

I really like Smith Hill; it’s in a lovely building (built in the era when libraries were divided into equally large adult and kid sections) and the librarians are really nice; unfortunately, they don’t have much money, and aren’t really equipped to handle the hordes of kids that enter the building every day as soon as school lets out.  And they don’t have air conditioning, which is kind of a drag when they’re forced to close when it gets too hot in the summer.  And they’re only open twenty-five hours a week.

But, you know, that’s why you should go to the book sale.  I’m guessing there will actually be some decent finds for pretty cheap.

Smith Hill Library
31 Candace St
6-8 PM

If you’re reading this and it’s before 10 AM and you’re not at work or otherwise occupied–a longshot, I know–you should head down to the Washington Park Library (1316 Broad Street), where some community members are staging a rally to get the branch opened again.  I posted about the ridiculous situation at Washington Park last month, and it seems like nothing’s changing…

The rally’s being organized by Open Table of Christ, one of several churches in the neighborhood that have been struggling (for two and a half years, now) to see their library reopened.

(And I promise to mention things like this a little more punctually from now on.)

Although it’s so disgustingly humid that I want to die right now (and, this just in, now it’s pouring, too!), I’m heading over to the former Benny’s on Broad Street today at five for the press conference/rally that the Library Reform Group is organizing about the Washington Park library.

<soapbox>Not to repeat myself too much, but the Washington Park Library (which was located in a city-owned building) was closed in January 2005 with just two days’ notice because the (privately-owned) Providence Public Library administration didn’t do anything about a roof leak in the building that they had been aware of since the late nineties.  Alan Shawn Feinstein offered lots of money to fix the roof, and the Library turned it down.  Then, this winter, the city put a new roof on the building.  They also fixed the damage that comes from a decade-old roof leak, removing all the mold and dead pigeons that the building had filled up with.

Service in Washington Park, in the meantime, moved over to the old Benny’s down the street, but there was nothing about that building that ever approached what one might call a library.  It was only open four hours a day, for one thing, and adults weren’t allowed inside.  Really.  Adults Were Not Allowed Inside.   Not to check out books, not to use the computers, and not to ask the librarians for help.

Now, it seems, the Benny’s building is also under foreclosure.

more »

Today’s July 1st, which marks the beginning of a new fiscal year at the library.  What that means exactly is sort of up for debate; last year library administrators said they wanted a written contract with the city about what services they’d be providing, but then they spent the whole year refusing to agree to anything.

If they don’t sign an agreement soon, the backup plan is to close five branches, in Smith Hill and Olneyville and Wanskuck and Elmwood and Fox Point.  And that’s not counting the Washington Park library, the closed branch that the city just spent Lord knows how much money on, adding a new roof and cleaning out ten years’ worth of mold and dead pigeons; the library administration, for whatever crazy reason, is refusing to reopen the branch, preferring to keep limited services in half of the old Benny’s down the street.

Also very vulnerable is the Fox Point branch, which is the only one of the (open) libraries currently operating on a lease.  The building, on the corner of Wickenden and Ives, isn’t in the best shape–it’s dark and unattractive and not accessible to the handicapped and if anybody tested the air they’d probably find something unsafe about it–but it’s a vital part of the neighborhood, staffed by knowledgeable and friendly people, and it would be a shame if the library decided not to renew their lease without making alternate plans for all the kids, families and senior citizens that use the branch every day.

… let them eat ROCK! Okay, let me get this straight, Ted Widmer, noted historian and director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, was once guitarist Lord Rockingham of the Boston band The Upper Crust? Am I the only one who did not know this? The band is still fopping and rocking, but after the recording of “The Decline and Fall of the Upper Crust” Mr. Widmer left to become a speechwriter for President Clinton. (In all honesty I’m not altogether sure if he is even in the above photo, but does it really matter?)

He may be known to some locals as the trouble-making Martin Van Buren buff biographer who shook up the Atheneum lecture series; or to Slate readers for his Moby diss (thank.. you.. Ted). Today the ProJo ran a profile and a generally favorable review of his new book ‘Ark of the Liberties: America and the World’. I met him once and liked him right away, but now I really really like him.

Let Them Eat Rock is the 2004 Upper Crust documentary featuring Mr. Widmer, as well as the title of their 1995 album.

(photo:Jay Elliot)

From the Library Reform Group:

PPL and the City of Providence were to renew their Memorandum of Agreement for another year by March 31. This date has come and gone and, so far as we know, the agreement has not yet been signed.

PPL is insisting that it will have a $1 million deficit next year if it doesn’t cut its services. [If there really IS the danger of such a huge deficit, which we are not so sure is the case, the Library Reform Group believes that PPL needs to do MUCH more to raise funds, not just threaten to cut services.]

At the March PPL trustees meeting, three options for moving to a sustainable library system were presented…