There are many impressive aspects to the new San Diego Central Library.
The gleaming dome, the latest landmark on the city’s skyline, is one and a half times the size of the U.S. Capitol’s dome.
The eighth floor reading room has comfy chairs and views of the Gaslamp, San Diego Bay, Coronado and the Pacific.
The 2.8 million items shelved here range from the latest Dan Brown thriller to a CD collection that embraces Bach and “Blurred Lines.”
All notable features. But perhaps the most impressive thing about the new Central Library is the fact that it exists.
“Many people have worked on this real hard for about 30 years,” said Charles Elster, a former library commissioner. “It’s immensely gratifying to see it happening.”
Some are less impressed, seeing this $185 million high-rise as a costly relic. Skeptics point to e-readers like the Kindle, which can download digital books, many of them free; and schools like Escondido’s Del Lago Academy, where textbooks are loaded onto students’ iPads and the campus “library” is largely devoid of ink-on-paper material.
Richard Rider, a local libertarian, called the new library “a monument to an era that is ending — a structure that in a few years will have little more utility value than a Pharaoh’s pyramid in Egypt. The only difference is that the library will have high operating costs — the pyramids need no such annual funding.”
For a different view, step inside our newest and grandest public facility. Yes, said Marion Moss Hubbard, the Internet revolutionized how we access information. And, yes, the library has extensive e-offerings.
Still, “only about 10 percent of all materials worldwide have been digitized,” said Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Public Library. “There are so many items, it’s not economical to digitize everything.”
Venture deeper into this nine-story, 497,000-square-foot structure and you realize that books — of any format — are just part of the story. This was designed as secular cathedral, with goals as broad and elevated as its signature dome.
Mission: All-encompassing
The library that offered bound volumes, quiet and little else? It’s gone, demolished by the Internet and electronic media — movies, recorded music, books on tape.
Libraries everywhere wrestle with this challenge. Many take a high-tech route. This summer, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., opened an 11,000-square-foot Digital Commons that resembles an Apple Store, stocked with laptops, tablets, e-reading devices, a Skype station.
In the Riverside County Library’s Temecula branch, patrons use an “Espresso Book Machine” to print and bind custom paperbacks.
Many libraries, including San Diego’s, circulate electronic books. Patrons can download the latest best-seller without leaving home.
“The best thing about libraries,” Elster said, “is they can be repositories for everything — sheet music, art work, audio and video recordings — as well as books.”
The new Central Library has no lack of traditional volumes. The first floor is a library within the library, offering the latest fiction and nonfiction. This is also where you find the children’s section, its walls festooned with Dr. Seuss murals.
Take the escalator to the second floor and enter the teen’s library — if you meet the entrance qualifications. Other than librarians, no adults are allowed in this haven of young adult books, study nooks, a snack area and a gaming room equipped with two 60-inch screens.
“We wanted them to be front and center,” Hubbard said, “to feel that this is their library.”
More teens are upstairs — the sixth and seventh floors are leased to a charter school, e3 Civic High, which has its own entrance. While classes will use the library’s resources, these two floors will be off-limits to ordinary library patrons.
Few are likely to feel shortchanged. The other seven floors in this nine-story high-rise cater to adults and children with disabilities; film buffs; demographers; political junkies; stargazers; students of World War II — check out the posters, such as the one commanding “Save Waste Fats for Explosives!”
This wealth of materials is not due to a recent spending spree. Many “new” books and documents had been stashed in the old Central Library’s basement. Now they will see daylight — and patrons.
“The genealogy people will be excited by what they see here,” Elster said. “The government documents people will be excited. The very fact you have room for a baseball collection is great.”
Look beyond these materials and you’ll see that something else abounds: Space, waiting to be filled.
Just as we are
While some compare this library to a community center, it’s more like a village. There’s an outdoor square, bordered by a cafe and a 350-seat auditorium with concert hall-worthy acoustics.
Patrons are encouraged to check out a small office for intensive studying — or lease the upstairs terrace for a rally (500 adults can stand here) or wedding reception (there’s room for 200 diners).
Poke around and you’ll find a sculpture garden, an art gallery, a shop with museum-quality items. Admire the views from the ninth floor, and don’t forget to inspect the dome, which is really eight overlapping metallic sails. The architect, Rob Wellington Quigley, wanted it to look unfinished.
“Always in a state of becoming,” Hubbard said, “just as we are as human beings.”
If there’s something here for everyone, that raises a sticky issue. “Everyone” includes the homeless.
“They’ll be part of our population,” Hubbard said, “and we’re glad we’re able to serve them.”
On his blog, Rider warned that the new library could become “the nation’s most ornate, ill-designed homeless center...” In fact, homeless men and women bathed in the old downtown library’s restrooms and slept in the stacks.
The library must be open to all, Hubbard said, but she cited three factors that should limit other patrons’ encounters with the homeless: 1) Unlike the old library, the new one won’t allow shopping carts to be parked outside; 2) Mental health staffers will be on site to offer counseling; and 3) The new library is more than triple the size of its predecessor.
“This is so much larger a space,” she said, “you won’t have people packed in so tightly. We’re going to have so many more people coming through here.”
Love and money
New libraries tend to draw new patrons. When Seattle’s central library opened in 2004, officials predicted 1.1 million annual visitors — then logged more than double that amount.
San Diego’s city libraries have seen patronage fluctuate. Between 2009 and 2012, annual visitors fell from 6.6 million to 5.5 million. This year is seeing a rebound: already the system has had 200,000 more patrons than it did during all of last year.
Libraries, in fact, are among the United States’ most popular institutions.
“We found that just about half of Americans visited a library in the past year,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, a researcher who led a recent study of libraries for the Pew Research Center. “Add in website usage, whether to borrow an e-book or check out what’s available, it’s 59 percent.”
Elster, though, questions whether this love translates into money. “The crucial question is: Are people willing to spend their taxes on them?”
The new library’s annual operating costs are projected to run $2.7 million higher than the old place. To defray costs, the San Diego Library Foundation raised $62.8 million; donors paid more than $500,000 to inscribe 3,200 bricks; the school paid $20 million for a 40-year lease.
Rooms, halls and terraces can be rented for special occasions. The 250-space underground parking lot is free for visitors, but they’ll need validation — and an accurate sense of time.
“They’ll probably have one hour,” Hubbard said. “After that, patrons will pay the prevailing rate.”
At least they won’t have to pay for the books.
“This city has some great cultural attractions,” Elster said. “But the thing about the library that is different from the opera and the symphony and most of the museums is that every wonderful and beautiful thing they have to offer is free.”
Including Wi-Fi access.
from: UT San Diego
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