Central Library Wages a Battle for Recovery : Job of Raising Funds to Replace Volumes Lost in Fires Is Aided by Corporate, Public Volunteers

By MIKE WYMA

Nov. 20, 1986 12 AM PT

It is the gratis gold mine

Waiting for me to excavate.

It is the fantasy journey

Where I learn to fly with my

imagination.

These lines from a poem by Huntington Park High School senior James Hsu describe the Los Angeles Central Library--the one that existed before this year’s two arson fires. The fires destroyed 20% of the Western United States’ biggest public collection and closed the building to patrons.

The 60-year-old downtown landmark, a cream-colored structure with a distinctive pyramid-topped tower, is scheduled to reopen in 1991, expanded and improved.

In the meantime, operations are moving from the damaged 5th Street location into temporary quarters, due to open next spring, at Broadway and 7th Street.

Restricted Budget

While funds are available for both those projects, the Los Angeles Public Library has nothing in its budget to replace materials lost in the fires.

The job of raising money for that purpose has been taken on by Save the Books, a cooperative effort of library staff and corporate and public volunteers.

Mayor Tom Bradley and Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook head the drive. Several Save-the-Books events are planned and others, including a writing contest in which James Hsu was one of 25 winners, have concluded.

The numbers describing the Central Library’s problems are large ones. The first fire, on April 29, burned for nearly seven hours and was fought by more than 325 city Fire Department personnel. Both figures are the largest in memory for a structure fire in Los Angeles, according to firefighters.

The loss of reading materials in that blaze and the smaller Sept. 3 fire totaled 200,000 books and a like amount of periodicals. Those figures will rise if many of the 700,000 wet books stored in commercial freezers are damaged beyond repair.

Library officials estimate the worth of lost materials at $15 million. Save the Books set a goal of $10 million by year’s end, an amount termed “very ambitious” by professional fund-raisers. The effort got off to a quick start, collecting $3.2 million within three weeks of the first fire.

Included were $2 million from the J. Paul Getty Trust and $500,000 gifts from Arco and the Times Mirror Foundation.

Fund raising sputtered through the summer and fall, and not until mid-November did Save the Books announce that it had hit the halfway point of $5 million.

Told in human terms, the library’s problems are equally as severe. Arson investigators won’t say whether they believe both fires were set by the same person, but it is an assumption commonly made by library personnel.

“It certainly appears so to us,” said Betty Gay, director of Central Library. “The second fire was actually more difficult for many of the library staff, because the first one could be explained as someone going after a random target. But the second one seems to single us out.”

Staff members have been looking over their shoulders while proceeding with a massive, dirty clean-up job.

“You can guess that people don’t become librarians because they want to get rich,” City Librarian Wyman Jones said. “They do it because of love. I can’t tell you how incredibly down the whole library staff was after the fire. We work for an institution that was here long before we were, and will be here long after we’re gone. To see it damaged so was a terrible thing.”

Pres Blyler, library personnel director, said 24 of the Central Library’s 250 staff members requested and were given transfers to branch assignments after the first fire, and that others received group counseling from a city psychologist.

“There was no heat and no air conditioning and the building was full of debris,” he said. “It’s very distressing when you’ve helped put together a collection and you see it partially destroyed.”

Soon after the first fire, neighbor Arco loaned the Central Library an empty floor in its high-rise across Flower Street. About 80 library staff members work there, while the rest are divided between the damaged building and the old Bullock’s store at Broadway and 7th Street, which is being readied for a spring opening as the temporary Central Library. That building, in an area known as St. Vincent’s Square, was leased by the city for $6.5 million for 4 1/2 years.

A $141-million expansion and renovation of the damaged library will proceed under a complex deal that was struck between the city and private downtown interests before the first fire. Most of the money will come from developers who, in exchange, will receive city permission to build high-rises and also parking room in a subterranean garage to be built below the library.

East Wing Addition

The last work of architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, the Central Library is done in a Spanish-Byzantine style and will have an east wing added during renovation, roughly doubling its size. A great many people were unaware of the extent of its holdings, director Gay said.

“Only 15% of the materials are visible to the public,” she said. “You walk in and see these high ceilings and rotunda, but not many books. Until the last 20 years or so, the thinking in designing libraries was to keep the public away from the books. So the material is very hard to retrieve, but the collections are marvelous. If you wanted a book or some data, chances are it would be there.” After the addition is complete, more material will be readily available to the public.

The job of promoting the Central Library’s holdings and services has fallen to the Save the Books campaign.

“There are two purposes to Save the Books,” said J. Carlton Norris, director of communications for Arco, which is heavily involved in the drive. “One is to raise money, sure. But the more important and the long-term purpose is to give the community the awareness of the scope of the contribution the library makes. Few people realize that this is the third-largest public library in the country.”

Although the essay contest raised no money directly, it was one of the campaign’s major public-relations devices. Co-sponsored and promoted by radio station KABC, the contest offered 25 round trips, with weeklong hotel accommodations, to a choice of New York, London or Frankfurt. Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District competed for 12 of the trips, 12 went to the general public and one was set aside for the winning essay among librarians. About 20,000 students and 1,300 members of the public entered.

Other Successes

Other Save-the-Books successes, organizers said, include $13,000 raised at last weekend’s California Library Assn. convention in Long Beach, a gift shop in the Arco Plaza that brings in about $500 a day, a mobile electronics show in Northridge that raised about $12,000, a Lakers intra-squad game that netted $23,000, and temporary merchandise booths at malls that have brought in about $7,000.

There have been disappointments, however. Shortly after the April fire, school superintendent Harry Handler announced a drive to raise $1 for every student in the district, or about $700,000. The effort fell far short, realizing only $76,000. And a $250-a-ticket event at the Nordstrom store in Beverly Hills was canceled for lack of response.

Organizers hope that publicity from a variety of sources--the essay contest, 55 billboards being donated by outdoor advertising companies, a nine-minute slide show prepared by Arco and offered to interested groups--will turn out the public for upcoming Save-the-Books events. These include a $25-a-ticket dinner and fashion show Dec. 3 at Robinson’s downtown store and a $10-per-entry downtown walkathon on Dec. 6.

“We hope the walk will be a major fund-raiser,” Norris said of Save the Books. “It’s a six-kilometer tour-type walk that will visit Olvera Street and Chinatown. There will be food and music. We’re hoping to draw 15,000 people.”

Norris said he questions whether $10 million can be raised by the end of the year and said the appeal probably will be continued into 1987. Plans are in the works for a telethon in January. He added that a drive such as Save the Books ordinarily would expect to raise about 15% of its money from the public and the rest from corporations and foundations. More than 600 appeals have been mailed to potential large donors, with most of them yet to be heard from.

Lon Burns, executive director of the Southern California Assn. for Philanthropy, which advises large donors, said it is difficult to predict whether Save the Books will meet its goal.

“When you compare it to a major university or hospital campaign, $10 million is not large,” he said, “but the library doesn’t have the historical relationships that exist for institutions like universities and hospitals. It doesn’t have built-in linkages like alumni. It’s basically a public institution that has been supported by tax dollars and now has to go to the private sector because of an extraordinary need.”

The drive comes, Burns said, “at an increasingly difficult time. There are eight to 10 times as many money requests as available dollars, and that ratio keeps getting bigger.”

Learning the Craft

Save the Books faces other disadvantages. It started in mid-year, after most philanthropic groups had set their budgets. And its organizers had to learn the craft of development, the name given to fund raising. James Glass, who has raised funds for such projects as the alcohol-rehab Winegart Center and the rehabilitation of Pershing Square, helped Save the Books set up its development department.

Glass said that even though the number of charitable drives under way in Southern California is not unusually high, “there is great competition for every charitable dollar.” The unique purpose of the library campaign--that it is for books and not another hospital wing or university building--should help, he said.

Help From Tax Law

More help, he continued, may come from the recent change in federal income tax law. This is the last year that individuals who use the short 1040 form can take a deduction for charitable contributions, Glass noted, and the last year that persons who itemize deductions can write off a full 100% of such gifts.

“The opportunity is there for individuals who want to make a significant gift to make it this year,” he said.

One sort of donation the Central Library currently does not want is books. Storage space is short, officials said, and staff members have their hands are full sorting and moving 600,000 volumes that are dry but damaged by smoke. Later the 700,000 wet books--many of them rescued from the water-soaked building by hundreds of volunteers--will be dried and undergo inventory. The books had to be frozen quickly to prevent mildew.

“What we’d like to do is identify what we need and ask the people to fill in the gaps,” Gay said.

Much of what was lost--an entire U.S. patent collection on microfilm, for example--will have to be purchased. And other items probably will not be replaced.

“This library started collecting in 1872,” Gay said. “A lot of what we lost was 100 years old. Some of it we may not find.”

Security Staff Increased

Meanwhile, the security staff of Central Library has been increased from 12 before the first fire to a current level of 27. Officials said that two-man patrols guard the building 24 hours a day. The April fire took place during business hours, but the September blaze was set while the building was closed and guarded. Arson Investigator Glen Lucero heads a team looking into the second fire.

“The direction of the investigation is to determine whether the fire was set by a person who sneaked in or by someone with credentials,” he said, adding that all library security personnel who were on duty at the time have taken and passed polygraph tests.

No Link to Hollywood Fire

Terry Depackh, an arson investigator whose team is working on the first fire, said authorities have found no link to the unsolved 1982 arson blaze at the Hollywood Branch library. Nor have they located a man who was seen in the Central Library before opening on the morning of the fire. A composite sketch shows the man to be in his late 20s or early 30s, a little over 6 feet tall, weighing about 160 pounds and having a prominent nose.

“He’s just someone we can’t account for,” Depackh said. “He was seen at a number of different locations. He hasn’t been ruled out as the one who set the fire, but we’re not going on it, either.”

When the renovated Central Library debuts in 1991, it will be just as complete and easier to use than its predecessor, officials said. They cautioned, however, that resources at the temporary central library will be limited, especially at first. There will be no card catalogue, for example, and far fewer books.

“Long term we expect to come back bigger and better,” said director Gay, “but we think it will take a year or a year and a half to get back to the level we had.”

Ginny Walter is in charge of the Central Library’s business and economics section, which sustained major losses. She noted that patrons will be seeing reminders of the library’s current trials for years to come.

“A lot of our books won’t be pretty,” she said. “We’ll probably put a sticker in them saying, ‘Please handle me carefully, I survived the fire of ’86.’ ”