Book Ends

Scrawny Stud has a neck full of dark purple hickeys. Leaning on his girl, whose belly bulges out from under her tube top, he proclaims his love in front of the downtown library.

It’s true love inside too. That’s where the two adjourn, Stud trailing his woman (whose house slippers don’t flip-flip-flip too loudly) to the quiet tables near the microfilm and magazines. The library may be the only air-conditioned place in town where they’re welcome.

At 12th and Oak, librarians don’t talk about the grimy feeling that has settled over the main branch. What else would you expect when 350,000 people tramp through a place each year, a place that’s been there since 1961? The library obviously needs a new home, but librarians talk about it in technical, not human, terms.

“It’s not a very good building,” says executive director Dan Bradbury. “It has lots of physical problems. It’s not equipped as a modern office building. The plumbing and the wastewater system leak — and water is the antithesis of books.” Besides, the library doesn’t own the place — it leases most of seven floors from the Kansas City School District, whose administrative offices occupy the rest of the building.

So over the past couple of years, downtown boosters have helped the library come up with a plan to move into the old First National Bank building, a classical Greek monument at 10th and Baltimore. The library is on its way to having a new home by the first part of 2003.

“It’s a pretty grand lobby,” Bradbury says of the entrance. “On the first floor there’s lots of brass and marble.”

But there won’t be as many books. A good chunk of the library’s collection will be gone by moving day.

For example, 80 percent of the bound periodicals will have to go. No more Journal of Farm Economics from 1927 to 1959. No more Woman’s Home Companion from 1914 to 1957. The “discard list” stretches to 2,318 titles, meant to save 84,540 inches of shelf space — that’s 1.3 miles of bound periodicals. Librarians are also “weeding” the nonfiction collection and the government documents; they’ll sell those to other libraries or collections.

“It’s one of those situations that sounds horrible,” says Therese Bigelow, of the collection development team. But many of the periodicals weren’t in the catalog; the library has acquired others on microformat. And, Bigelow says, “we have other ways of getting that information for someone who’s interested, such as the interlibrary loan.”

Bradbury notes that one library consultant “was a little astounded that we had simply held on to so many of those periodicals, which aren’t germane to our collection. We didn’t have to ask the tough questions about whether to get rid of them because we’ve basically been using the [basement] levels as an attic.”

Downstairs in the two basements, amid bare concrete and stacked old furniture, the weeding has already begun. Beyond the chain-link fence that separates the library’s storage space from the school district’s, crammed old metal shelves stand two feet apart. Some of the books are taped and rubber-banded together; some have gluey strings of canvas hanging from ripped-off spines. Chilton’s auto manuals for cars that most certainly are beyond repair by now. Records from congressional hearings on chain stores, dated 1933. The U.S. House Reports on Navy Yards & Naval Stations 1916-17. Endless biographies of presidents. A sign hangs from one set, noting that it is “to be withdrawn and held on special shelf for UMKC law library.” Watch out for that puddle.

Librarians have a careful process for determining what stays and what goes, and Bigelow says the move is forcing them to do what they’ve been putting off. “There are experiences even the best librarians go through and ask, ‘Do I have to live through that again?’ Collection shaping is one of those. We have not evaluated our collection against our collection development plan, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re looking at storage issues [whether material is better stored on microformat], what’s in poor condition, what’s dated.” For instance, she says, “A book on AIDS published ten years ago is a dangerous book.

“This is a library where books are still valued,” Bigelow adds. “Our love of books is reflected in our approach to collection development. A book that’s crumbling doesn’t have informational value. It’s all being done with a lot of thought — and that thought is service to the public.”

Privately, however, other librarians say the weeding process reflects a changing philosophy at the library (and at libraries nationwide), suggesting that it’s becoming less of a research institution and more like a bookstore, emphasizing what’s new and popular.

“We’re a research library in those things that we have strong holdings in,” Bradbury counters. “The real strength of our holdings is in the local history area and our special collections. We have a large collection that has a lot of retrospective strength. Even though we are getting rid of part of the book collection and materials that are falling apart and materials that are no longer used, we’re still a regional resource collection.” Besides, he’s excited that in the new building, “80 to 90 percent of the collection will be out on public shelves.”

Where Stud and Slipper Girl can find it easily. Thankfully, they won’t be endangered by a ten-year-old book on AIDS.