Los Angeles Public Library
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This library serves the city of Los Angeles. For the library serving the county, see County of Los Angeles Public Library.
| Los Angeles Public Library | |
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| Location | Los Angeles, California |
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| Established | 1926 |
| Number of branches | 71 |
| Collection size | 6,393,429 |
| Annual circulation | unknown |
| Population served | 3,844,829 (city); 12,923,548 (metro) |
| Budget | unknown |
| Director | Fontayne Holmes (City Librarian) |
| Employees | unknown |
| Website | http://www.lapl.org/ |
The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) system serves the residents of Los Angeles, California. LAPL is one of the largest publicly funded library systems in the world. The system is overseen by a Board of Library Commissioners comprised of five members appointed by the mayor.
Membership is open to everyone, not just residents of the City of Los Angeles, as there are no residency requirements to obtain a library card. Circulating books, periodicals, computer access and audio visual materials are available to patrons. The Library's Rare Books Department is located in its downtown Los Angeles location. There is also an extensive selection of databases covering a wide variety of topics, many of which are available to remote users who hold an LAPL library card. Examples include full-text databases of periodicals, business directories, and language learning tools.
Also, the library has an extensive collection of historic photographs from a variety of sources, including the former Los Angeles Herald-Examiner newspaper, as well as collections from noted local photographers. The Shades of L.A. Collection is an archive of over 10,000 images from family photo albums collected in recent years that shows the diverse history of the area.
Aggressive expansion and growth of the system began in the 1920s. Under Library Board of Commissioners Chairman Orra E. Monnette, the system gained the support of Los Angeles citizens and began building a network of modern branch libraries to keep pace with Los Angeles' growth as a city.
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[edit] Central Library
The Richard Riordan Central Library, originally constructed in 1926, is a downtown Los Angeles landmark. It is the third largest public library in the United States in terms of book and periodical holdings. Originally simply the Central Library, the building was renamed in honor of the longtime president of the Board of Library Commissioners and President of the University of Southern California, Rufus B. von KleinSmid. The building was subsequently renamed in 2001 after Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.
Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue designed the original Los Angeles Central Library to mimic the architecture of ancient Egypt. The central tower is topped with a tiled mosaic pyramid with suns on either side with a hand holding a torch representing the "Light of Learning" at the apex. Other elements include sphinxes, snakes, and celestial mosaics. It has similarities to the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska, also designed by Goodhue and which also featured sculpture by the architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie.
During the 1970s and early 1980s (before accessible databases or public access to the Internet existed), it was an important research library. Some of the more notable collections included the Science and Technology Library in a special alcove above the general Science Department which included a complete collection of all Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) publications including the complete Patent Gazette and Trademark Gazette issues from the opening of the PTO. It also included a complete set of the entire registration books published by the Copyright Office starting from Volume 1. These collections were restored when the Central Library reopened.
It was extensively renovated and expanded in a "Modernist/Beaux Arts style" (according to the principal architect of the renovation Norman Pfeiffer) from 1988 through 1993, including an enormous, eight-story atrium dedicated to former mayor Tom Bradley. The interior of the library is decorated with various figures, statues, chandeliers, and grilles, notably a four-part mural by illustrator Dean Cornwell depicting stages of the history of California.
The building's limited access had caused a number of problems. Generally, the accessible public stacks in the reading rooms only displayed about 10-20% of the actual collections of the Central Library. For anything else, a patron had to submit a request slip and a clerk would retrieve the desired material from the internal stacks. Internal stacks were packed very tightly and had very little headroom. For example, while the normal reading rooms had ceilings of anywhere from ten to fifteen feet, the internal stack areas were many shelves of about six-foot height, stacked internally, so that while the public access area was about two floors plus the Science and Technology alcove, the internal stacks were approximately five or six floors. To fix this would have required substantial renovation, a cost the city was not willing to cover, especially after hours of operation were cut in response to the 1978 property tax reduction measure Proposition 13.
The catalyst for the renovation was the devastating arson fire of April 29, 1986. Although the building was safely evacuated, its vintage construction precluded the ventilation of heat and smoke, and limited firefighter access. Some 400,000 volumes—20 percent of the library's holdings—were destroyed, with significant water and smoke damage done to the surviving works. A second fire on September 3 of the same year destroyed the contents of the Music Department Reading Room.
On a humorous note, the April 29 fire in the building was extensively covered in news media throughout the Soviet Union, probably because it was felt that the explosion and fire three days earlier at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant deserved far less attention, and was given very little coverage in the news media there compared to the massive Soviet media coverage of the April 29 Los Angeles Public Library fire.
As part of the rehabilitation plan, the LAPL sold its air rights to developers, enabling the construction of the eponymous Library Tower (later renamed the U.S. Bank Tower as well as an earlier period when the building was called the First Interstate World Center) skyscraper across the street.
The Library's renovation was completed in 1993. The Central Library reopened on October 3, 1993.
[edit] Gallery of the Central Library
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[edit] Branches
Besides the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, the system also operates 71 branch locations in the city's many neighborhoods:
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The Cahuenga Branch, Lincoln Heights Branch and the Vermont Square Branch are the three remaining Carnegie libraries in the Los Angeles Public Library System. Six were originally built, but three have been demolished.
[edit] External links
- architectural analysis of the Los Angeles Public Library central branch, with photos
- Los Angeles Public Library system
- Library Foundation of Los Angeles
- The Library Store
- Chuck, Lysbeth. "Los Angeles' Very Special Libraries," Information Outlook, Vol. 6, No. 2, February 2002 (published by the Special Libraries Association)
- Fodors.com: Richard J. Riordan Central Library
- Art and Architecture of the Central Library
- LAPL Photo Collection overview
