A new buzz phrase has entered the debate over the future site of the Chicago Public Library. It is ”world class,” and confusion over its meaning is still another unresolved element in the controversy over whether the former Goldblatt Bros. department store is a suitable location.
If the library board votes Tuesday to accept a report critical of the 75- year-old structure, the Goldblatt`s building will move down from preeminence and take its place among several other sites to be considered.
Only three months ago, the Goldblatt`s building, 333 S. State St., was hailed by library commissioner John Duff as future site of a ”first-class, state-of-the-art central library.” But by mid-September it had come to be considered merely ”adequate, at best” by a blue ribbon panel mandated by the mayor. Swayed by the developers and architects among its members, the panel called for a new ”world class” library.
Exactly what that world-class library would be, however, is yet to be defined. What is clear, say specialists in the field, is that Chicago now has nothing approaching such a library and that any attempt to build one will have to focus on more than bricks and mortar.
Most local attempts to define ”world class” focus on site and structure.
”It would be a building that reflects a position in Chicago of a preeminent cultural institution . . . a symbolically beautiful building for people to rally around,” said Terrence Brunner, director of the Better Government Association, which organized the blue ribbon committee. It is hoped that wealthy contributors will be among those who rally.
Symbolic value also is a key consideration for library board president Cannutte Russell. ”It needs to be brought back to a place of accessibility and prominence in people`s minds,” he said, referring to the central library`s 12 years in the Mandel building at 425 N. Michigan Ave.
A new structure is needed, goes the argument, because libraries are specialized buildings. A team of consultants hired by the Union League to assess the Goldblatt`s building, concluded it was too long and narrow and lacked flexibility because of its shape, columns and central core.
A world class structure, said Paul Stack, a member of the league`s library committee, would be a ”flexible” building created to fit the library`s program.
Brunner has accused the library staff of modifying its program, originally drawn up in 1979, to fit the Goldblatt`s building, an accusation that has some merit.
”A lot of changes were written in response to pressures, according to what the latest site proposal was,” said Mary Ghikas, former library assistant commissioner. State-of-the-art compact mechanized shelving for archival storage, for example, was excluded from the program, she said, when it was realized that Goldblatt`s floors would not bear the weight.
Among professional librarians, however, the phrase ”world class” is nearly meaningless because, they say, there are no set criteria for determining what is a world class library.
”There are no standards by which you can measure Chicago against Atlanta, New York or Cleveland. Library services are a reflection of community needs, the level of literacy, ethnicity, intensity of higher education,” said Leigh Estabrook, dean of the graduate school of library and information science at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
In the last 15 years there has been a marked shift away from holding public libraries up to one set of quantitative standards. Now the only criterion is how well a library meets the definition of its mission, which for a public library is how well it meets the needs of its own community, said Eleanor Rogers, director of the American Library Association.
Among the college educated public, however, the research value of libraries has come to dominate considerations of quality. The central public libraries of New York City and Boston, for example, are held up as great libraries because they are great research libraries.
That role was never in the agenda for the Chicago Public Library, which is defined as a general reference library for the out-of-school adult, with several specialized collections, and the largest branch system per capita in the nation.
The branches, of which 86 include reading centers, account for the 5 to 1 ratio of volumes to titles in the system: 4,586,707 volumes to 823,765 titles, according to acquisitions director Mark Knoblauch. The branches also account for the long waiting lists for popular novels, such as those by Stephen King and Danielle Steele, which the library system has to purchase by the hundred. A 1976 study commissioned by the library concluded that it ”does not own a single comprehensive research collection in any subject area.” Despite aspirations to build up to research levels its substantial collections in patents and trademarks, investments, political theory, management and labor, American fiction, costume, and Chicago architecture, the study concluded it lacked the budget to do so.
The most recent statement of philosophy for the new central library, written in 1979, called for an expanded general reference capability. It also indicated an intent to build some subject areas up to comprehensive research levels. The future library building, reads the statement, ”must be able to accommodate growth” for such expanded collections.
But the main reason the Chicago Public Library has never become a research library is because there are several good research libraries in the metropolitan area, especially the Newberry Library for humanities and the John Crerar Library for science and medicine, now at the University of Chicago.
To avoid duplication, an 1896 decision divided up collection responsibilities between the Chicago Public Library and the Newberry and the John Crerar librarires, both non-circulating libraries.
The Chicago Public Library was to focus on ”wholesomely entertaining and generally instructive books,” as well as newspapers, patents, government documents, books for the blind, and books on architecture and decorative arts,” according to library documents.
”If we combined all three libraries, that would be a great major public library. We could hold our heads high then,” said William Towner, the retired director of the Newberry Library.
Combining all three actually was discussed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Towner said. But Newberry and Crerar officials lost interest when it was proposed that the new building to hold them be a mixed use structure with tax-producing commercial facilities on the lower floors, he said.
Since then, the central Chicago Public Library was shipped off from what is now the library`s Cultural Center at Washington Street and Michigan Avenue to the Mandel building, with 350,000 of its volumes put in storage and yet to be entered on the system`s data base.
The warehousing of the central library and the 12-year delay in building a new library has deeply affected the execution of its mission, say librarians both in and out of the system.
”It has not been able to focus on its own mission, to define it and pursue it over a number of years,” said Ghikas, who is development director for Library Services and Systems Inc. The delayed determination of a central library location has distracted all levels of library management in energy-consuming planning attempts, she said.
The Chicago Public Library`s national reputation rests on the quality of its reference services, say librarians outside the system. It is not highly regarded either for the depth and breadth of its collections, the national activity of its staff, or its ability to recruit top quality people to fill important vacancies. It has the reputation of being plagued by the inability to rise above politics.
”It`s a commonly accepted fact in the book and library world that Chicago has not had anything remotely approaching quality commensurate with other cultural achievements in the city,” said Kenneth Nebenzahl, a Chicago rare books dealer.
Library board president Russell said last week that final selection of a library site would be followed by the hiring of outside consultants to review program plans for the new library from ”top to bottom.”
Despite the delayed resolution, librarians outside the system are encouraged by the rising level of public interest in the debate over the new library.
