Amid a sea of cardboard moving boxes in the now-quiet halls of Chicago`s Cultural Center, J. Ingrid Lesley runs through a list of fond memories.
There was the time author Saul Bellow spoke there at Mayor Richard M. Daley`s inauguration, the time composer Philip Glass played tapes of his music in the center and when Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks recited some of her works.
”This place has so many great memories,” says Lesley, 51, chief of the Chicago Public Library`s arts and letters division. ”I remember the first time I came here in 1966 and went up to the reading room on the fourth floor. I had never been to a library this size, and it was exciting to see such a large room with long reading tables where many people were pursuing information and knowledge. It was truly inspirational.”
Little of the library`s presence remains in the Cultural Center except for the last few boxes to be transported to the library`s new residence, the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. The Cultural Center`s library facilities at 78 E. Washington St. were closed July 13.
The 757,000-square-foot Washington library, which opens Oct. 7, will house the library`s collections from the Cultural Center and the facility at 400 N. Franklin St.
Lesley says it is a bittersweet time for her and many of her fellow employees.
”The new library is a miracle,” she says while walking the empty halls of the Cultural Center. ”We`ve been very concerned about having a permanent home, and here is our future. But it will be very sad leaving the Cultural Center. We all love this building. In fact, one of the librarians who was organizing her departmental move said, `It feels like there has been a death in the family.` ”
The excitement over the new library, however, will help temper cutting ties to the Cultural Center, she says.
”In the new facility, we will have two whole floors, which will allow us to remove many restraints and make many more collections accessible,” Lesley says. ”For example, in the foreign language section, in the past every single square inch of space was (covered) with books. You couldn`t reach the top of the shelving unless you dragged a chair over. Now we`re going to a place where all the books are reachable and will be on (reachable) shelves.”
Lesley`s division has two large collections in the fields of visual and performing arts and literature and language.
”The arts department includes all the musical holdings and the art and performing arts collections,” she says. The literature and language department contains materials on the history of languages, translations, a fiction catalog and a foreign language collection.
Lesley is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the department and the expansion and strengthening of humanities programs.
”About 55 percent of my time is spent developing grant proposals that augment the book collections or special endeavors, like preservation or special outreach services,” she says.
In recent years, she has worked on several projects, such as the recently completed ”Korean-Americans and the American Public Library” project.
”The idea was to introduce the concept of the American public library to the growing Korean-American populations in the Korean neighborhoods at Foster and Lawrence Avenues and (in conjunction with suburban library districts) in Skokie, Lincolnwood and Morton Grove,” Lesley says. ”The idea came from a proposal from a Korean-American librarian at our Albany Park branch.”
The programs established collections in literature, audio and video materials and computer software, Lesley says.
Another recent project was the creation of a 100-videotape collection of the ”Jubilee Showcase” gospel music television program that aired on local WLS-TV from 1963 to 1984. ”We`ve created an archive that will be used by scholars, researchers, musicians, seniors, students and those who just enjoy it,” Lesley says.
Lesley also is working on a project to put 28,000 slide images from around the world on videodisc. The slides were donated by a library patron.
”This is a new idea and a new technology for (most) public libraries,”
Lesley says. The project will allow patrons to locate and view scenes from various countries on a computer.
Lesley has put together programs, such as a series of speakers on AIDS education and a list of shelters for homeless people who come to the library. The variety of her work is what Lesley best enjoys about being a librarian. ”To say that every day is different is an understatement,” she says.
Her multifaceted abilities are a tremendous asset to the library system, says library Commissioner John B. Duff. ”She`s a valued employee particularly because of her imagination and enterprise. She has had some marvelous ideas,” he says of the programs she has implemented.
Duff adds that it is important for librarians to help the library system evolve for two reasons: ”We`ve got to come up with new ideas so that we can reach more people with the resources that we have. And we`ve got to be alert for grant opportunities from the federal government or independent
foundations. In these regards, Lesley has been invaluable.”
Lesley says she was inspired to go into library work by a childhood incident.
”When I was a kid growing up in Ft. Wayne, Ind., freedom was being able to walk over to a neighborhood branch library on my own,” recalls Lesley, who still spends much of her leisure time browsing in libraries and bookstores.
”As I got older, my parents allowed me to take the streetcar downtown to the central library. I remember wanting to access the adult collection of that library because I had read everything by Edgar Allen Poe and I wanted to find out more about him.”
In addition to allowing her into the adult reading room, the librarian helped her find the materials she wanted. ”It was splendid,” Lesley says.
When she was in high school, Lesley became involved in the school library club. She attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and worked in the campus library as a bibliographic searcher.
After graduating from Purdue in 1967 with a bachelor`s degree in English literature, Lesley and her husband, Albert, came to Chicago ”because of the job opportunities.”
After working for an advertising agency, Lesley went to work as a technician and trainee in the Central Library (which became the Cultural Center) in 1969, preparing a bibliography for Earth Day 1970.
”A librarian told me that I needed a degree (in library sciences) and a union card to work in the library as a librarian,” she recalls. ”So I went back to school and obtained my degree in 11 months.”
After graduating from Rosary College in River Forest with a master`s degree in library sciences in 1971, Lesley became an assistant librarian at the Toman Neighborhood Library on the West Side in early 1972.
”Most of the older population there was Croatian, but the emerging population was Hispanic,” she says. ”So I got a tutor from Quigley South High School and began learning Spanish. After a while, I began reviewing Spanish-language books and getting those reviews published in the Spanish-language newspapers to publicize the books. That got people involved” in coming to the library.
Through the 1970s, Lesley worked at the Legler Regional Library on the West Side, the West Town Neighborhood Library on the Near West Side and the Frederick A. Douglass Neighborhood Library on the West Side.
”Each library had a specific need,” she says. ”For example, Legler was in a black community, and we did a lot of musical programming there” because there was little available in music. ”I remember seeing Harold Washington give a talk there when he was a congressman.”
In 1980, Lesley became the branch head of the Lake View Neighborhood Library on the North Side. ”That was a very challenging role because it`s a very sophisticated community,” she says. Patrons asked for more specific information and more materials through inter-library loans than patrons of other libraries, she says.
In the fall of 1987, she was promoted to her current position.
”One of the things that I like most about being a librarian is working both ends of the spectrum,” says Lesley, a resident of the Sheffield neighborhood on the North Side. ”The librarian has to reach that person in the inner city as well as that professional who is coming in to use the library`s database.
The Washington library will do that, Lesley says.
”The move to the new library center is as significant a move as when the library system made the Cultural Center its permanent home nearly 100 years ago,” she says. ”This is the library for the next century.”
The Cultural Center will be operated by the Department of Cultural Affairs, which hasn`t decided how it will use the vacated space.
But as she strolls through its quiet corridors, Lesley says the Cultural Center won`t be forgotten.
”The library will be gone from here, but you will not remove the memories,” she says. ”The fact that this building served as a library for Chicago will be forever etched in the mosaics and the walls. Everyone who ever entered this building will have a memory about it.”
