THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110503
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
After years of cutting its budget, the City Council tentatively agreed Tuesday to give more money to a once-proud library system that lags in books, equipment and staffing.
The council was responding to an impassioned plea for funding from the chairman-elect of the library's Board of Trustees, Steve Story.
Story said the council had to pay if it wanted a world-class system.
``Are we wasting our time and energy?'' Story asked the council, after outlining plans for improving the libraries. ``What are your marching orders?''
``This notion that we ought to have a world-class library rings very well with this council,'' Mayor Paul D. Fraim said.
The board's meeting with the council Tuesday came after statistics showed that thousands of Norfolk residents were traveling to libraries in other cities to find the books they need.
In the last five years, the city's library budget has shrunk by 20 percent and its staffing by 33 percent, Story said. National library statistics show that Norfolk has the lowest rate of library usage of any city in Hampton Roads.
Norfolk recently hired a new library director, Sally Reed, who has acknowledged that the libraries have serious deficiencies.
Councilman Herbert M. Collins Sr. said he was ``embarrassed and ashamed'' to admit that his daughter, who is in college, had to travel to Virginia Beach to do research.
``We should put the libraries on the top shelf in budget priorities,'' Collins said. ``I can't think of anything more important.''
Neither the council nor library officials gave specific dollar amounts for the additional funding, but Story asked for a supplement to the library's current budget of $3.5 million as well as for additional funding in future years.
Story outlined a plan in which the system's 11 branches would soon be able to specialize in books and materials that fit their neighborhood. In addition, staff training would be increased and a full-time communications director would be hired to publicize the library and work with citizens.
For the longer term, library officials said they would start a planning process with citizens to decide how to improve the system, including whether to build a new central library and whether to relocate it outside downtown.
After the council began debating the issue, Story said the board would listen to whether residents put more value on the easy parking of a suburban-style library located outside downtown, or the opportunity an improved central library offered to keep the city's top services in one place and to bolster downtown development by drawing people to the area..
``I personally believe that a revitalized library could add tremendously to the revitalization of downtown,'' Story said. ``It could be an additional jewel in the crown.''
Councilman G. Conoly Phillips said the library should work on increasing private donations to supplement any additional funding by the city.
The request for more money coincides with a push by the Library Board to draw attention to the city's libraries over the next 100 days. Begun by new director Reed, this public relations campaign will include meetings with citizens on plans to improve the libraries.
The campaign also will focus on the revamping of the Park Place library. The branch library has specialized in children's books, African-American literature, adult learning and preschool and teenage materials, which the librarians there say best serve the surrounding neighborhood. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO
Norfolk's Kirn Library could be replaced as the main facility, as
the city looks for ``an additional jewel in the crown'' to bolster
development.
by CNB