California is facing a $13 billion budget shortfall over the next year and a half, and it’s safe to say that the pain will be felt across public services. In some parts of the Bay Area, incoming tax dollars won’t be enough to buy even books for libraries. That’s why, in places like Santa Clarita, libraries are going private. It’s a proven practice: The Mechanic’s Institute in San Francisco’s library has been private since the late 19th century.
What’s to be done when the economy makes books unaffordable, but public libraries can’t fill their shelves? KALW’s Holly J. McDede found a fairly simple answer: Start your own library.
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HOLLY MCDEDE: To get to Kristina Kearns’ library you'll have to first walk through an antiques shop on Valencia, called Viracocha. You’ll pass old-fashioned typewriters, a few bathtubs, subway station turnstiles, and an assortment of bicycles displayed on the walls. If it's a Saturday there might also be a live piano player. Once you make it through this jungle of delightful oddities, you’ll run into Kristina Kearns. Chances are she’ll be sitting on a bench reading a book from the library she started.
Kearns’ library doesn’t feel much like a regular library either. The floors are a bit squeakier, and every once in awhile the building, like antique buildings tend to do, stretches. You might not notice it – that is, until Leaves of Grass falls off the shelf.
KRISTINA KEARNS: Oh! Walt Whitman just went down.
Kearns used to work at a bookstore in Greece that really struggled because of the poor economy. When she came back to America, she saw the same thing.
KEARNS: I had been with McSweeney’s Publishing, kind of volunteering for a while before then and helping out with the Rumpus, so it was strange to hear how publishing was dead and books are dead. Over and over again, it was kind of like, “Why are you guys saying this? You should be the ones not saying that!” I think it’s strange.
Kearns also had economic troubles of her own. She found it difficult to afford books, even used ones. She worked five part-time jobs for six months before she could even start buying books – not that she had any time to read the books once she had them. And her small, personal purchases certainly didn’t solve the larger problem going on here.
One day, she struck up a conversation with Jonathan Siegel, the owner of Viracocha, and pitched him the idea of opening a library of her own. It turned out she was talking to the right person. Siegel immediately offered her the space in the back of his antique shop.
KEARNS: His openness to just give me the chance, and his friends who came in and helped me build because I didn’t know what I was doing… that’s kind of, hopefully, what the name represents. All my job is is to keep this physical space open so that people can have this space to do what they want with it.
She called the library “Ourshelves” and set about looking for books. Before long, she had local authors on board. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon personally invited Kearns into his house, and told her to take whatever books she wanted. She went back to her library with 100 of Chabon’s books. Friends of San Francisco Public Library let her exchange books she already had for books she wanted from them.
KEARNS: I think part of it is that it’s not a commercial enterprise. This isn’t about money. This isn’t about stature of any kind. This is just an open space to do whatever you’d like.
Once her doors opened, Kearns started to hear about more libraries sprouting up throughout the Bay Area. In Richmond, a mother put bookshelves filled with children’s books in laundromats. In San Jose, volunteers started an informal lending program when the city failed to provide funds to hire a librarian. Within restaurant Mission Local Eatery lies a cookbook library.
KEARNS: It makes sense to me that the idea is coming out at the same time because books are expensive, and there’s a need to adapt the role of what a bookshop’s role is. When we’re put in a tighter corner, more ideas come out, more sparks and changes.
You know what other year was exciting for libraries? Are you thinking 1854? Because if you are, you’re right. For starters, the economic situation that year makes our current economy seem, eh, not that bad.
Back then, half of San Francisco’s population was unemployed. The gold had run out. So it was time to get creative. A small group of people founded the Mechanics' Institute Library as a center for adult to learn crafts and trades. It still stands today in San Francisco’s Financial District.
TARYN EDWARDS: MY name is Taryn Edwards, and I’m one of the six librarians that we have on staff here.
To get a sense of what the Mechanics’ Institute Library looks like, first picture Kristina Kearns’ little library in the back of the antique shop. Now, take away the antique shop. Then, add a few floors. Put in an elevator, and a winding staircase. Don’t forget the glass windows.
EDWARDS: A mere five years after it opened, it was immediately too small, so that’s why we had to add two extra floors. And that’s why it’s a bit of a rabbit warren to get down to the next staircase. So it’s usually very quiet here up on the third floor.
It also sounds a lot different than Ourshelves. Ourshelves has a piano player for example while the Mechanics’ Institute has a chess club.
EDWARDS: Chess was always a main aspect of the Mechanic’s Institute, oddly enough, because in Gold Rush California there wasn’t a whole lot of entertainment options in San Francisco that didn’t involve getting drunk or carousing on the Barbary Coast. So our founders, being very moral men, wanted to offer the entertainment option of playing chess.
One thing both Ourshelves and the Mechanics’ Institute have in common that patrons pay for membership. At Ourshelves, the fee can be $120-$240 a year, based on a sliding scale. At Mechanics’ Institute, membership costs $95 a year. For that price, you could buy about six books at a bookstore. Here, take as many books as you want. Just, please, bring them back.
In San Francisco, I’m Holly McDede for Crosscurrents.
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