NYPL Changes its Renovation Plans - Opinions from a Former Employee

The opinions expressed here are my own.  I discussed NYPL in this blog before and stated that I worked at the Research Library in the Science and Technology Division from 1983-90.  Today, I have read two articles about the change in renovation plans of the Central Research Building also known as the Schwartman Building on 5^th Avenue and 42^nd Street.

• The Nation 
• New York Times  

The original plan was to move most of the books from the central building and move them to a storage facility in New Jersey.  This would create room for Mid-Manhattan and SIBL to move to move there to consolidate the operation.  There would be a large information commons there.

Many traditionalists vehemently opposed this including the Committee to Save the NYPL, Citizens Defending Libraries, and the Library Lovers League. Many major cultural figures who campaigned against the plan were Mario Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie and Francine Prose In my opinion the big mistake that NYPL made was not to consult with their users when this plan was first articulated.  This would have saved so much money as the library already paid the British architect Norman Foster $9 million in private funds for his firm’s work on the plan for the landmark building.  This money certainly could have gone to much better use.  $9 million has just gone down the drain.

It is an understatement to say that libraries have changed in this internet era.  Many major research libraries have moved less used materials to remote storage facilities. In my previous comments on this issue I do believe that NYPL should do the same.  I do understand the landmark status and historical significance of the central building.  On the other hand the central building should not be limited to the scholarly elite.

The current plan seems to be a compromise:

The Mid-Manhattan Library will be renovated in stages so that so it can remain open.

There will be 50 percent more public space in the building, including new spaces for children and teenagers and more work areas for researchers and writers.  This is a step in right direction. SIBL will be closed, but neither article stated where the collection will go.  I was quite dismayed to hear that the research level collection in the physical sciences was dramatically cut.  If the usage of the science collection was so low, then NYPL is justified in not paying for expensive resources that are rarely used.  I believe that independent researchers can be referred from NYPL to Columbia or NYU if they need technical journals and databases.

I do commend NYPL for coming to a compromise, but I wish they would have consulted with their users before any plan was implemented.  I hope they are pleasing most of the people most of the time.