Keep the 42nd Street Library Open on Sundays!

  • On 20 Jan, 2024
  • By

Response_to_President_Marx_final

Right now, there isn’t a single public library open anywhere in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Manhattan on Sundays. Across the city, millions of students, scholars, inventors, and readers lack a quiet, accessible place to work on the day when most New Yorkers are free.

Will you help change that? At a minimum, NYPL should keep the centrally-located 42nd Street Library open on Sundays.

Please email the following message to our city-wide representatives:

Dear Comptroller Lander, Public Advocate Williams, and Council Speaker Adams:

Currently, there isn’t a single library open anywhere in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Manhattan on Sunday. Millions of New Yorkers lack a quiet, accessible place to study, read, write, and research on the day when most are free. Keep the 42nd Street Library open on Sundays! In the words of then candidate Brad Lander: “The library should be open seven days a week.”*

Sincerely,
[your name and address]

…and email it to:  action@comptroller.nyc.gov, gethelp@advocate.nyc.gov, SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.go

On January 6th, 2024, we started this campaign by asking our supporters to forward the following message to NYPL President Anthony Marx and the NYPL Board of Trustees—this letter has now been signed by City Councilmember Chi Ossé, Chair of the Council Committee on Libraries, and we thank him!

If you haven’t already done so, please copy this message and email it to president@nypl.org and boardoftrustees@nypl.org:

From: The Committee to Save the New York Public Library (savenypl.org)
To: Anthony Marx and the NYPL Board of Trustees:

On November 26, 2023, the NYPL suspended Sunday service at all its libraries, including the Central Library on 42nd Street. Budget cuts by city government have forced the public library systems in Queens and Brooklyn to take similar action, leaving the city with no open libraries for half of every weekend. We write to urge that the 42nd Street Library, which is differently funded from the branch libraries, remain open on Sundays, when most people have free time to use it.

The 42nd Street Library was built with the taxpayers’ money on city land, NYC still owns the building and its contract with NYPL* requires that the library remain open 80 hours per week. As a private institution with an endowment of over $1.5 billion, NYPL suffers least from Mayor Adams’s budget cuts: it can surely afford the cost of keeping Sunday hours on 42nd St. Funding is a question of priorities.

Keeping the doors open at the 42nd Street Library would cost a fraction of the millions NYPL leadership has spent recently building a supersized gift shop for tourists, and new, redundant elevators and stairs so caterers can more efficiently service private parties and weddings.** Already, these private events limit the time available for researchers and readers, and now with the library closed all day Sunday, they have even less time.

Some of those researchers and readers cannot use the library on Saturday for religious reasons, leaving them with no library at all on weekends. We urge NYPL leaders to remedy this discriminatory situation.

The stated mission of the library—to serve all the citizens of the city—has not changed over the years, even as curtailed hours have restricted library use.  A representative of the library told the City Council last year as it sought to increase taxpayer funding: “Libraries open doors. But not if they’re CLOSED.” And yet, the leadership of NYPL has chosen to close the doors of the 42nd Street Library on Sundays. We think this violates its primary mission.

The Committee to Save the NYPL has tracked the steady reduction in hours, from an average of 82 hours per week between 1911 and 1960, to its current low of less than 55 hours (the recent Sunday closings cut those hours even further). If the Library is to fulfill its mission to the citizens of NYC and beyond, NYPL leadership must keep its doors open on Sundays.

* contract with NYPL: https://savenypl.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/HPC-to-LPC-08-12-19-Letter-and-Exhibits-Combined.pdf

** private parties and weddings: https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/nypl_fall_2017_special_events_brochure.pdf

On January 12th, NYPL President Marx sent the following response:

From: Anthony Marx <president@nypl.org>
Subject: Re: keep the 42nd Street Library open on Sundays!
Date: January 12, 2024 at 4:33:31 PM EST

Dear —-,

Thank you for your email and for sharing your concerns about the impact of New York City’s budget cuts to the Library. I share your frustration. Closing on Sundays was a decision we did not make lightly, but one we unfortunately deemed necessary due to the severity of these cuts.

I’d like to give you some background that might help explain why we felt compelled to respond to our budget challenges the way we did, and some context on the other issues you referenced.

In its November Plan, the City proposed a 5% mid-year cut to our funding which will also carry into future fiscal years. This means we needed to immediately reduce our budgets. Sundays are maintained through overtime funding, making their operational costs 50% higher than other days. In addition to costing more, Sundays historically are the least used days in our systems (including at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building). While you are correct that the Research Centers are primarily privately funded, we also do rely on a significant portion of City funding each year: over 30% of Research’s budget is funded through the City of New York. As you know, the New York Public Library is a single system that operates the Research Centers as well as our extensive network of Branch Libraries. Since the Branch Libraries are mostly funded by the City, the cuts have disproportionately impacted those services. But given the magnitude of this immediate budget reduction, affecting both the Branches and Research Libraries, the most prudent measure was, regrettably, to eliminate Sunday service across the system for the time being.

You are also correct that over nearly a decade we have invested over $250 million of capital funds to improve the Schwarzman Building for our researchers and the public. These include:

  • The new Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities, with renovated space for 400 researchers, collections consultations, school visits, and programs.
  • The new Polonsky Exhibit of the Library’s Treasures, the first permanent display which brought in its 1 millionth visitor last year.
  • The Milstein Stacks, state-of-the-art storage for 4 million volumes and archival materials.
  • A new entrance on 40th street and the Marshall Rose Plaza, along with new elevators and stairs to improve the movement of people and our collections – separating the public from back-of-house functions – while also improving accessibility and ADA compliance.
  • A new visitor center to introduce the public to the Schwarzman Building and NYPL as a whole, and reduce tourist traffic in the Rose Main Reading Room.
  • A new exhibitions gallery, opening this March in the site of the former gift shop, which will significantly increase the footprint for temporary exhibitions.
  • A new location for the shop, moving it away from the main hall and making room for more exhibition space.
  • And updated bathrooms and other mechanical improvements.

It is worth pointing out that both the shop and rentals are important sources of revenue for the Library; these are even more important at a moment of financial stress. Further, as I noted above, we have taken care to make building improvements so these operations do not disrupt the public services of the Library. Similarly, we take every precaution to ensure access to  services remains available to patrons when hosting private events and in the past 10 years have only rarely implemented an early closure for the building.

Building renovations are one-time costs paid for in capital funds. This funding is entirely separate from the day-to-day operations of the Library, including Sunday service, which are recurring costs paid for out of our operating budget (of which the City is a major source).

In addition to the physical improvements, we have been proud of the progress we’ve been able to make in supporting researchers at 42nd Street over the last few years, including:

  • Expanding fellowships by 50% since 2020.
  • Adding new curators including for the Middle East & Islamic Studies, Latin American, Iberian & Latino Studies, and Slavic & East European Collections.
  • Doubling the size of the research collections available to the public from 10 million to 24 million volumes, through our partnership with Columbia, Princeton and Harvard, while investing in and growing our special collections, including making several significant and noteworthy acquisitions
  • Expanding digital access through enhancements to our research catalog, making more public domain works available, and in digitizing over 100,000 items.

This important momentum is unfortunately blunted by our latest financial challenges. Even more worrisome, we are facing an additional 5% cut in the upcoming January Plan that would force us to further reduce services. In the coming months we will launch our #NoCutsToLibraries advocacy campaign to ensure the public’s voices are heard by our elected officials. I hope we can count on your support to join us in persuading our City leaders that this funding is vital to maintain our services and needs to be restored.

I appreciate your dedication to the Library’s critical mission to serve all the public – from the scholar at the Schwarzman Building to the child learning to read in the Mott Haven Library. And I look forward to working together to return Sunday service to all New Yorkers.

 Yours,
Tony

On January 21st, we sent President Marx and the Board the following reply, clarifying why Sunday hours at the 42nd Street Library are both essential and feasible.

Committee to Save
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

To: Anthony Marx and the NYPL Board of Trustees:

Thank you for your response to the many letters sent by Committee to Save NYPL supporters. We are heartened that Chi Ossé, the Chair of the NYC Council Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations, has endorsed our letter, too. Unfortunately, your message did not allay our concern about the decision to suspend Sunday hours at the NYPL branches, nor our alarm that the 42nd Street Library is now closed on Sunday in violation of its original agreement with the City of New York.

Maintaining a library and reading room, open to all, every day of the week, was the founding premise of NYPL’s Central Library on 42nd Street; the City funded its construction for that purpose. Your decision to deprive New Yorkers of all library services on Sunday is irresponsible, but doing so to provoke public protest, as suggested by your planned launch of the #NoCutsToLibraries campaign, is wrong-headed. We encourage you to see library users as patrons rather than pawns.

The budget numbers from your letter show that 30% of the research libraries’ budget comes from the City. The 5% cut in this contribution results in a 1.5% reduction to the overall budget of the four research libraries, which rely primarily on private funding, and the 42nd Street Library is but one of the four. Is keeping it open on Sunday beyond the means of an institution with a $1.5 billion private endowment? Perhaps keeping open all branches is a real financial challenge, but the shortfall at the 42nd Street Library can surely be managed. The obligation to provide one open library on Sunday for New Yorkers with no alternative should compel you to maintain this essential service.

Thank you for the list of accomplishments from the past decade. We applaud the newly funded fellowships, the new curators, and access to larger physical and digital collections. All improvements to library services deserve wide support. It is curious that the only price tag you provide is the $250 million spent on capital improvements to the 42nd Street Library.

Money spent on improved access to the library building is always welcome, but other changes have had unfortunate results: The new visitor center (and redundant coat room) displaced the map collection, causing longer waits for delivery of maps; the giant relocated gift shop may have made way for a small exhibition space, but it displaced two modern classrooms; the new redundant elevators – just a few feet away from an existing one – aid caterers serving canapés more than librarians serving readers. When the library is closed on Sunday, these changes benefit no one except those with the money to rent the building for private events.

We urge NYPL to re-align its priorities at the 42nd Street Library. Nurturing the human capital of library users is more urgent than many discretionary capital projects there; after all, the library’s building should be used as a learning center, not a profit center.

By monitoring trustee meetings, the Committee to Save NYPL has learned that some of Stephen Schwarzman’s generous, $100 million contribution to the Library has been deployed in temporary bridge loans to fund capital projects – when new funds are raised these loans are repaid, thus returning the donation to its original value. Similar financial flexibility could meet the current budget shortfall. Since Schwarzman’s name has been carved into the marble walls beside every door of the 42nd Street Library, is there a better use for his donation than to keep those doors open on Sunday?

Committee to Save NYPL, January 21, 2024
SaveNYPL.com

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