SaveNYPL at the City Council: Keep Libraries Open on Sunday
Watch CSNPYL President Mathew Zadrozny’s gripping testimony (really!) at the New York City Council arguing that many libraries, including 42nd Street, should be kept open on Sundays and that the New York Public Library has the resources to do so:
Testimony of Matthew Mateusz Zadrozny
President, Committee to Save the New York Public Library (saveNYPL.org)
New York City Council
Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Chair Rivera, Councilmember Brannan, Councilmember Brewer, fellow New Yorkers:
Good afternoon, my name is Matthew Zadrozny. I am the president of saveNYPL.org, an all-volunteer watchdog group. In 2014 we saved the great 42nd Street Library and the Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th & 5th.
Since November, NYC libraries have been closed on Sundays, depriving one million school kids of a safe space to study and hang, and kneecapping millions of ambitious adults. An incalculable social cost and economic loss.
The decision to keep ALL libraries closed on Sundays is political theater, and a scandal. Especially at the NYPL, which recently spent hundreds of millions on a new patio and catering elevator.
When the city built the 42nd Street Library, its contract with the NYPL stipulated that “one or more reading rooms […] be open on week days, holidays included, from 9.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m., and on Sundays from 1.00 to 9.00 p.m.” †
When NYPL president Tony Marx and former chair Evan Chesler were growing up, in Inwood and Allerton, the 42nd Street Library was open more than 80 hours per week.
And yet, today, as service at 42nd Street has dwindled to just 52 hours per week, NYPL’s finances have seldom looked better.
The NYPL endowment is 1.5 billion dollars, a record.
And the NYPL board has a combined net worth in excess of 90 billion dollars.
This means that NYPL trustees alone could fund the entire NYPL system for two hundred and forty years.
To quote Tony Marx: “We’re not in the 1970s here.”
In L.A., where NYPL trustee Ethan Hawke works, the central library is open 60 hours a week and on Sundays.
In Boston, backyard of trustees Henry Louis Gates Jr and Robert Darnton, the central library is open 66 hours per week and on Sundays.
In Paris, where trustee Hubert Joly studied, libraries are open every day, including Sundays.
In Seoul, home of trustee Michael Kim, the central library is open 78 hours per week, and on Sundays.
In Washington, where Senator Schumer works, the MLK library is open 66 hours a week, and on Sundays.
And yet, in our own city, home to more than 100 billionaires — the most of any city on earth — libraries are closed on Sundays.
“Sorry about tomorrow’s test, kid. Have you tried Yonkers, Nassau, or Hoboken? Their libraries are open.”
So, what’s it going to be, New York? Are we still, in fact, “the state of opportunity”?
Or are we a second rate city, in a second rate state, with a second rate library, high on our own supply?
It’s up to you, New York.
Today, the library chiefs came before you, once more, with pockets out-turned.
Give them the money they ask.
But require them to keep some libraries open every day and every night of the week.
Require NYPL leadership to keep the 42nd Street Library — the largest, most central, most accessible and most well endowed of all NYC libraries — open 80 hours per week, including on Sundays, as stipulated in NYPL’s contract with the City.
80 hours a week at Forty-Second Street!
80 hours a week at Forty-Second Street!
80 hours a week at Forty-Second Street!
And on the seventh day there was service.
Thank you
