ORANGE : Library Pins Its Hopes on Volunteers

One of the first tasks that Community Services Director Gary Wann faced when he started his job in July, 1993, was to tell 29 library staff members that they were fired.

“I had the distinct pleasure of bringing those people in and telling them,” he said, shaking his head. The experience was symptomatic of the general state of the library, which has lost nearly $1 million from its budget over the past three years. The Santiago Hills branch had to close its doors last year.

Yet notices went out in August announcing that the library was expanding its hours. Children’s story hours are continuing and schoolchildren can still rush in and ask adults for help with homework assignments.

“Now comes the restoration period,” Wann said.

To accomplish that, the Orange Public Library is relying on volunteer power as never before, even in some non-traditional areas such as check-out and circulation.

“They used to be nice to have,” branch supervisor Robert Felthaus said of the volunteers. “Now they’re necessary to have.”

About 20 volunteers already help out or are in training. And the search for more continues in an “all-out ad campaign,” Wann said. The staff would like 30 more to apply.

Last week, City Manager David F. Dixon said he was forming an ad hoc committee of community members to look at the library’s problems. Wann, who will serve on the committee of six or seven members, admitted that the announcement has made the library’s Board of Trustees “a little testy.”

Possibilities to be considered by the committee include an assessment tax, a charitable foundation and joint use with Santiago Hills College, Wann said.

But he hopes the committee’s eventual recommendations coincide with the library’s own study, called Orange Public Library 2000, which will try to set policies to keep the battered institution alive and working.

“You’re looking at the last educational infrastructure in the state,” Wann said of libraries, which are in crisis nationwide. “You lose the library and you lose a whole generation of kids.”

Orange has one of the smallest main libraries in the county. With a city population pushing 120,000, the library is only 17,000 square feet. According to national standards, that figure should be about 55,000, Wann said. The yearly book budget has gone from $300,000 to just over $100,000 since the cuts began.

With volunteers manning circulation desks, shelving books and taking care of children’s needs, Wann hopes that trained librarians can concentrate on reference and other areas where their expertise is crucial. Any retired librarians will be welcome at these desks, he said.

They all anticipate the opening of most schools next week, when the real test begins.

“When schools open and the first few (homework) assignments are due, that’s when we’ll know,” Wann said. “That’s when the test of using volunteers in non-traditional areas will begin.”