Community Library Moving to AJU

The Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles is moving out of its decades-long home at The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard and being absorbed by the library at the American Jewish University (AJU) on Mulholland Drive. The merged library is scheduled to open at AJU Sept. 1 and will be free to the public.

AJU and Federation officials, who over the last year brokered the deal, believe the new arrangement will make the library more accessible to large Jewish population centers on the Westside and the Valley, in addition to the thousands of people who attend AJU events.

“I think this will be a real boon for the community, and I look forward to seeing the books on the stacks and available to all, and having people really enjoy them,” said Beryl Geber, Federation’s associate executive vice president for policy, who was involved in the negotiations.

Fewer than 2,000 people a year had been using the Jewish Community Library, which had strong programming and a solid collection but was hampered by its location on the third floor of the high-security Federation office building. Over the past several years, Federation drastically reduced funding to the library, which it founded in 1947.

AJU plans to more than double the size of its Bel and Jack Ostrow Library in the next few years, and will expand existing book discussion groups and the annual Celebration of Jewish Books.

A vocal group of library professionals and devoted Jewish Community Library clientele began protesting the merger when news first leaked in January, but as talks moved forward, no competing alternative was presented to Federation.

“We just didn’t get that far,” said Sherrill Kushner, an attorney who helped organize the opposition, gathering 150 signatures to present to Federation leaders.

Critics of the relocation worry that AJU is not accessible by public transportation and is not a convenient stop but a destination, up on a hill off the 405 Freeway at Mullholland Drive.

Abigail Yasgur, who served as the librarian for 10 years, resigned in February in protest to what she called the Federation’s “dumping and unloading” of the library.

Details of the relocation were hammered out in a three-way deal reached between AJU, Federation and the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE), which has overseen library operations since 1990.

Federation, through its education pillar — one of five different issue areas the agency allocates money toward — will continue to provide the merged library $76,000 each year for the next three years (to be reviewed annually).

The Bureau of Jewish Education will get first crack at the Jewish Community Library’s 30,000 volumes, taking from it the books and resources its staff needs for an internal, non-circulating library.

Over the summer, AJU librarians and a consultant will cull the collection, determining which books and films to add to AJU’s 125,000-volume collection. AJU President Robert Wexler says it will keep duplicates of popular books for circulation. Decades worth of community archives also will move to AJU. The library will continue a mail service for those who can’t get to the facility.

AJU has not yet determined if it will need to hire a community librarian.

The children’s collection, housed at the Slavin Children’s Library on the ground floor at 6505 Wilshire Boulevard, was not part of the AJU negotiations and will remain in the building, according to Federation President John Fishel, who said Federation will continue to fund the Children’s library.

But as of 2010, BJE will no longer operate the children’s library — and who will has not yet been determined.

“The children’s collection will stay here. We will have to decide if it will be a freestanding entity, or possibly tied to another organization in the building,” possibly the Zimmer Children’s Museum, Fishel said.

Over the past several years, Federation has been decreasing funding allocated to BJE to spend on the library. Federation provided $166,000 of the library’s nearly $300,000 budget in 2008-2009, with the remainder coming from fundraising and almost depleted reserves. In 2007, a BJE task force undertook a study to determine the future of the library.

Just as the task force was struggling to come up with recommendations, AJU’s Wexler approached Federation.

The university already was planning to open its collection to the community at a facility set to be built in the next three years — a 20,000-square-foot library with a computer lab, reading room, rare books room and space for author talks, in addition to stacks and display areas. A reading garden adjacent to the library is already under construction, and AJU will launch a campaign for the new library in the fall.

The merger with the Jewish Community Library allows AJU to bring home the notion that it is more than a university, Wexler said.

“This is a way of reinforcing the message to the community that we are an institution of community education, beyond what we do in terms of educating professionals,” Wexler said.

Jill Lasker, who chaired the BJE’s library committee, believes the merged entities will serve the community well.

“Even though this process has not always been smooth, and people have been very passionate in expressing their opinions on the pro and con of this move, I’d like to think that we are in fact one big community, and that this ultimately is in the best interest of the community,” Lasker said.