Steinbeck’s Hometown Closes Libraries

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The hometown of John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize-winning author, is set to lose its public library system due to a financial crisis. The closures may leave Salinas mindful of one of Steinbeck’s observations: “I guess there are never enough books.”


Salinas, a community of 150,000,is located in a fertile valley that served as a backdrop for many of Steinbeck’s novels, including “The Grapes of Wrath.”


Barring a funding miracle to cover the $3 million annual running costs, the city’s three public libraries will go into “hibernation” next June.


Lauren Cercone, who helped co-ordinate a failed attempt to fund libraries from taxes, said: “Steinbeck once commented in a letter that he couldn’t have continued without the city and county libraries, as he relied not only on the collections but also on the research abilities of the librarians.”


Emotions in the city are running high over the impending closures. In the days after the news broke, the 6-foot bronze statue of Steinbeck outside the main library was adorned with a black armband. Emergency meetings have been called and residents have even been writing to Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host, for help.


The decision is part of a wave of library closures across America as local authorities face strained budgets. Public library funding across the nation has been cut by nearly $100 million since 2002.


The disappearance of libraries comes as the number of Americans reading literature has plummeted. Ac cording to the National Endowment for the Arts, which sponsored a survey of 17,000 people, for the first time in modern history fewer than half of American adults now read literature.


In New York State, the 52-branch public library system of Erie County is facing a crisis similar to Salinas. Budget woes have also threatened libraries in Detroit and Denver, as well as large towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio.


Over the past 12 years, Salinas, which lies 100 miles south of San Francisco, has weathered a $31 million budget cut. But this year, with falling sales tax revenues, economic stagnation and soaring health care costs, even additional cuts could not plug an $8.5 million shortfall.


“We knew this was looming. There was nothing left to whack,” said Lynne Steele, the president of the Friends of the Salinas Public Libraries.


Every day more than 2,000 people visit Salinas’s libraries, a 112-year-old system comprising the Steinbeck, El Gabilan, and Cesar Chavez branches.


Nearly 50,000 members take advantage of its 240,000 books, free literacy lessons, computer services and homework center – and library use is increasing.


Campaigners say those hardest hit will be the less privileged, including the Hispanic population.


The irony that much of Steinbeck’s writing focused on the struggles of Salinas’s migrant workers is not lost on them. “We will be the largest city west of the Mississippi with no library service,” said Ms. Steele.


“Salinas is Steinbeck’s birthplace. To consider that literary achievement and then to have no libraries here, it’s unthinkable.”


Some in Salinas say it is more important to keep policemen on the street.


But Amanda Holder, spokesman for the city’s National Steinbeck Center, a museum which since 1998 has housed the writer’s archives, says: “Perhaps if there were more libraries, we wouldn’t need so many police.”


Michael Gorman, the president-elect of the American Library Association, said the closures were short-sighted.


“California used to have the best school libraries in the country,” he said. “But they went from first to worst and now people are wondering why their kids don’t read.” At the Steinbeck Library, a few blocks from the writer’s childhood home, posters on the wall proclaim “Salinas celebrates literacy.”


“It just breaks my heart,” said Nancy Steinbeck, the widow of Steinbeck’s son, John. She said much of the city was “plagued with gangs and poverty,” while its library books were left to “moulder behind locked doors.”


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