Article In The Villager On What’s Happening To NYC Libraries Featuring Citizens Defending Libraries- Some Contradictions Are Picture Perfect

It is so valuable and so rare when the press runs stories about the selling off of NYC libraries, valuable even when NYPL officials are allowed their talking points– That’s why we are thankful that The Villager just ran an article on the subject, which featured Citizens Defending Libraries and what we are saying to a fair extent.  See:  A new chapter for public libraries has watchdog growling, by Gabe Herman, December 27, 2018.

The whole article is a recommended read, but in response to a few of those NYPL officials talking points, we thought a picture or two is worth a few thousand words.

The article quotes Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White a number of times.  This is one: 

White, of C.D.L., specifically criticized the Schwarzman plans as “commercializing the library.” He said a focus is being put on the gift shop and adding a wine bar, while fewer books are now available there, citing off-site storage in New Jersey.

In rebuttal:

    . . .  A library spokesperson said there were never plans for a wine bar or any alcohol to be served at Schwarzman. . .

However here is a visual the NYPL furnished in connection with those plans (and maybe the close-up of what's intended for the Map Room helps just a bit to make a point).   . .  At the NYPL trustees meeting where this was discussed, one trustee expressed hopes the plans could include an expansion to include outdoor cafe space as well, which would mean taking over some of the city land in Bryant Park.

What is in those wine-shaped bottles behind the bar?

And presumably, the NYPL official who says that there are "never plans for a wine bar or any alcohol to be served" at 42nd Street central research library is just not thinking in terms of how the NYPL advertises (see picture below) its space there for ritzy events like society weddings with consequent risk that the library will be closed early to researchers to accommodate them.   

NYPL "Beverage Program" as it advertises its space for events: Just Apple Juice?  

From the NYPL's brochure for using its space for events-- Do we know the etiquette well enough to know that this si showing both red and white wine glasses at the ready standing side by side?

An astute library defender also reminded us about the discussion that has gone on about the current work creating new cafe space atop the Mid-Manhattan Library (the main circulating library across the street), about which the NYPL administration official explaining things said he didn't: “want it to appear that space was being created for dinner events . .   .  but when that space is not being used we have the opportunity to rent it out.” Arguably, this is part of the same plan that includes the Schwarzman building.  Without argument, it is part of the same ethos.

Views of the space being created atop the Mid-Manhattan circulating library, which it is suggested could look down on the front steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library that the NYPL promotes for use as wedding space.

 Similarly, the NYPL officials wanted to downplay the loss of books:

The N.Y.P.L. denied any books are missing from Schwarzman, countering that many were moved to a second sublevel beneath Bryant Park, for climate control and a more efficient organizational system.

How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?

Here, to go along with the visuals above, is everything you need to know about the disappearance of books in New York City’s public libraries.  See: How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?

The article notes that “White sees a trend of selling off branches,” and:

“We think they’re picking off libraries one by one,” he said, referring to the S.I.B.L., the Donnell branch in Midtown in 2008 and another strongly opposed plan in Inwood, plus others in Brooklyn, which is under a separate system from the N.Y.P.L.

“Others in Brooklyn,” includes what was the second biggest library in Brooklyn the Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination federal depository library, that was the easiest significant library for the many New Yorkers and Brooklynites to get to.

Reading The Villager article you’ll see that NYPL Chief Operating Officer Iris Weinshall, Senator Schumer’s wife, tries to counter the notion that we are losing library resources, but one of the recent articles you may want to read as background on this is an overview from Jeffrey Wollock of Inwood that brings to light that even the daughter of the Schumers has gotten involved in these library sales, being involved in initiating the Inwood Library sale with her mother.  See:  The Voice of an Inwood Library Defender- Jeffrey Wollock Provides an Overview: Libraries as Real Estate -How NYC's Libraries are Being Stolen.

As for the way that books are disappearing from the libraries as these schemes dismantle them, we like this Michael Michael D. D. White quote from the article:

“The public still prefers physical books,” he said, “the use of the libraries is up, and we’re selling them off and changing the nature of the libraries.”

There is a lot more to learn about this on our web pages.

Narcissists: There’s a New Category Called “The Communal Narcissist”— Why Is That Something Library Defenders Would Want To Know More About?

Putting together a few thoughts about narcissism and those who sell libraries-  Clockwise from top, an article about "communal narcissists", work of Wendy Behary and her list of traits, Anand Giridharadas and his book about wealthy philanthropists, Dr. Ramani Durvasula's video about four kinds of narcissists.

Why would those defending the libraries want to know about what is supposed to be a particular kind of narcissist?  We will get to that. 

The subject of narcissism in the classic psychology sense can be fascinating, particularly when we now seem to be living in a culture that encourages traits that might easily be defined as problematic manifestations of the syndrome, even rewarding them by with positions of authority or high office.

This isn’t necessarily our area of expertise, and we note that, when you look into it, there are various psychologists who have gotten involved in making lists of the different kinds of narcissists into which they believe narcissists overall can be classified.  Those lists and categories frequently don’t seem to match, not in number or in category.  And then there are lists offering “sub-types”!

Reading about the traits assigned to some of these supposed categories it seems that many of those “differentiating” traits are actually all possessed together by many of the most pronounced narcissists. .  . Are they vain about their appearance and physical traits or vain about their brain– or vain about both?  Are they “High-Functioning, Exhibitionist, or Grandiose Narcissists” openly bragging and seeking attention, or are they sometimes surreptitiously operating with more or less the goals?  How much categorization makes sense?

Wendy Behary has a book out, “Disarming the Narcissist,” that offers a general list of traits associated with narcissists.  At a conference in Washington where she presented this year she said that the original title she liked for the book, rejected by her publisher or editor was, “Narcissist: A Nightmare in Shining Armor.”
  
Behry says narcissists typically display ten of the following thirteen traits:

1.   Self-absorbed – Acts like everything is all about him or her
2.    Entitled – Makes the rules; breaks the rules
3.    Demeaning – Puts you down, bullyish
4.    Demanding – of whatever he or she wants
5.    Distrustful  – Suspicious of your motives when you’re being nice to him or her
6.    Perfectionistic – Rigidly high standards – his or her way or no way
7.    Snobbish – Believes he or she is superior to you and others; gets bored easily
8.    Approval seeking – Craves constant praise and recognition
9.    Unempathic- Uninterested in understanding your inner experience or unable to do so
10.    Unremorseful – Cannot offer a genuine apology
11.    Compulsive – Gets overly consumed with details and minutiae
12.    Addictive – Cannot let go of bad habits; uses them to self soothe
13.    Emotionally detached – Steers clear of feeling

In other words, they spend a lot of time trying to make themselves look good and seeking praise and recognition, but they are dangerous to others because they lack empathy and feelings, feel entitled and break rules while putting themselves first.  Unable to apologize, they tend to be adept at, and focused on, shifting blame, deflecting truth to find other reasons for problems they are a source of, rather than acknowledge any failures in themselves.

We came across what is suggested to be a particular classification of narcissist that intrigued us as library defenders and got us thinking.  We watched a video of Dr. Ramani Durvasula: The 4 Types of Narcissism You Need To Know.  Per the title of that video, Dr. Durvasula offers a four “primary type” category division that includes the “malignant narcissist” (mean, almost psychopathic, likely to lie, cheat or steal, perfect material to make great criminals) the “covert narcissist” (seemingly put upon, really victimy, but still grandiose and passive aggressive).
                   
The category that really caught our attention was the hard-to-spot“communal narcissist.”  The communal narcissist is always out at galas and benefits and wants attention for writing checks to charities.  They want to be seen as caring for those they are serving, while actually having a lack of empathy for those people they are “rescuing” and feel superior to.  They seek lots of “validation for all their good works” and are not about doing good quietly and unseen.

We found an article on this classification in Psychology Today: The Communal Narcissist: Another Wolf Wearing a Sheep Outfit, by Peg Streep, May 24, 2016.  The title of the article sounds a lot like Behary’s abandoned “Narcissist: A Nightmare in Shining Armor.”

The article is based on categories Dr. Craig Malkin used in his book “Rethinking Narcissism,” and says that the concept of the communal narcissist category “is a relative newcomer to the party; the designation is only a bit over a decade old.”

Malkin is quoted as explaining:

[T]hey regard themselves as especially nurturing, understanding, and empathic. They proudly announce how much they give to charity or how little they spend on themselves. . . . They believe themselves better than the rest of humanity, but cherish their status as givers, not takers.

But with grandiose notions that they are serving the world they lack “the ability to empathize” and are, according to the article “involved in community only as a validation of self.”   And finally, the article makes the point that they do not have the ability to self-recognize their traits.

If you are ahead of us on this then you already know why we were thinking about all of this.  We are thinking about it because it got us wondering about the library trustees and high level library administration officials who are consistently so self-congratulatory to themselves, and so self-assured about all the good things that they have done to transmogrify the libraries into something different.

There are also the related questions raised recently by Anand Giridharadas in his new book “Winners Take All- The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” and by others as to whether wealthy people dabbling in charities to "benefit" the rest of us want to help us or just help perpetuate a world and systems where they are always going to be on top, no matter if that’s problematic (i.e. asking them “to fix a system they are complicit in breaking”).  Plus, what the wealthy do is so frequently ensnared in the penchant for so-called “win-win solutions” where the wealthy who take the helm steering things are always looking for what’s in it (the “win”) for them.

Finally there is an overarching precept that Joseph Stiglitz, writing about Mr. Giridharadas’ book, offered by providing a quote from political scientist, Chiara Cordelli: “This right to speak for others, is simply illegitimate when exercised by a powerful citizen.”

Mr. Giridharadas doesn’t specifically mention the esoteric subject of the “communal narcissist” in his book, but in his book he does in fact, cite Ms. Cordelli’s words specifically in terms of good old-fashioned narcissism, saying that self-proclaimed “leaders” naming “themselves as the solvers of the most intractable social problems represents a worrisome way of erasing their role in causing them,” and the strangeness of placing “people with the most to lose from social reform” is:

marred by its own “narcissism.”  “It seems to me that these days everyone wants to change the world by themselves,” she said. “It’s about them; it’s about what they do.”  

Is that just a description of garden variety “narcissism,” or Ms. Cordelli zeroing in intuitively on the recently defined classification of “communal narcissist,” adopted by professional psychologists and counselors? 

(BTW: Another book covering similar territory with respect to the new “philanthropy” of the wealthy that we have also written about, David Callahan’s “The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age” neglects the subject of such narcissism entirely.)

Communal narcissists?  Maybe knowing that they exist and being alert for their traits will enable them to be spotted amongst the higher up library administrators and boards of library trustees that are congratulating themselves while they sell off and shrink, and commercialize with private partnerships, New York public libraries while eliminating books and eliminating librarians and their influence.  Such individuals are surely there, harbored in their ranks.   There is also their close kin, the inappropriately self-designated, self-prioritizing “problem solvers” for the rest of us identified by Giridharadas whose “charity” can do more harm than good.  They can no doubt be found in those ranks too.

The interesting thing, however, is that, whether or not particular individuals manifest these psychological traits personally, when the forces aligning to dismantle libraries aggregate individuals endowing them with authority to pursue the goal of dismantling libraries, those groups will inevitably engage in tactics and behaviors most suitable to pursue and validate such dismantling.  Engaging in those tactics and behaviors they are likely to collectively display the traits of communal narcissism: They will focus in a self-congratulatory, unquestioning way on how wonderful what they are doing is; they will be disengaged from and unfeeling and unemphatic about the people they are supposed to be serving while displaying delusional beliefs that they not only do care, but are superior in this regard; they will seek congratulation and good press for what they are doing; they will see themselves as “givers,” not “takers”–

– Like other narcissists they will lack remorse for the harm they cause, steering clear of feelings, snobbishly keeping to themselves; they are apt to be bullyish or demeaning to others; and in an entitled fashion they will arrogantly want to make the rules and be in charge while breaking whatever rules they want, and they will avoid truth and accountability (wanting to be in charge of “fixing” what “they are complicit in breaking”).  . .

 .  And they will make a point of looking good, perfectly coifed and decked out when they go to their galas and benefits.

Wall Street Journal Reveals Fate Of SIBL, The City’s Biggest Science Library: Super-Wealthy Paul Allen Will Turn It Into “Pop-Culture Museum.”

The "Thing" that will take over NYC's biggest science library

The Wall Street Journal just revealed the currently intended fate of the SIBL, the NYPL’s Science, Industry and Business Library and the city’s biggest Science Library.  Paul Allen, one of the very richest of the world’s multi-billionaires wants to turn it into a “Pop-Culture Museum.”
Allen intends it to be another edition of Allen’s Seattle-based Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP where, according to the Journal: “Current exhibits focus on everything from Marvel comics to horror films to the rock band Nirvana.”  (See: Pop-Culture Museum Eyes a Second Home— Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is gearing up to take over a 100,000-square-foot space in the old B. Altman building, By Charles Passy, June 1, 2018.)

An obvious observation the Wall Street Journal article doesn’t offer: A science library, an institution fundamental to a functioning democracy is being destroyed.  This is being done at a time when science itself is under attack by those who are synchronistically interested in crippling democracy.  Yes, the disappearing science library is being replaced by what is called and may actually qualify as a “museum” (it’s being run as a “nonprofit’), but how readily can you differentiate a pop-culture museum like this from straight-out advertising, a further building up the brands owned by the huge media mega-consortiums of which Disney, owning the Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Muppets brands, is just a fractional part?

Museum web page or advertisement for Marvel's Universe of Super Heros?  Or both?

While this time its being done though an out-and-out sale of the property, shifts that make library space into space that is more commercially supportive way of pop-culture is consistent with what is being done to library space even when it isn’t being sold: The NYPL’s 42nd Street Central Reference Library is being commercialized with book-eliminating wine-café and exit-through-the gift shop, “renovations” and with similar changes, the Brooklyn Public Library’s Grand Army Plaza Library (one-third of all the library space in Brooklyn) is eliminating books, while the book appearance veneer the BPL management plans to dress up the plan involves moving its “popular library” out where it can be better seen.  The BPL says that for the sake of these appearances it will make its “popular library” more book focused and less comic book focused than it currently is. . . . There are those comic books again!

The Wall Street Journal article debates whether the new museum will fill a void:

While New York City doesn't have a directly comparable facility to the Museum of Pop Culture, the subject is covered in part by a host of institutions, said Mark Walhimer, a museum consultant based in the city. In particular, he pointed to the Museum of the Moving Image, located in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens.

Yes, if you wanted to see the Star Wars exhibit you had to go to the Brooklyn Museum, where you can now purchase $2,500 tickets if you want to see the David Bowie exhibit on a private basis.  As fun as these exhibits might be, it still raises questions: Are our museums, like our libraries, becoming too commercial?

It’s amazing how Paul Allen’s purchase and the impending demise of the city’s biggest science library has so heretofore been essentially unreported by the press, both local New York City press and National media, unless you want to consider Noticing New York’s reporting: As NYPL Senior Execs Present Pretty Pictures To City Council Of Expensive Mid-Manhattan Do-Over Renovation They Neglect To Mention One Thing: Rush To Immediately Sell SIBL (at a suspiciously low price?) To Very Interesting Buyer, January 11, 2017.

It’s amazing because Paul Allen is such an eccentric and interesting multi-billionaire: As Noticing New York noted, as if out of a James Bond film, he owns a fleet of the world’s largest yachts, a squadron of World War I fighter planes, he’s flying into space and building the world’s largest airplane.

Although it presented breaking news, The Wall Street Journal didn’t do a great job of connecting a number of dots.  Among the points it didn’t mention:

    •    Our suggestion that Mr. Allen donate the SIBL back to the NYPL with the stipulation that it be used as a library, restored to its original intended purpose, something that would probably cost Mr. Allen less than operating his yachts for a very fractional period of time.

    •    The irony that Mr. Allen as a Microsoft co-founder made his money through science.  That makes it much more of a shame that Mr. Allen should now be a party to the destruction of the city’s biggest science library, a sort of “I’ve got mine” mentality while pulling the ladder up after you so that nobody else can follow.

    •    That Mr. Allen’s father worked in a library where the young Mr. Allen would tag along after him as he worked, something else that may have contributed to Mr. Allen's ultimate success.

    •    That Mr. Allen has said that when he tagged along with his father he imagined “a trove of knowledge” found in a library could save a “dying or threatened civilization.”  That may sound virtually like the kind of science-fiction fantasy that might get play in Mr. Allen’s museum, but there is a close correlation between the demise of civilizations and the loss of their libraries.  Further, it can be debated how fictive the idea that we are a threatened society might be.

    •    That it would be very deserving of investigation to look into what seems to be the very low price the NYPL sold all of its SIBL space for.  SIBL was a significant public investment.  The Journal article notes it “opened in 1996 with much fanfare.”  That was when it was christened “the library of the future.”  It is still one of the City’s most modern technologically advanced libraries, just as the central downtown Brooklyn Heights Library was when it was sold.

The Journal article concludes:

The museum's launch would spell the end for the Science, Industry and Business Library, which opened in 1996 with much fanfare. The library's services will be absorbed into Midtown's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (formerly the Mid-Manhattan Library), which is under renovation and slated to reopen in 2020, library officials said.

The collection would become available at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main library at 42nd Street.   

That formulation for describing the fate of SIBL elides the fact the science library is going out of existence.  NYPL is ending the Science Library because, as NYPL’s Bill Kelly, its Director of Research Libraries, explained, people should get their information from the internet.  You can listen to Mr. Kelly explain this in our video. . . the clip comes at about the 50 minute marker, directly following the inserted reporting about the proposed elimination of net neutrality.  (And after the ironic inserts about "Dark Money" in the NYPL gift shop and Stephen Schwarzman, and after the walk pass the hedge-funders' soiree in the closed research library.)

Video: NYPL 2nd Presentation of "Master Plan" Dec 7, 2017 Part2.

The Wall Street Journal is behind a pay wall.  This Citizens Defending Libraries post aside, only those who are paid subscribers to the Journal are going to know or be affected by what the Journal has, or has not reported about Paul Allen’s acquisition and the fate of SIBL.  Maybe the readers of the Wall Street Journal are not a group that will find it so essential to know the things noted here as left out of the story. . .   but wouldn’t they, at least, find much of it interesting?

Citizens Defending Libraries did offer comment for the article before its publication, but that comment was not included. 

Destroying The English Commons- Isn’t This Exactly The Wrong Response To An Economic Squeezing?

New York Times front page: To `Tighten' your `belt' in England you sell 17 Liverpool parks to developers and your sold off library is refashioned into a “glass-fronted luxury home.”

Today the New York Times leads off with story on its front page about “belt-tightening” in England telling us about a sorry state of affairs where the English Commons has to be plundered and sold off to . . . . We are told that 17 parks are being sold to developers by the Liverpool local government, that a walk though Prescott in Northwest England shows that the local swimming pool has been eliminated with the razing of the community center, that the local museum is history, and that old library building “has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home.”  (See: Britain’s Big Squeeze– In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything– After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.  By Peter S. Goodman, May 28, 2018.)

Yes, we often think of England when we think of the concept of a shared public commons, and this is what reportedly is happening to libraries there.

Destroying the commons with a privatized sell-off to the wealthy is exactly the wrong response to economic squeezing and austerity.  Aren’t such times exactly when people ought to pool and share their resources to stretch them farther?  In fact, in England and the United States, a collective approach to mobilizing for the common good was precisely what helped our countries recover and get moving after the great depression of the 1930s.

A go-it-alone division of resources can accentuate the waste.  The Times article briefly notes that the wealthy in England are still quite wealthy and exceedingly well-off.  The Times does not note that, in these times of the country’s supposed austerity, about $45 million dollars or more was just spent on a royal wedding, almost all of that amount footed by the English tax-paying public, not the wealthy royal family.

While you can read the Times article, we’ll not recommend it as necessarily fair and accurate reporting about whether all this sell off of English public assets is really, as some suggest in the article, the way to pave the road for future “prosperity for all,” instead of just further increasing wealth inequality and further impoverishing the public now and going forward. . . .  

. . . The reason that we can’t recommend the Times article is that the Times has been biased and inaccurate in the past reporting about English politics, exhibiting a strange eagerness to discredit England’s political left: See FAIR’s– NYT: Corbyn Has Marginalized Labour With His Popular Positions, by Jim Naureckas, September 6, 2016.

BTW: Do you find the Times article about the woes in England and the response thereby `necessitated' the sort of narrative prologue whereby we might be more readily conditioned to accept when the similar sacrifices are demanded here in the U.S.?

What Libraries Are Affected By New York City Plans To Sell Libraries As Real Estate Deals, Shrink And Underfund Libraries And Eliminate Books?

Library officials said early on that they wanted to sell the most valuable NYC libraries first.  And indeed, that is exactly what the NYPL did when its first move was to sell the central destination Donnell Library, a library that was documented to be on most valuable block in Manhattan at the time.  Similarly, the concurrently launched Central Library Plan with its proposed sale of the Mid-Manhattan Library focused on the choicest real estate.  The BPL did the same thing prioritizing two prime site libraries adjacent to Forest City Ratner property for probable luxury towers, the Brooklyn Heights Library and the Pacific Branch library.  Unfortunately, the libraries that are most valuable to real estate developers are also the most valuable to the public for very similar reasons, including central accessible locations.

The most valuable libraries may be at the top of this list, but all libraries in the New York City system are currently under siege.  All libraries are under siege because of the deliberate, unprecedented and absolutely unnecessary underfunding of NYC libraries that is being presented as an excuse to sell libraries affects all libraries in all our city's boroughs.

All libraries in the New York City system should also be considered currently under siege because each and every library sale becomes precedent and a model for the next.  The shrink-and-sink sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library replicates the shrink-and-sink Donnell Library (in fact it was conceived at the same time with the same people in the background).  Moreover, BPL president Linda Johnson told the City Council when it was approving the shrink-and-sink Brooklyn Heights Library sale that it would be a model for future library deals by all three city library systems, the BPL, which she heads, the NYPL and the Queens Library.  Johnson has referred to herself as head of the Brooklyn Library system as having "over 1,000,000 square feet of real estate" at her disposal.

While Library officials are attracted to seizing for conversion the most valuable libraries first, they are also usually tactically coy about their plans. At this point they openly acknowledge going after only a few libraries at a time.  They go after the very valuable ones they want and they also go after the libraries where they believe they have ascertained that they can overcome community opposition and expect that they can, at the same time, perhaps achieve another objective that attracts them, like laying the groundwork for an upzoning in Inwood or establish and entrench a principle of reduction as with Spaceworks in Red Hook and Williamsburg.

For more details about affected libraries click here:  What Libraries Are Affected By City Strategy Of Defunding, Shrinking, Selling Off Libraries?

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

NYC Libraries Are Being Sold For Huge Losses And For Minuscule Fractions of Their Value

People ask whether the public is at least getting good deals or "value" when we sell our libraries.  We absolutely are not.  We are selling our libraries for far less than their worth and far less than we have invested in them.  The losses are actually profoundly embarrassing notwithstanding the proclivity of library officials to deceptively characterize proceeds from sales as "profits," and as "hefty" rather than "paltry."  That's been true since the beginning. . .

. . .  The first library sold, the Donnell Library, the central destination, 97,000-square foot, five-story central destination library on what was documented to be the most valuable block in Manhattan at the time, was sold to net the NYPL less than $25,000 million.  The penthouse in the luxury tower that replaced it in the 50-story luxury tower replacing Donnell went on the market for $60 million.  Another single lower-level condo unit in the luxury building, 43A, sold for $20,110,437.50.  There is also a 114 guest room luxury hotel in the tower.  according to the Wall Street Journal, Chinese investors made that hotel,“the most highly valued hotel in the U.S.” after agreeing to buy it for “more than $230 million. . .  .more than $2 million a room.”

. . . The central destination Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn, expanded and fully upgraded in 1993, one of the most modern and up-to-date libraries in the system would cost more than $120 million to replace.  The city sold it for less than its tear-down value, for less than its value as a vacant lot, and because it was sold to a developer who's inferior bid was not the highest bid, it's sale became the subject of one of the pay-to-play investigations of the de Blasio administration.  When costs are finally calculated it is likely the city and library administration officials will have netted less than $25 million from this library's ruination.

. . . In two suspicious real estate deals the NYPL has sold the 34th Street SIBL library, the city's biggest science library (in the former Altman's Department Store between Madison and Fifth Avenues) for an aggregate amount that, in adjusted for inflation terms, is just barely equal to the $100 million the public paid for that library in 1996.  That is despite the library's prime location and fact that since that time the New York real estate market has been surging by multiples that far outstrip inflation.  The above-ground portion of the technologically state-of-the-art library was sold to one of the world's wealthiest men, renowned, like a character in a James Bond novel for a owning a fleet of the world's largest yachts, a force of vintage war planes and for building the world's biggest plane.  Maybe this technologist magnate acquired the science library because his father worked in a library and he remembered tagging along with him, overwhelmed by the information and daydreaming of "'the sci-fi theme of a dying or threatened civilization that saves itself by finding a trove of knowledge.'" . . . This low gross amount that the NYPL receives for selling SIBL is not what the NYPL will net from the sale, because the sale, part of a consolidating shrinkage affecting also the Mid-Manhattan Library, will be costly.  That  overall plan now known as the “Midtown plan” is referred to on the NYPL's website as costing “$300 million.”

. . . The Sunset Park Library is being given away by the city, without bid, for nothing to an organization, the Fifth Avenue Committee, that is politically connected to Mayor de Blasio.  Incongruously, the city says that it cannot give the recently renovated Inwood Library away without bid, but it appears that the library will be similarly handed-off unfairly and without charge to another organization that has an inside track.

. . . Similarly, the hand-offs of library space in the Red Hook Library and Williamsburg Library to Spaceworks are essentially giveaways that conceptualize the library space as being somehow useless.

. . . Banishing books to expensively keep them off-site must also be regarded as another cost draining the public pocket book.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

When Did The Plans To Sell Libraries (Plus The Launching of The Concomitant Underfunding of Libraries) Begin?

Although plans to sell NYC libraries were not announced by the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration until much later, those plans actually to go back to at least 2005 or probably 2004.  David Offensend was hired by the NYPL in June of 2004 and, though he is imprecise, he says that he started working on library deals not long after his arrival there.  Janet Offensend, his wife, who helped launch BPL library sales started haunting the BPL and its board in 2005.  Other city development officials were being positioned by Mayor Bloomberg on the BPL board around that time.  (The Bloomberg administration took office January 1, 2002, shortly after 9/11.  By contrast, the Giuliani administration implemented library expansion plans that carried over into the early Bloomberg years.)

The BPL's minutes for 2005 show that in January a developer, perhaps jumping the gun based on inside knowledge, was angling to buy the 12,200 square-foot Midwood Library.  In November 2006 the New York Times ran a little noticed article about tearing down “obsolete” branch libraries to produce “new,” "better" library space in multi-use developments saying that a study had produced "an inventory of nearly every branch library in New York City" to identify "candidates for redevelopment" (like the "Red Hook, Sunset Park and Brower Park" libraries and the "Clinton Hill Library," which involves pushing through an accompanying rezoning.)  The article mentions "deferred maintenance" as a reason to redevelop the libraries.

In May of 2006 it was revealed that four Connecticut librarians had won a fight, secret because of a gag order since it began in July 2005, to resist broad federal surveillance of their library patrons.

Although the public did not know what it needed to know in order to see it happening, 2007 and 2008 were extremely eventful years in terms of furthering the plans to sell NYC libraries: 

2007 
    •    In January 2007, Booz Allen Hamilton (known principally as a private surveillance firm, the "colossus" in the industry, working for the federal government) was hired to assist the NYPL trustees with their strategy of the sale and reformulating of libraries.
    •    In the Summer of 2007 the Mayor Bloomberg and First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris expressed enthusiasm for the NYPL’s plans to sell and redevelop major central destination Manhattan Libraries.
    •    In November The Donnell Library sale was announced.
    •    The NYPL was working on selecting architects in connection with the Central Library Plan.
    •    The NYPL had plans for other consolidating shrinkage hub libraries for Northern Manhattan and Staten Island.
    •    Albany legislation reorganized the BPL board giving Mayor Bloomberg more control.
    •    The BPL started working on a "Strategic Real Estate Plan" being drafted by a former vice president of Forest City Ratner, which, will include a sale of the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library replicating the Donnell sale (with Forest City Ratner involved in the transaction) as well as “leveraging” all its “over one million square feet of real estate by launching partnerships . . .
    •    The BPL is working on a deal to turn the Brower Park Library into a redevelopment deal.
    •   The BPL was considering creating a tiny new library in DUMBO as“new library model,” (an “Out-Post”), that would have been only 1,700 square feet.
     •    Brownstoner published an article about the BPL selling the Clinton Hill Library for redevelopment and, although the public was unaware, there was a list of city libraries developers were looking at.

2008
    •    The BPL agreed, at city request (before the fiscal crisis), to start deferring capital expenditures for its libraries.
    •    The BPL hired an architect to create a Master Plan for its Central Library (eliminating books) that’s much like the NYPL’s Central Library Plan.
    •    The NYPL board was advised of the expectation that federal law might "require" the NYPL "to reengineer their Internet service facilities to enhance law enforcement's ability to monitor and intercept communications."

This is right around the time (just as Bloomberg clears his third term election hurdle) that funding for the libraries drops drastically even as public use continues a steep upward trajectory. The lack of funds with these funding cuts will be cited as the principal reason to sell libraries.

Chart from Center From an Urban Future report showing sharp decline in funding (coinciding with plans to sell off/"leverage" libraries) against escalating use.  

In 2009 a lot of librarians were being fired, shifted to different positions and NYPL librarians were being being asked to sign “nondisparagement agreements” to silence them when real estate deals get announced.  Also in 2009, the BPL adopted a late in the game "Community Needs Assessment" blessing its library sales and offering the principle that the Brooklyn Public Library should as one of is objectives be engaged in "support for economic development."

When Linda Johnson arrives to head the BPL in 2010 she speaks to the BPL board about how the strategic plan converting libraries into real estate deals is her priority.

Locking in aspects of its Central Library Plan, the NYPL proceeds in 2011 and 2012 to sell its book-storing Annex between 10th and 11th avenues and part of SIBL.  Also in 2011 Linda Johnson reminds the BPL board that their goal is to advance so far into the "real estate plan" that it will be deep in progress "when a new Mayor takes office . .  he or she will not derail it."  . .

. .  Also in 2011, Ms. Johnson tells the BPL trustees that Booz & Co. has been hired because of their "extensive experience with libraries" and would be involved with the right-sizing of the libraries.  This involves Bloomberg's First Deputy Mayor (and a meeting at Gracie mansion) overseeing the use of Booz & Co.to make coordinated changes for all three of the city library systems, BPL, NYPL and Queens. 

The July 4th weekend of the summer of 2012 is when the air conditioning in the Brooklyn Heights Library `broke down` along with other air conditioning systems of libraries across the BPL system- This was just before library sales were to be announced.  The Heights air conditioning "break down" like other air conditioning "break downs" at other libraries will be cited six months later as a reason to sell the library.

As another parting 2012 gift, 2012 is also the year that the Bloomberg administration set up the library-shrinking Spaceworks corporation.

January 2013 is when the overall assault on the libraries becomes clear with new Brooklyn library sale plans coming to light as the Bloomberg administration hopes to ram them through or lock those sales through, together with the NYPL Central Library Plan, before leaving office at the end of the calendar 2013.  That's when Citizens Defending Libraries is formed to counter the plans.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

Why Turning Libraries Into Real Estate Deals Isn't The Good Deal Library and City Development Officials Describe

At first blush, many people have accepted what city development and library officials have regularly asserted about the deals launching this city-wide program of converting libraries into real estate deals (or, similarly, "redeveloping" our schools for that matter), that by "unlocking" library real estate development rights with multi-use developments it is a "win-win" proposition that benefits the libraries as well as the developers and real estate industry.

The offer of a free lunch is a tempting thing to hope for, but it doesn't bear scrutiny.  The math, when you do it, simply doesn't work out: It is expensive to tear down existing, frequently recently renovated libraries that the public has already invested substantially in.  When these development ideas are promoted the math goes from initial wishful fantasies, to deliberately obfuscated lack of transparency, to outright mendacious misrepresentation.  If library officials had insisted that the Donnell Library or the Brooklyn Heights Library be fully and completely replaced when they were sold (irrespective or their spaces being shoved underground), the sales would have to be calculated showing deep and obviously absurd public losses. . .

There is also the disruption that affects the public. And, although library and city officials try to skip over the point, when library assets are being divested, the libraries are, in the process, shedding their opportunities for future expansion and to keep pace as the city grows.

Moreover and probably most important, such multi-use development schemes force the libraries to "partner" with powerful private real estate interests that ultimately wind up in the drivers seat, setting the priorities with big checkbooks that bankroll false and misleading PR.  With the moneyed interests throwing their weight around, the public is exposed to bait-and-switch variations.  The Donnell Library sale deal that was described to the press and public when it was announced in no way resembled the deal that was consummated.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

Selling Libraries And The Broader Issue of Private Sector Plunder of Public Property

Libraries are not our only public commons that are undemocratically under attack.  The attacks on libraries reflect a much wider scourge of plundering our public assets with the selling off and privatizing of schools, hospitals, public housing, parks, and even the privatization of our streets and sidewalks.  Accordingly, instead of just fighting the library fight, Citizens Defending Libraries (and you can join us) has reached out to other activists to hold a series of forums on the selling off of public assets and help engender and understanding of the commonalty of the threats and tactics an subterfuges we see.  For instance, as Noam Chomsky has explained one such "standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.". .  (In other words, when the door is open to privatization and sell-off there is an inducement to underfund.)  And then, with the transfer to private ownership, the result for public gets even worse.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

The Biggest Lies To Watch Out For When Officials Sell Libraries

Some of The Biggest Lies To Watch Out For 

City and library officials working with real estate developers trot out a standard set of misleading falsehoods and ploys to promote library sales.  If you think they sound good, watch out, often what they are saying is pretty much opposite to the real truth.

Here are lies to watch out for:

Lies about proper public process.  What political officials will try to tell you about how libraries are being sold off with the due process of adequate public input and participation is often not true.

On September 30, 2013, the New York City Council had its first ever hearing hearing about the plans to sell city libraries.  It involved all sorts of coordinated testimony about how good it was to sell and shrink libraries around the city like Mid-Manhattan, SIBL and Brooklyn Heights.  It was basically a defensive action responding to the public efforts Citizens Defending Libraries was helping to spearhead after CDL's creation.  It was also a reaction to a June 27, 2013 New York State Assembly hearing about the library sales where the public had turned out universally opposing the library sales and library officials were crucified in the press for their incompetent responses.

At the September 30, 2013, City Council hearing BPL President Linda Johnson extolled the quality of `public involvement' in the sell-off of the Brooklyn Heights Library in response to a softball question that sounded prearranged.  Prepared for this, Citizens Defending Libraries was simultaneously submitting written testimony at the hearing directly contradicting that assertion in Ms. Johnson's testimony, pointing out that the:

public process for selling off New York City libraries, such as it exists, is confusing, deceptive and intentionally frustrating to those wishing to, in any way oppose, or question the wisdom of, selling off libraries, shrinking them, or underfunding them as a prelude to such sell-offs.

Pending library sales, frequently worked on secretly for years in advance, are not announced to the public until the sales are purportedly “done deals.”  The public will often be told to forget about expressing their opposition because of this.  Local officials will have signed on to the sales before the public knows or has been able to give them any input or reaction.

Officials will hold some public events as eyewash, but these eyewash events will not be about asking the public whether they want their library sold, whether they want it shrunk, whether they might actually want their library bigger, or how else they might want to plan for the future of the public property; the public will only be invited to express what they might want when their library is, in fact, sold and shrunk, its books eliminated.  Meanwhile, basic background information, like about the extent of the loss of books will not be forthcoming.

If there is going to be a ULURP process (not always the case because it is not always required), the public will be told to cool their heals and wait to express opposition to the project only when that ULURP process has all been rigged.  The ULURP process (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) won't be launched or proceed to its next steps until the powers that control things have lined up the votes in advance to push the library sale through.

How rigged is this process?:  In the case of the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, when passionate and essentially unanimous testimony from the community opposing the sale overwhelmed the Brooklyn Community Board 2 land use Committee causing the committee to falter and vote that that the sale should not be approved and should not be considered again, the Chair of CB2 directed that approval of the proposed sale and shrinkage of the library be sent back to the committee on short notice over a Fourth of July weekend directing that "When this committee meets next it will be to do what they were supposed to. .  What should have taken place, what should have taken place at last Wednesday’s meeting."  The Land Use Committee then met again, comprised of a different set of members and voted for the sale while refusing to hear any public testimony.

The sale procedure progressed to be approved by the entire CB2 board to whom the CB2 Chair had refused to distribute the Citizens Defending Libraries letter addressed to them and which voted, for the most part without its members bothering to minimally acquaint themselves with the asset they were disposing.

Similarly, when the Brooklyn Heights Library then went before the City Planning Commission a panoply of conflicts of interest affecting the Commission whose members are heavily representative of the real estate industry interest, assured that the vote would be to sell and shrink the library as the Commission's Chair indicated a willingness to do the same sort of thing to turn NYC public schools into real estate deals.

The lie that the public should wait to oppose sale of libraries because it will have that opportunity at a later date (when the rigged "done deal" ULURP review process starts).   
The public is often told that there will be a process in which the public can oppose the sale of the library in the future so it is not appropriate or worthwhile to oppose that sale at this time.  The truth is that these deals are clearly presented for final steps like ULURP only after officials have done everything they can to assure that what the public may say during the process doesn't matter.

Lies that new "replacement" libraries will be as big or even bigger than the old.  Library officials routinely try to obscure the math of library shrinkage by odd and selective approaches to measurement concluding that because the new space will be "bigger" in terms of what they want or what is `publicly accessible' and therefore pronounce as being "bigger" replacement libraries that are actually smaller, sometimes startlingly so.  The NYPL's Central Library Plan was promoted as making a "bigger" library when it was actually taking about 400,000 square feet of library space and reducing it to about 80,000 square feet.  By disregarding that its Business, Career and Education functions were being terminated at the location, the BPL tried to sell the shrink-and-sink replacement Brooklyn Heights Library, one-third the size was, as being as big as the 63,000 square foot library being destroyed.

The above-ground portion of the Brooklyn Heights Library was about 38,000 square feet.  It had two more half floors of readily accessible books below ground.  The above-ground portion of the library to "replace" it will be just 15,000 square feet.

The lie that the library is too dilapidated will be too expensive and impossible to fix (especially its air conditioning).   The decision to sell the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Heights Library, was from all the evidence, probably made in 2007 (if not sooner.)  The announcement that it was going to be sold was kept under wraps and the sale did not get revealed until the beginning of 2013 when the plans was to push the sale through before December 31, 2013, the last day of the Bloomberg administration.   July Fourth weekend 2012, just six-months before the announced sale of the library it was announced that the air conditioning system for the library had broken down.  Library officials at the BPL then said a major reason the library was being sold was because the air conditioning could not be fixed.  That same summer of 2012 it was announced that libraries across the Brooklyn Public Library system were suffering from air conditioning problems that could not be solved.  The only library pushed for that no such broken air conditioning claim was made about is the ultra modern SIBL, completed in 1996.

Virtually every library that city and library administration officials have pushed forward for sale has been asserted to have insoluble air conditioning problems: The Donnell, Brooklyn Heights, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Mid-Manhattan, the research stacks at the 42nd Street Library.  Over and over again and right from the beginning we see libraries that were recently renovated proclaimed to be dilapidated and not worthy of maintenance.  These lies can be embarrassing: There were made about the Brooklyn Heights Library expanded and fully upgraded to be one of BPL's best in 1993; about SIBL, the "library of the future" built in 1996; about the Inwood Library who renovation NYPL President Tony Marx had just recently praised. 

The "there will be the same number of books" lie.  For more about how this isn't true see our section about how book counts are reducing at New York City libraries.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)