"Winter of my Discontent" Hits Home

Hometown of Steinbeck Is Closing Its Libraries

SALINAS, Calif., Dec. 27 (AP) - Mary Jean Gamble organized the John Steinbeck historical archives and supervised the Steinbeck literature collection. After nearly 23 years with the Salinas Public Library, she may know more about "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Cannery Row" than anyone else here in Steinbeck's hometown.

So how does she think he would have reacted to the news that the city is closing its libraries in the spring?

"He'd obviously be upset," Ms. Gamble said. "He knew that literature can lift and elevate the spirit and enable humans to rise above any situation. He probably even read some of the great literature at the Salinas library."

Facing record deficits, the City Council voted on Dec. 14 to shut Salinas's three library branches, including those named for Steinbeck and the labor leader Cesar Chavez. With all three set to close by May or June, Salinas, a blue-collar town of 150,000, could become the most populous American city without a public library.

Steinbeck was born here in 1902. He described the area, nicknamed Salad Bowl to the Nation for the lettuce and broccoli fields nearby, as "pastures of heaven" and immortalized it in his 1952 novel "East of Eden."

But ever since a half-cent sales tax increase to preserve city services was rejected by voters here on Nov. 2, Salinas has drawn the scorn of bibliophiles far and wide. Editorials in newspapers from New Zealand to London have condemned the library closings.

"It's embarrassing, not to mention inconvenient," said Ben Lopez, 69, a Salinas resident since 1945 who visits the Steinbeck branch at least twice a week.

"Where else will I go to check out material, Prunedale?" Mr. Lopez said, referring to a relatively spartan branch of the Monterey County Free Libraries system.

Because of Salinas's large number of poor farmworkers and immigrants, the city's libraries are popular destinations for people seeking citizenship primers, literacy courses, Internet access, after-school programs and tapes teaching English as a second language. Roughly 1,900 people visit on an average day.

But "the reality is that we live in a blue-collar community where people are struggling, and they're afraid of new taxes," Mayor Anna Caballero said. "I don't think they realized the enormity of what we were facing."

Libraries around the country are encountering hard times. According to an April study by the American Library Association, libraries in 41 states absorbed more than $50 million in financing cuts in the last year, and more than 1,100 libraries have reduced operating hours or trimmed their staffs.

Because of cutbacks in state financing combined with Salinas's rapid growth and rising health care costs, the city had to pare $8 million from its budget in the last year and faces an additional $8 million reduction in a $60 million budget for the 2005-6 fiscal year.

Jan Neal, administrative manager at the Steinbeck branch, said the prospect that a white knight would emerge to cover the libraries' annual operating expenses of $3.2 million was remote. And although the libraries have no plans to sell their books, she is pessimistic that they could close and then seamlessly reopen if the economy improved in a year or two.

"Operating a library," Ms. Neal said, "isn't as simple as selling cans of tomato soup at a retail store."

© New York Times