Camden City Libraries May be Rescued by the County System

August 9, 2010

Within four days of the Camden (N.J.) Free Public Library board voting August 5 to shutter the entire three-branch system and empty the facilities of their collections and equipment by the end of December, Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd announced that she is in talks with the county to have the city libraries absorbed into the county library system. “After learning that the library board’s only solution was to close our libraries, I knew I could not let that happen,” Mayor Redd said at an August 9 press conference, according to a report from KYW News Radio–Camden.

The consolidation is contingent on the approval of the Camden city council and county officials, and does not guarantee that all three branches would survive because “the plan is still being put together,” emphasized Louis Cappelli, director of the Camden County Board of Freeholders, at the press conference. Two days earlier, Cappelli asserted in the Camden Courier-Post, “It’s a top priority for the freeholder board to ensure that the city is not without a library.”

The mayor has also revealed that she is seeking the cooperation of Rutgers University to continue allowing Camden residents campus library access.

CFPL Director Jerome Szpila told American Libraries that “the library board is generally agreeable” to the takeover plan. So is Camden County Library System Director Linda Devlin, who told AL, “The residents of Camden need access to a public library, and we're going to work together to achieve that goal.” However, trustee Frank Fulbrook has taken issue publicly with the proposal, stating at the August 9 press conference, “When the crisis reached a fever pitch, [Mayor Redd] steps in to ‘rescue’ the situation. I think it was all a cynical ploy.” The board’s August 6 closure vote was taken with the understanding that the collection of some 187,000 items would be sold, donated, or destroyed, as would any electronic equipment, because they would constitute a fire hazard if left in empty buildings.

Mayor Redd said in the August 6 Philadelphia Inquirer that she had been negotiating with the county prior to the library board’s vote, and that she had discussed the possibility of a county-library takeover with CFPL board President Martin McKernan in July upon slashing the city library budget to only one-third—or $282,000—of its FY2010 appropriation. “The citizens are first, and the libraries are on the top of the list as we struggle through the budget,” Mayor Redd told the Inquirer, adding that green-lighting a shutdown was “a decision of the library board.” That same day, she told city library officials that another $108,000 could be added to the FY2011 budget, but trustees responded that the $390,000 total would not be enough to keep even one branch open full-time.

Szpila, who became CFPL director at the end of April, said he’ll know more after city and county officials decide whether  the county will take over Camden’s three city facilities. Should that happen, it would be 6–12 months before all the details were ironed out, including the automation of the city library system, which still uses a card catalog. Meantime, finances are so shaky without the county providing “a cash infusion” that Szpila may have to proceed with plans to shutter CFPL’s smallest branch as of September.

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