For 28 years Marsha Huddleston was a librarian in the children’s division of the downtown public library. According to her colleagues, she helped build the collection and knew it as well as, if not better than, anyone else in the system.
Many observers outside the system have lauded Dempsey’s efforts. Her program “One Book, One Chicago”–which encourages residents across the city to read and discuss such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird and My Antonia–has been imitated in several other cities. And largely because of her efforts, Library Journal, a national trade publication, named Daley “politician of the year” in 1997. “No American political leader more thoroughly reflects the effective use of the political process to build a strong library system and service than [Mayor Daley] of Chicago,” the magazine stated in announcing the award.
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A random survey showed a surprising lack of depth in the liberal arts collections. The library has, for instance, five copies of Charles Beard’s classic study An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, but it doesn’t have any copies of We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, Forrest McDonald’s neoconservative critique of Beard’s analysis. In other words, any student hoping to research the most basic college term paper on the Constitution would be out of luck.
Williams suspects Dempsey is using the budget crisis as an excuse to punish outspoken employees by transferring them. He’s been a vocal critic of her book-buying policies, and he’s part of a dissident slate that’s challenging the leaders of the library employees’ union in a November 22 election. The president of the union, Evelyn Stewart, happens to be the head of the Coleman branch.
Huddleston says the librarian who replaced her lives on the southwest side and had been working at the Mount Greenwood branch. “Now let’s follow the logic,” she says. “They were taking a woman who lives on the northwest side and sending her to the southwest side, while taking a woman who lives on the southwest side and sending her downtown. I can only think they wanted to force me to retire. If that’s so, they got what they wanted.”
But reference librarians say service is bound to suffer. “They’re asking fewer librarians to do more work,” says Dickman. “In my old department there were 19 librarians. Now there are 11. As it was, we often had people lined up waiting for help–and that was before the cuts. They claim service won’t change. That’s simply impossible.” (The librarians plan to protest at the library board’s November 19 meeting, at 10 AM at the Harold Washington; the meeting is open to the public.)
