Los Angeles Public Library

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Los Angeles Public Library

This library serves the city of Los Angeles. For the library serving the county, see County of Los Angeles Public Library
County of Los Angeles Public Library

The County of Los Angeles Public Library system serves residents living in 51 of the 88 incorporation cities of Los Angeles County, California....
.

The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) system serves the residents of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is the largest city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles is rated as a beta global city, has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California....
, California

California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
, United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
. With over 6 million volumes, LAPL is one of the largest publicly funded library

Public library

A public library is a library which is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and may be operated by Civil services....
systems in the world. The system is overseen by a Board of Library Commissioners with five members appointed by the mayor.

Circulating books, periodicals, computer access and audio visual materials are available to patrons.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Los Angeles Public Library'

Start a new discussion about 'Los Angeles Public Library'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) system serves the residents of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

California

United States

Public library

Library

A library is a collection of information, sources, resources, books, and services, and the structure in which it is housed: it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual....
's Rare Books Department is located in its downtown Los Angeles location. There is also an extensive selection of databases covering a wide variety of topics, many of which are available to remote users who hold an LAPL library card. Examples include full-text databases of periodicals, business directories, and language learning tools. Despite the development of accessible databases and public access to the Internet, LAPL's Central Library remains an important research library.

The library has an extensive collection of historic photographs from a variety of sources, including the former Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published Monday through Friday in the afternoon, and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays....
newspaper, as well as collections from noted local photographers. The Shades of L.A. Collection is an archive of over 10,000 images from family photo albums collected in recent years that shows the diverse history of the area.

Aggressive expansion and growth of the system began in the 1920s. Under Library Board of Commissioners Chairman Orra E. Monnette

Orra E. Monnette

Orra Eugene Monnette was an attorney, author and banker. Monnette was also the Founder of the Bank of America, L.A., but his contribution to the organization is often overlooked in its corporate history....
, the system gained the support of Los Angeles citizens and began building a network of modern branch libraries to keep pace with Los Angeles' growth as a city.

Central Library

The Richard Riordan
Richard Riordan

Richard J. Riordan is a Republican Party politician from California, United States who served as the California Secretary of Education from 2003–2005 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993–2001....
Central Library, originally constructed in 1926, is a downtown Los Angeles

Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolis area....
landmark. It is the third largest public library in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
in terms of book and periodical holdings. Originally simply the Central Library, the building was renamed in honor of the longtime president of the Board of Library Commissioners and President of the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private university, nonsectarian, research university located in the University Park, Los Angeles, California neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, California, United States....
, Rufus B. von KleinSmid

Rufus B. von KleinSmid

Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid was the Fifth President of the University of Southern California .Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid became USC's fifth president in 1921....
. The building was subsequently renamed in 2001 after Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan

Richard Riordan

Richard J. Riordan is a Republican Party politician from California, United States who served as the California Secretary of Education from 2003–2005 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993–2001....
.

Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue designed the original Los Angeles Central Library to mimic the architecture

Architecture

The term architecture can refer to a process, a profession or documentation.As a process, architecture is the activity of designing and construction buildings and other physical structures by a person or a computer, primarily to provide shelter....
of ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
. The central tower is topped with a tiled mosaic pyramid

Pyramid

A pyramid is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of pyramids are usually quadrilateral or trilateral , meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces....
with sun

Sun

The Sun , a G V star, is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 98.6% of the Solar System's mass....
s on either side with a hand holding a torch representing the "Light of Learning" at the apex. Other elements include sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology....
es, snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate legless carnivore reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears....
s, and celestial mosaics. It has similarities to the Nebraska State Capitol

Nebraska State Capitol

The Nebraska State Capitol, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the capitol and seat of the Nebraska Legislature and houses other offices of the government of the U.S....
in Lincoln, Nebraska

Lincoln, Nebraska

The City of Lincoln is the Capital and the Nebraska#Important cities and towns of the United States U.S. state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County, Nebraska and the home of the University of Nebraska....
, also designed by Goodhue and which also featured sculpture by the architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie

Lee Lawrie

Lee Oscar Lawrie was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II....
.

Some of the more notable collections included the Science and Technology Library in a special alcove above the general Science Department which included a complete collection of all Patent and Trademark Office

United States Patent and Trademark Office

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification....
(PTO) publications including the complete Patent Gazette and Trademark Gazette issues from the opening of the PTO. It also included a complete set of the entire registration books published by the Copyright Office

United States Copyright Office

The United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress, is the official U.S. government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States....
starting from Volume 1. These collections were restored when the Central Library reopened.

It was extensively renovated and expanded in a "Modernist/Beaux Arts style" (according to the principal architect of the renovation Norman Pfeiffer) from 1988 through 1993, including an enormous, eight-story atrium dedicated to former mayor Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley (politician)

Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was a five-term mayor of Los Angeles, California, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles....
. The interior of the library is decorated with various figures, statues, chandeliers, and grilles, notably a four-part mural

Mural

A mural is a painting on a wall, ceiling, or other large permanent surface....
by illustrator Dean Cornwell

Dean Cornwell

Dean Cornwell was an United States illustrator and mural. His oil paintings were frequently featured in popular magazines and books as literary illustrations, advertisements, and posters promoting the World War II....
depicting stages of the history of California

History of California

The History of California is divided into the following articles....
.

The building's limited access had caused a number of problems. Generally, the accessible public stacks in the reading rooms only displayed about 10-20% of the actual collections of the Central Library. For anything else, a patron had to submit a request slip and a clerk would retrieve the desired material from the internal stacks. Internal stacks were packed very tightly and had very little headroom. For example, while the normal reading rooms had ceilings of anywhere from ten to fifteen feet, the internal stack areas were many shelves of about six-foot height, stacked internally, so that while the public access area was about two floors plus the Science and Technology alcove, the internal stacks were approximately five or six floors. To fix this would have required substantial renovation, a cost the city was not willing to cover, especially after hours of operation were cut in response to the 1978 property tax reduction measure Proposition 13

California Proposition 13 (1978)

Proposition 13, officially titled the "People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation," was a ballot initiative to amend the constitution of the state of California....
.

The catalyst for the renovation was the devastating arson

Arson

Arson is the crime of deliberately and maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires caused by lightning for example....
fire

Fire

Fire is the oxidation of a combustion material releasing heat, light, and various Chemical reaction products such as carbon dioxide and water....
of April 29, 1986. Although the building was safely evacuated, its vintage construction precluded the ventilation of heat and smoke, and limited firefighter

Firefighter

Firefighters are rescuers extensively trained primarily to put out hazardous fires that threaten civilian populations and property, to rescue people from car accidents, collapsed and burning buildings and other such situations....
access. Some 400,000 volumes—20 percent of the library's holdings—were destroyed, with significant water and smoke damage done to the surviving works. A second fire on September 3 of the same year destroyed the contents of the Music Department Reading Room.

Ironically the Soviet Union gave extensive media coverage of the April 29 arson fire, in comparison to almost no coverage of the explosion and fire

Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale....
three days earlier at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power power plant near the city of Prypiat, Ukraine, 18 km northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 km from the border of Ukraine and Belarus, and about 110 km north of Kiev....
.

As part of the rehabilitation plan, the LAPL sold its air rights

Air rights

Air rights are a type of development right in real estate, referring to the empty space above a property. Generally speaking, owning or renting land or a building gives one the right to use and develop the air rights....
to developers, enabling the construction of the eponymous Library Tower (later renamed the U.S. Bank Tower

U.S. Bank Tower

The US Bank Tower, formerly the Library Tower and First Interstate World Center, is a skyscraper located at 633 West Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles Los Angeles....
as well as an earlier period when the building was called the First Interstate World Center) skyscraper

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition nor height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper....
across the street.

The Library's renovation was completed in 1993. The Central Library reopened on October 3, 1993.

Gallery of the Central Library

Branches

Besides the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, the system also operates 71 branch locations in the city's many neighborhoods

List of districts and neighborhoods of Los Angeles

This is a list of the districts and neighborhoods of the city of Los Angeles. The districts are organized by region....
:

The Cahuenga Branch

Cahuenga Branch

Cahuenga Branch is the third oldest branch library in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Located on Santa Monica Boulevard in the East Hollywood, Los Angeles, California section of Los Angeles, California, it was built in 1916 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie....
, Lincoln Heights Branch

Lincoln Heights Branch

Lincoln Heights Branch, now known as the "Biblioteca del Pueblo de Lincoln Heights", is the second oldest branch library in the Los Angeles Public Library system....
and Vermont Square Branch

Vermont Square Branch

Vermont Square Branch is the oldest branch library in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Located about a mile southwest of the University of Southern California campus, it was built in 1913 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie....
are the three remaining Carnegie libraries in the Los Angeles Public Library System. Six were originally built and three acquired through annexation, but six have been demolished.

External links

Chuck, Lysbeth. "," Information Outlook, Vol. 6, No. 2, February 2002 (published by the Special Libraries Association)
Fodors.com:

Los Angeles Public Library

Central Library

Gallery of the Central Library

Branches

See also

External links