Patience and fortitude

Scott Sherman's passionate interview on Fresh Air compelled me to pick up this book; for that reason alone, I encourage readers to listen to the interview as a companion piece. I've been interested in the history of both libraries and books for years, so the history of the New York Public Library (currently the fourth largest library in the world) and the recent rollercoaster ride to change the main branch on 42nd street were not a tough sell.

As the CFO of one of the smallest colleges in the U.S., I was particularly interested in the financial ups and mostly downs of the NYPL since its founding, but was still impressed that the library functioned with a relatively small endowment given its size and complexity. The balancing act of selling off or holding valuable assets while maintaining (never mind improving) services can be tremendously difficult and may seem barbaric to outsiders. Perhaps, the “small” endowment is one of the things that crippled the library system, although it isn't clear that there were opportunities to significantly increase it during the first 50 years of so of operation, which would theoretically have created a massive endowment today.

However, the NYPL's managment made a number of clear missteps with the plan to “democratize” the main branch by moving it's over 3 million item collection to Princeton, blowing over $18 million in the process. Having experienced both the lack of quality consultancy and bloated price tag of McKinsey and Booz Allen during my corporate days, as well as having worked in companies where upper management was paid tremendous salaries and lower levels were told to watch out with buying office supplies, I felt nearly nauseous to hear the NYPL follow that path as one of the great research libraries. Also, the inability to either monetize assets like the custodian's apartments in several of the branch libraries or use them for public good made no sense.

The struggle between going digital and maintaining physical inventory was also interesting. Disclaimer: for over 15 years, I worked at three separate educational publishing companies, so this paragraph contains strong, personal opinions. In 1999, a consultant expensively claimed that 2000 would be the year of the eBook! It wasn't. The last company I worked for insisted that digital was a superior learning method (vs. standard textbooks and classrooms), but efficacy studies have not proven that argument (some studies provided evidence to the contrary!). Particularly for reference books, digitizing is rather dangerous. How long will that file be accessible and by whom given the proliferation of eReaders? Will the physical copy of the material be maintained in the event that the digital file is lost, corrupted, or inaccessible? Frankly, eReaders are not democratic and don't provide those at the lowest income levels of our society with resources. Publishers generally believe there is more money to be made with eBook subscriptions on their device than with print texts.

Although the book would be even more interesting if we could hear directly from the NYPL's board and executive staff, the author tries to present their point of view with excerpts from public meetings and interviews, although there is clear bias in that presentation. He makes it clear that he was not granted interviews or provided information under the Freedom of Information Act, so at least, attempts were made. Also, I would have enjoyed a few diagrams of the NYPL's interior to show the how the stacks were integral support to the Rose Reading Room, as well as pictures of the key players. Overall, the book was well-written and I look forward to more from Mr. Sherman.