Good news for bookworms

Alon Kastiel recently cancelled his cable TV subscription and got a library card. The Tel Aviv real estate entrepreneur did this in protest of the lack of interesting programs, while joining the library was both symbolic and practical. "In Israel, libraries are the closest thing to the experience of purchasing books at stores like Barnes & Noble," he says. "Though there isn't coffee, there's such a huge selection you'll find something that speaks to you."

The almost total cancellation of library membership fees, as part of the amendment to the Public Libraries Law passed in the previous Knesset, has created a rush to the libraries even without a PR campaign. Since then, according to the Israeli Center for Libraries, there has been at least a 20 percent increase in municipal and public library membership.

Time will tell whether the new law will transform the image of the library - from a dusty place of quiet refuge, into a vibrant community center where the holdings are computerized and children and adults alike flock to write papers, study, surf the Internet, and participate in workshops and classes.

The Mediatheque Library in Holon is an example of such a futuristic facility. The Mediatheque Center, a pink building where the library was inaugurated in 2004, houses a children's theater, a cinematheque, the Israeli Design Center and a museum of comics and cartoons. In the municipal library are two expansive floors of books, computers and study stations as well as a music library with discs on loan, whose entrance is decorated with a gigantic poster of the cover of the Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

The Mediatheque may not have the most impressive collection of books - The Beit Ariela Library in Tel Aviv, for example, is superior in certain areas - but it definitely looks terrific and cooperates well with the cultural institutions located nearby in terms of literary theater evenings or encounters with writers. There are also writing workshops given, literature and art groups and even a film group. The children's library is full of the latest computers, spaces for story hour, illustrations from children's books and chairs shaped like hearts and flowers.

According to Toni Dori, director of the library network in Holon, the move from the old building to the new one tripled the number of borrowings from 8,000 per year at the old library to 21,00 at the new one. However, Holon is not a typical example. To a large extent, the way the public and municipal libraries look is dependent on the priorities of the municipality responsible for them and which provides most of their budget. To illustrate this, the building in Holon was part of the effort to brand Holon as "the children's city." The municipality, headed by Motti Sasson, has invested large sums, starting with NIS 100 million to erect the new building and culminating in an annual budget of NIS 11 million for libraries in Holon - of which NIS 10 million is from the municipality.

Victor Ben Naim, in charge of libraries at the Ministry of Culture, believes this isn't a matter of geography. "The gap isn't between the periphery and the center. The library in Ramle is flourishing, while the one in Lod is in the dumps; because in Ramle there is an excellent library director and in Lod they pensioned her off early as part of the recovery plan."

After many decades during which government support for libraries amounted to only 5 percent, at the Ministry of Culture they are hoping for a new day. The amendment passed in 2007 in effect enforces the law passed in 1975, which disallowed the imposition of membership fees at municipal libraries. In the 1970s there were many good intentions behind this law, but not one shekel. Under the auspices of the new amendment, government support is supposed to grow to half of what the municipalities allocate - NIS 85 million out of NIS 170 million.

"The moment the economic value of the libraries is not measured by the number of members and the state is supporting more provisions and allocating more money, [we can] conduct experiments and not be afraid to take risks," explains Alon Sapan, the director general of the Mediatheque.

In the meantime, local authorities must bridge the hole in the budget created by the lack of membership fees, and not all of them are happy about this. Four local authorities are still refusing to cancel their fees, and therefore are not enjoying any government support.

The Shoham council has a month to decide whether they are in or not and Narkis Fine, the council's director general doesn't see many arguments in favor of joining.

"In my opinion the public can't maintain this law, and when I say 'the public' I am referring to the local councils," she says. She claims that the loss the Shoham Council would suffer from canceling the membership fees would amount to about NIS 200,00 annually (accountant Lior Ashkenazi, the financial director of the Israeli Center for Libraries, says it's about half that sum), whereas the most generous offer the council has received from the Culture Ministry thus far stood at about NIS 100,000. Asks Fine: "In an unstable political climate like ours, who is going to guarantee that the next government is also going to support the move and approve the promised budgets?"

"This is a wonderful law, but why apply it to everyone?" she asks. "I have a [new] computerized library - why can't I charge NIS 100 a year for it?" But even Fine knows that if the fees will continue to be charged, she will face inhabitants wondering why they are paying for services other people get for free.

Honoring the arrangement

However, Ashkenazi and Ben Naim are certain that the Finance Ministry will honor the arrangement. "At the outset we demanded more money but we compromised with the Treasury in order to make certain that they support the agreement - so from our perspective the chances are small that the agreement won't be honored. There's no insurance policy in this country, but in the meantime we've received all the allocations we were promised."

"In the beginning, it will be hard for [local authorities]," Ashkenazi says. "Rishon Letzion, for example, lost a tremendous amount of money and the municipality didn't say a word. This is a huge achievement - until now the government had totally ignored the libraries."

The nationwide increase in the number of members is noteworthy, especially because the move has not been publicized, only reported in a number of articles in the local and national press. The fact that the membership never constituted a great expense - NIS 100 to 200 annually at most, and in some places only a few tens of shekels - suggests that the effect has been mostly psychological.

Revital Falka of Tel Aviv, for example, signed up at the Beit Ariela Library only after Tel Aviv cancelled membership fees. "It wasn't a big expenditure in any case," she says, "but it's a matter of principle - culture, art and knowledge should be accessible to the entire public." Falka, an artist who has also worked with the children's library at Beit Ariela, heard about the free membership when the library was still charging a fee, in a conversation with a librarian. The latter encouraged her to write a letter to the municipality and ask that the law be applied in Tel Aviv. Falka did as she recommended and also began a discussion of the issue on TheMarker Cafe Internet site. She compares the free library card in her wallet to the organ donor card.

The dramatic effect of a free library card was felt some time ago in south Tel Aviv, where the municipality canceled the fee back in 2004. The small library at the Beit Danny community center, located in the Hatikvah neighborhood, boasted a sharp increase of about 500 percent, from 187 readers in 2005 to 1,000 at present.

If the Mediatheque is the future of libraries, the Beit Danny library is the past. In the lobby of the community center, elderly women totter toward the senior citizens' club on the second floor as their Filipina caregivers sun themselves outside. In the third-floor library, old steel shelves laden with books covered in clear plastic stand on a gray carpet. Hand-painted signs greet readers and in the corner stands an Israeli flag next to a framed copy of the national anthem. In the reading room a few heavy and outdated computers await users, and at the entrance to it is a bulletin board full of newspaper articles cut out by hand by the energetic librarian, Yael Katan.

"I always say that first of all I'm a mother, a teacher and a social worker and only afterwards a librarian," says Katan. Her job includes advising school children who frequent the center on using the computers. "Ninety-five percent of the inhabitants here don't have a computer," she explains.

Katan holds literary events in accordance with the means at her disposal and the inspiration that comes to her - even though the locals don't tend to come to events that cost money - but no special innovations are expected in the coming year. "In order to make a revolution you need budgets, you need an understanding with the people on top," she shrugs.

At the Beit Ariela Library, despite the wealth of materials there - a music library, a theater library, an extensive press archive, workshops and enrichment classes - wear and tear is becoming evident: On signs in the press archive, for example, a number of letters are missing and the overall appearance is looking a bit outdated.

Nurit Libman, the director of Beit Ariela and the network of municipal libraries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, says that a modest addition of just 10 to 20 percent to the budget for libraries, which amounts to NIS 18 million in Tel Aviv, would enable her to enrich the collections, improve the appearance of the libraries and initiate more digital projects.

A visual "makeover," digitization and even marketing - all are essential in order to help libraries stand up to the spirit of the times. In Europe, the librarians are already fighting back: In Finland, as related in an article published in Haaretz, librarians visit the kindergartens and present extracts from famous books; in Italy, relates Ben Naim, they hand out books at the beach.

In Israel, the vision of a library on the beach is still a long way off. "The librarians are afraid there will be grains of sand in the books. We are less revolutionary," says Ben Naim.

"There have been attempts that weren't so successful, like library [employees] that went out to a mall and tried to sign up readers," recalls Libman. Instead, they go to Rabin Square during Book Week, and at Beit Ariela they even give a pen and a book bag to everyone who joins. "It used to be that we were more into advice and the reading room, but there has been a decline in the use of the reading room because the demands from the education system have declined," Katan says, "but people always love to read books for pleasure and there is awareness of all the best sellers. This is really a fashion."