Background[]
Also known as Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Call to meeting in November 2010 about a rehab of the South Side branch.
Insights[]
- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh,PA,USA
- On Sunday June 8, 2008 from 12-5PM, CLP- Main and Schenley Plaza in Oakland will be abuzz with the excitement as children, teens and adults kick off summer.
Details[]
Open Meetings in 2009[]
Meeting to decide fate of library branches not open to the public[]
- By Bill Zlatos, TRIBUNE-REVIEW Monday, December 7, 2009
Since October 2009, when the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh announced plans to close, merge or move seven branches, Gloria Forouzan has been to more meetings than she can count.
She plans to attend a community forum Dec. 14, 2009, and said she would attend a board meeting of the Carnegie Library immediately afterward if she were allowed.
The library board will decide at that meeting whether to delay closing branches in Lawrenceville, Beechview, Hazelwood and the West End, merging the Carrick and Knoxville branches and moving the Mt. Washington library from Grandview Avenue to Virginia Avenue.
"We believe the public should be at this meeting," said Forouzan, 55, of Lawrenceville. "Having this little forum before the meeting is like putting us at the kids' table at Thanksgiving."
The Carnegie Library is one of the few systems in the area that closes its meetings and refuses to release agendas or minutes. It's a circumstance, Carnegie officials say, related to its creation in 1895.
"We are certainly organized differently than a lot of other public libraries," said Barbara K. Mistick, president and director of the Carnegie Library.
Unlike many libraries, the Carnegie Library is a nonprofit group, not a unit of government even though its gets nearly 93 percent of its money from taxpayers.
Library systems in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Philadelphia are government-related, and their board meetings are open.
"Not only are they open to the public, but they're accessible online," said Amy Banister, spokeswoman for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. It is a quasi-governmental agency totally dependent on state funds. It is seeking passage of a 1-mill levy that would generate about $20 million a year.
In contrast, the Cleveland Public Library is a unit of the school district.
"I don't know another nonprofit organization that has one-third of its board public trustees," Mistick said.
Nonprofit groups such as the Carnegie Library do not have to conduct open meetings. But the Carnegie's suburban counterpart, the Allegheny County Library Association, is a nonprofit group whose board has policies that require its meetings and records to be open, except for a narrow list of exceptions, such as the purchase of land or personnel matters.
Mistick said that changing the library's structure to open its meetings may have unwanted consequences. She cited fundraising as an example because donors could not deduct contributions to government.
"You can't place an unfair burden to operate our system that's different from our legal structure," she said. "You have to balance the public's interest with a need to operate efficiently and effectively."
But public libraries in other cities such as Cincinnati have created nonprofit groups as their fundraising arms. That allows the library to open its meetings while donors can get tax deductions. Mistick said the library system in Seattle even switched from a Carnegie library to part of city government.
Asked if the Carnegie Library is considering opening up its meetings and records, Mistick responded, "My focus is trying to keep the neighborhood branches open."
Forouzan said the debate about closing her neighborhood library has revived its Friends of the Library branch, a civic support group. If the Carnegie Library's board meetings were open, she said, her group probably would designate a member to attend the meetings.
"Rather than say they can't do it," she said, "it's better said they haven't looked into how to do it."