Today, millions of Angelenos use the Central Library downtown (which turns 100 this year) and over 70 branch locations to access the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of over 8 million books.
But this juggernaut wasn’t created overnight. What started with just 750 books in 1872 was transformed in part because of city librarian Everett Perry, a visionary who wanted books to be easy to access. Here’s a look at how his influence can still be felt today.
A library in disarray
Perry got the job as top librarian in L.A. after working at the New York Public Library, which opened a main building during his tenure. He was accustomed to growth.
But when he arrived in 1911, the Los Angeles Public Library was struggling. With no permanent location, it had moved several times into different rented spaces, the most recent being in the Hamburger's Department Store, where patrons had to ride an elevator to check out books in between women’s clothes and furniture.
Perry aired his grievances in a 1912 library report.
“The modern library aims to be a vital force in a community,” he wrote. “It can not perform this function, if its usefulness is limited by an inaccessible location.”
This is an early look into his ethos as librarian. Perry was part of a progressive crop of librarians, whose ideas were shifting about how books should be stored and used by the public.
His goal was to create a library system focused on great service and that rivaled the very best on the East Coast. With others, he pushed for a central library to be built, funded by a $2 million bond measure. Voters passed that in the 1920s, which led to the creation of the impressive Art Deco building that still stands downtown.
But what was perhaps even more impressive was how he infused the building with novel ideas about how to make reading more accessible.
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One key example was his decision to set up subject departments. For decades prior, libraries stored books on fixed shelves (these couldn’t be adjusted), so they were usually sorted by size or acquisition date. Libraries had only recently moved to the not-very-user-friendly Dewey decimal system.
By grouping books under subjects, Perry made it much easier for people to find what they wanted. His idea was so successful that it eventually spread to other libraries across the country.
Another innovation was where you could read the books. Perry put the circulation and card catalog area in the center of the floor, which was surrounded by book stacks and reading rooms along the edges. That meant they were next to the windows and full of natural light, which according to LAPL, wasn’t customary at the time.
Building a teaching program
Perry earned a reputation as a fair, iron-fist leader who wanted top-notch library practices.
He issued a rulebook for staff that covered everything from the janitor’s responsibility to make brooms last longer to requiring librarians to go with patrons to find books.
But Perry’s legacy also includes the next generation of librarians. In 1914, he revamped an aging LAPL librarian training program into a full-fledged, accredited library school that was known as the best in California.
He aimed to professionalize librarianship by encouraging men to apply (it had commonly been women), urging all applicants to have at least some college-level education, and creating a formal internship program. The program covered technical librarian skills, as well new coursework that compared how other libraries functioned across the country.
Perry served for over two decades until his death in 1933.
His achievements were numerous. Aside from getting the Central Library built, he grew the staff from 98 to 600, helped the 200,000-book collection balloon to 1.5 million, and added dozens of more branch libraries.
In 2018 he was inducted into the California Library Hall of Fame.
