"Libraries," reads the sign posted in the lobby of the E.P. Foster Library "have been and are the information superhighway."
But another sign posted on its entrance tells a different story. It informs patrons that this branch of the Ventura County Library is closed four days a week.
The irony is not lost on county Library Director Dixie Adeniran. While the demand for more and better information services is on the rise, she said, the revenues needed to pay for costly new books, CDs, videos and computer-access services are quickly diminishing.
During the last two years, Ventura County's 16 libraries have lost one-third of their funding and two-fifths of their staff. Library hours have been cut in half.
Faced with yet another fiscal crisis this year, the County Board of Supervisors once again came to the rescue, agreeing to hand over $820,000 from the general fund to spare the county library system further cutbacks.
But the bailout is only a temporary reprieve, Adeniran said. The county must come up with new ways to generate revenues, or risk losing its library services altogether.
"We need more money," Adeniran said. "Continuing along as we currently are is running a library system that is dying a not very slow death."
Indeed, more than half of the county's libraries, which serve a population of 419,150 in and around seven of the county's 10 cities, are open less than 20 hours a week. Patrons must memorize odd schedules to figure out when they can check out a book or browse through periodicals.
"I think it's awful," said Maryeanes Garven, 72, a library patron in Ventura. "I mean if people can't get into libraries, gee whiz. . . ."
Garven was one of about two dozen people on a recent afternoon waiting outside for the Foster library to open. One of the main reasons why people go to the library, she said, is economics.
"You see all these people standing out here waiting to get in," she said. "Not everyone can afford all the books you should have, like atlases and encyclopedias and things. And if you don't have them at home, where are you going to get them?"
Garven herself said she visits the library once a week to check out the latest bestsellers, which might otherwise cost her $20 to $25 apiece.
"I get five or six books at a time because I read real fast," she said. "I don't know what I'd do without the library."
Laura Fobes, 67, another longtime patron, said libraries are a low-cost form of recreation for young and old alike.
"Libraries are very important for young people," she said. "It gives them something else to think about. If libraries were open at night, it would give them a safe place to go and learn something."
E.P. Foster's limited hours typify the cutbacks that have taken place at county libraries. Last year, its weekly hours were slashed from 61 to 16. Its staff of 22 full-time employees was reduced to nine, who split their time with the neighboring H.P. Wright Library.
"The public is frustrated and angry" because of the drop in service, said Joel Goldberg, senior librarian at E.P. Foster. "People used to be able to renew books over the phone. But now we can't even do that because it takes too much time."
E.P. Foster is important to the county library system because it's the county's main reference library, housing the system's best nonfiction collections. It includes special business books, self-help law books, specialized periodicals and even a genealogy section for tracing family histories.
Also, the library recently became the first in the county system to offer patrons the chance to use the Internet computer network. Among other things, the worldwide computer network allows users to access library catalogues at the University of California, call up sports team schedules or check out National Weather Service forecasts.
"I think this increases the importance of public libraries," Adeniran said of the new electronic information service, which will soon be expanded to other libraries. "If you don't have a personal computer at home or at school that will offer you this kind of access, this may be your only on-ramp to the information superhighway."
But information costs money and the overriding question is how much are residents willing to pay for this public service. Libraries after all, county officials said, do not generate their own revenue. And traditional bake sales or used-book sales are not enough to replace the millions of dollars in public money that has been lost.
Moreover, funding for libraries is expected to become more scarce as government officials devote more money to bolstering law enforcement and public safety. All rely heavily on property tax revenues for their budgets.
"It's a huge, huge problem," said county Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, who strongly supported library funding during budget sessions this summer. "It's just another example of the problem of how we allocate revenues in this state."
