Librarians

When 18-year-old high school graduate Mary Emily Foy became Los Angeles' first female full-time librarian, she saw the public library as more than a warehouse for books. She envisioned a living institution of learning for the entire community, a palace of beauty for a temple of wisdom. Instead, the feisty, outspoken feminist who had a passion for education got three dark rooms over a saloon, on the site where the federal courthouse now stands at Los Angeles and Temple streets.

One group of adults may be wilder about Harry Potter than the millions of young people whose fascination with the aspiring adolescent wizard have made the books a worldwide phenomenon: librarians. Across Southern California, those who love reading couldn't be more delighted by the buzz J.K. Rowling's popular series has generated for literature, especially among children.

With the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, freelance writers have successfully wrestled the New York Times and other publishers to the mat, forcing them either to pay up for past work or to delete it from online archives. But if freelance writers now have powerful publishers in a literary half-Nelson, it is the unassuming news librarians who are taking a chair to the head. Now that the Constitution has been safeguarded and lofty copyright principles upheld anew, the real work begins.

A decade after Los Angeles slashed spending amid a recession, libraries seem to be back at the top of the city's bestseller list. The proposed budget would boost library spending to a record $68 million to help pay for expanded hours and thousands of new books. The city undertook a major construction program, building five libraries and renovating 30 branches.

The sleuth receives the call early in the morning and the search begins. Out of her rustic home nestled in the foothills, she gathers her clues by phone, using anything from a name to a description. Then she narrows her choices of places to look. Will it be that little bookstore in Chatsworth? Or maybe a shopping center in New Jersey? Genevieve Krueger is neither a police officer nor an FBI agent, but she is a detective of sorts: a book detective.

Former congresswoman and one-time presidential candidate Pat Schroeder is hardly a Washington novice, but she took a political drubbing recently from the unlikeliest of foes: a bunch of librarians. Schroeder, who now heads the Assn. of American Publishers, had the temerity to publicly criticize libraries for their stance on copyright laws and for distributing free copies of electronic books and articles that publishers are trying to sell.

A quarter of the more than 2,000 county employees facing layoffs won a reprieve Tuesday when the Board of Supervisors created 500 positions for them in the welfare department. Librarians, museum curators and other employees scheduled to lose their positions in the wake of the county's worst fiscal crisis may instead apply for jobs as eligibility workers and fraud investigators in the Department of Public Social Services.

A special faculty committee, studying charges of bias in the UC Irvine Library, criticized its chief administrator for his alleged "dubious" commitment to affirmative action and poor management in a report issued Friday. The report, prepared after a five-month study, alleged that the head librarian, Dr. Calvin Boyer, neglected to stem discriminatory practices in the library because of his lack of "leadership qualities." The paper further urged Chancellor Jack W.

Occasionally, Dennis Martin used to question his decision to become a librarian. Martin never suffered a full blown crisis of faith: He loved his job. But nearing retirement, the 34-year employee of the Los Angeles County library system could not help taking stock. "I often asked myself, 'Is what I'm doing helpful? Is what I'm doing meaningful?' " he said. In December, Martin got an answer. He was named a winner of a prestigious librarian award.

In the two years since an action figure modeled after Nancy Pearl first went on sale, owners of the 5-inch plastic toy have sent Pearl photographs of the mini-Nancy at the Eiffel Tower, the base camp of Mt. Everest -- even atop a wedding cake. The Pearl figurine outsells models of Da Vinci, Einstein, Freud and Houdini, and currently runs second in sales only to Jesus Christ. Not bad for a librarian.