SF Main Library Removes Newspaper Shelves

The San Francisco Public Library is looking for a new space to house the Bay Area Reporter and other community publications after shelves near the main library's Fulton Street entrance were recently removed. Heads of some newspapers are unhappy.

The publications "weren't doing what the publishers and the organizations expected, and by that I mean they were being dropped off in the morning before we opened and left out in the rain," or "people would come in and grab some to sit on," and the area could get messy, Karen Strauss, chief of the main library, said.

The spot "was very much not mediated by the library," Strauss, a lesbian, said. "This was a space where people could come in and put a stack of fliers one month" and then "not do it again," she said. "It wasn't something the library even tracked." She added that the use of the shelves "has really diminished over time."

The shelves were taken down at the beginning of December. It could take months for a new spot to be selected.

Strauss said, "We're looking inside the library for a location that will be an improvement" for the communities the publishers are targeting.

"We're doing a fair amount of construction" in the library, she said, and "we're looking at a couple possibilities, so we'll be working on those over the next several months."

Strauss said the publications have been placed in sections of the library that match their subject matter. The B.A.R. is now available near the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center on the third floor.

According to B.A.R. publisher Mike Yamashita, the shelves, which had been in place for several years, had been just inside the library's Fulton Street entrance. There was never any written policy concerning the shelves, but the move caught Yamashita and others off guard.

"They were there one day and gone the next," he said.

But in an email, Strauss said a flier had been posted that said, "On Friday, December 5, these shelves will be removed and will not be replaced. All remaining fliers and pamphlets will be recycled. Please keep this area clear in order to provide a welcoming entrance to the main library."

Asked why the library didn't move the newspapers to a new space and then take down the existing shelves, with a sign pointing people to the new spot, Strauss said, "That's a fair question. That was never an ideal space to begin with, and it really had gotten to the point where we felt like it was time to address it."

Strauss estimated there had been "half a dozen" papers on the shelves. Besides newspapers, there had also been advertisements and magazines in the spot.

She wasn't sure of all the papers that were there, but said, "It was not a consistent set of publications."

Geoff Link, executive director of the San Francisco Study Center, which publishes the Central City Extra, was also unhappy about the shelves being taken out. The paper covers the Tenderloin and nearby areas.

"The main library is also the Tenderloin library, and we depend on being able to leave our papers there," Link said in an email to Strauss and others that was copied to the B.A.R. "It's the biggest drop point for the Extra , and up to 800 people monthly depend on finding it there. How can the library unilaterally decide to end its decades-long role as a dependable place to find information about all of the city's neighborhoods in one spot? It feels like a form of censorship and if that goes too far, it certainly is an abdication of the library's traditional role as a communication center for community news."

Strauss said the shelves are "completely unrelated" to the archives of the papers the library keeps, including the B.A.R. , and those archives are still available.