Our library is Open! Tuesday thru Saturday, 10am to 1pm
News from Leni Matthews, our Branch Manager
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The Piedmont Avenue Library (PAL) patrons can come into the library to browse, get a library card, and out books under Oakland Public Library’s Express service.
At PAL, we are allowing five patrons in at a time for now. The 5-person limit impacts class visits. Teachers are allowed to bring some students for OPL Express, but we are trying to plan something for classrooms after branch hours.
More patrons are coming as they are finding out that libraries are now open to the public. PAL patrons still cannot use the computer, charge phones, mingle and/or sit and read for an hour, but OPL is planning to open all libraries to full operation (pre-pandemic) in the coming months.
And with OPL Express, PAL has self-checkout! We are finding that people really like it. Most are amazed at the fact that you can stack books on the machine to checkout items all at once. Some have shared their concern that the machine may replace jobs, however, we all know that library workers do more than checkout books.
"You can actually come in now!" said one patron. People are glad to be back inside. We are too!
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Paulette Forte welcomes patrons |
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Temperature taken on entry |
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Using the new self-checkout |
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Leni Matthews, Our New Branch Manager |
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Leni’s experience with libraries began when she went with her mother to the library. When she was a young girl in Chicago, libraries required that young patrons knew how to write their names to get a library card. When the librarian discovered Leni didn’t know how to write her name that well, she took her to a table in a quiet corner and practiced with her. Leni’s name was legible, and the librarian gave Leni her first library card. She has been involved with libraries ever since.
Her librarian training began with volunteering at local school libraries, tutoring as “Teacher in the Library,” and participating in internships at Chicago Public Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Argonne National Laboratory -- all in the Chicago area. She attended library school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), but her first full time job as a librarian was in Arlington, Texas as the User Experience Librarian.
When her family relocated to the Bay Area, as a true librarian, she researched Bay Area neighborhoods before making a final decision about where her new home would be.
Leni believes in involving the library with the community and developing supportive relationships between them. She is especially interested in finding gaps in community services and exploring ways the library can fill them.
Be sure to stop and welcome Leni to Piedmont Avenue Library.
By Ruby Long
Ruby is a neighbor whose work has appeared in local and national publications.
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PAL Clean Up Day
Make our library even more welcoming! Please join us for another Library cleanup Saturday, June 5th at 10am. You bring your own gloves and tools (brooms, rakes, dust pans) and we provide the bags to fill.
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Proposed City Budgets for 2021-2023 Contain Positive News for Library Supporters
1) The Mayor's Policy Budget for operations shows Oakland Public Library as maintaining its current budget, with "no anticipated service impacts".
2) There is also $750,000 for a feasibility study for converting the former Piedmont CDC building into a new home for the Piedmont Avenue branch. The budget comes in two separate parts. That money comes from the Draft Capital Improvement Program (in the category of Buildings and Facilities, to be funded from Measure KK infrastructure bonds). This feasibility study is an important first step for the project. It is positive news but does not mean quick action or full funding. The money would not be spent until the 2022-23 Fiscal Year, and there is no identified funding source for the later tasks of preparing plans, permitting and doing the renovation and repair work.
Oakland's City Council will approve a final budget in June. Councilmember Dan Kalb has advocated for the Piedmont Avenue library as one of his budget priorities and Friends of PAL will continue working with him and Library Department staff to support this project. Kalb is holding a virtual Town Hall meeting about the budget with staff from City Finance and Mayor Schaaf on May 20th at 6:00pm. To get the Zoom link to this meeting RSVP here.
Other links: Mayor's Policy Budget; Draft Capital Improvement Program.
By Arleen Feng, member of the Steering Committee of Friends of Piedmont Avenue Library
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Be A Friend Of PAL
Attend our Zoom meeting Tuesday, May 18th at 7pm, all welcome
the zoom link is below
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The Avid Reader by Louis Segal
I’ve been an avid reader since I could read. In high school I used to cut school to read in the Berkeley Public Library. I’m writing this column to share some of the books I love. I hope, perhaps, you might grow to love a few of them.
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Eric Foner is one of the most celebrated historians of our age. He has written prodigiously about the 19th century American history. He’s written histories of Thomas Paine, Nat Turner, Lincoln and Slavery but his life’s work has been devoted to the Reconstruction Era 1860-1880, including the towering, encyclopedic Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 [1988] a book only second to W.E.B. DuBois Black Reconstruction: An essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, [1935] in shedding light on this turning point in American democracy.
Foner’s most recent book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution [2019] is a concise history of the making and implementation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution. Through close textual analysis, Foner makes the compelling argument that these amendments were as fundamental to US constitutional thought as the Bill of Rights. He traces these amendments from their promise and idealism to the disillusionment and cynicism that helped dismantle a profound radical experiment in democracy. Politicians, white terror, recrudescent southern elites, the Supreme Court, the emergence of the Robber Barons, and the rise of corporate ‘personhood,’ to say nothing of our own turn of the century imperial wars, all served to dismantle this promising and redemptive movement. Foner traces the journey of the 14th amendment, designed to amplify citizenhood, protect the civil and political rights of freedmen, and disempower the old slaveocracy to, by the 1880s, a corporate tool to defend corporations from popular controls and expand States Rights. Foner argues that that the 14th and 15th amendments are still tools to help us realize a more democratic less corporate future and to dismantle the toxins of white supremacy. The book weighs in at a little more than 200 pages, and, while it’s not amusing, it most certainly is edifying. If you believe in being a citizen, you should check it out.
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What's Happening at the Library |
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Our Library Is Open from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, Tuesday through Saturdays. Under Covid restrictions there are no public computers or programs.
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Reading Program with Prizes
The Oakland Public Library offers eight-week reading programs for three age groups: Kids, Teens, and Adults. More than 12,000 people each summer (the majority are kids ages 0-12) participate in these programs. OPL provides a system for logging their daily reading and awarding prizes to those who complete the program. Online and in-person registration will be available on Saturday, May 29. Check OPL website for online registration.
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