Rick Derenburger has been coming to Tucson’s downtown library for the past 30 years, but it wasn’t until he became homeless two years ago that the library became an essential place.
He cools off from the heat, charges his phone, and drinks his fill of cool water. If it closes, as a new report from the Pima County Public Library suggests could happen by December ahead of a planned downsizing, Derenburger isn’t sure whether there will be room for him to spend his days at this preferred library.
“It’s going to suck really badly … especially if you’re a senior,” says Derenburger, who says he used to work in IT for the Pima Community College system. Derenburger was one of about 15 people out in front of the main library branch before it opened on Monday morning.
He says the senior centers are spread throughout the city and difficult to reach, and many other libraries are too full of unhoused patrons for him to find a comfortable space.
His branch, the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, could close for downsizing renovations in December, with a proposed plan to reopen in a different location at a future date.
The change, along with the closure of more branches and the transition of one to a library administrative building, are part of a series of proposals for the Pima County Public Library system laid out in a memo and draft report shared to the Pima County Board of Supervisors by county administrator Jan Lesher dated Aug. 16.
Together, they mark what may be the starkest changes proposed to the public library system since the system cut back its hours in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“However painful it may be, we cannot continue to support the full number of 27 library locations with our available staff,” the report from the Pima County Public Library says.
The other proposed changes laid out in the report are:
- Closing Dewhirst-Catalina Library branch at end of 2024 calendar year
- Closing Santa Rosa Library at end of 2024 calendar year
- Closing Frank De La Cruz-El Pueblo Library at end of 2024 calendar year; opening an internal Community Engagement Hub in its place
- Temporarily close Southwest Library once Richard Elías-Mission Library reopens in fall 2025; begin building new Southwest Library in 2026
Amber Mathewson, director of the county library system, said the proposed changes were a difficult choice to make, but ones she hopes will allow the library system to better serve its constituents.
“Our goal is really to provide access to information, whether that be for recreation or learning, to everyone in the community in whatever format or platform they might need that to come to them,” she said in an interview with Arizona Luminaria. “What we’re trying to do now is make sure that we can get all of those services out to as many people as we can with our resources that we have at hand.”
And with the broad work that libraries do as one of the few spaces in many American communities that welcome people regardless of their ability to pay for services, the impact is likely to be felt by the library’s most vulnerable users. In particular, some of the libraries facing possible closure were opened as part of a small library approach created to bring services to underserved communities, but that have been difficult to maintain as robust local libraries, the report said.
The proposed changes are necessary because of chronic staffing shortages and the financial weight of some of the library locations, the report said. But they are also necessary because of the strain faced by the library system in dealing with a rising level of immediate community needs, from health care to shelter to food.
“The number of customers facing homelessness and housing insecurity, job loss and underemployment, poverty, mental health crises and substance abuse is orders of magnitude greater than anything public libraries have experienced to date,” the report says. “Staff are experiencing higher levels of secondary trauma and stress and having to navigate higher instances of difficult and sometimes violent incidents with the Public.”
A timeline included in the report proposes a community survey in September, ahead of the first planned library closures of Valdez, Catalina, Santa Rosa and El Pueblo to take place in December. The library system is working with a consultant to craft the survey to determine what the Pima County community is looking for from its public library system. The survey will be in English and Spanish, and available in print and digital forms, Mathewson said.
The timeline for possible branch closures, however, is far from set in stone, said Mathewson. The plan is contingent on a vote by the Pima County Board of Supervisors. The proposal will be discussed at the upcoming Library Advisory Board meeting on Thursday, Sept. 5, she said.
“People love the library, and we love our community as well,” she said. “We’re not seeing this as a cutting of services. We’re seeing this as a way to provide service in a different way.”
Pima County supervisors oversee the special funding district for the library system.
Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, who represents District 5, said she promises to make space for a public conversation about the draft document.
“I am the wife, sister and daughter of librarians. I am a strong advocate of our Pima County libraries because they fill a critical role in the lives of people in our community. I am understandably concerned about any possible reduction in access to necessary services for our constituents,” she said in an email to Arizona Luminaria.
“No decisions have been made as of yet. I believe that [it] is critically important to the patrons of each of these libraries discussed in this draft document to understand what these changes mean. I will be advocating for public meetings in advance of any vote of the Board of Supervisors because we need to hear directly from our community.”
Supervisor Rex Scott said he told the library system their timeline, of shutting down the first libraries at the end of 2024, was ambitious given the need he saw for public engagement. “There needs to be a significant amount of not just public input but public outreach — that public outreach needs to occur in the areas of the county that will deal with the closures.”
There will eventually be a vote by the board of supervisors, said Scott, but “we are far away from that point.”
Alexandra Lohmann didn’t use the public library much until she was older. These days, she meets friends in the shade of the trees in front of the downtown library, checks out novels, and uses the computer.
It’s also one of the few places where Lohmann, who is studying to be a peer support specialist through the Community Bridges program, says she sees a cross section of people who live in the town she grew up in.
“As big as it is, it can fit everybody that comes here. There are people from higher society to the homeless society — everyone,” she says. She is against the downsizing, and the library closures. “Don’t do it! What can us, as society, do to keep them open? What do we need to do?”
In person and online
The Pima County Public Library system runs 27 physical library locations and one virtual library. Out of Pima County’s 1.04 million residents, 283,000 people have library cards, the report says.
The report is the culmination of a process started several years ago at the behest of county leadership, said Mathewson. That process involved looking at different scenarios to plan a library system that would meet the needs of its constituents into the future. With this report, she said, “it’s just finally time to start getting some input to see if we’re headed in the right direction.”
The proposal lays out a new approach for the library: moving from a primary focus on brick-and-mortar locations to providing services direct to library users. More broadly, the report says, those changes move the library toward a focus on storytelling and equitable access to library materials.
“Our new focus unlinks our services from brick-and-mortar, to make us nimble, responsive, innovative, and relevant to all communities as we go where customers are — both in person and online,” the report says. “This is a big departure from previous expectations that every library [is] as close to every type of Programming as possible.”
Several of the libraries that will be closed will have parts of their programming shifted to nearby community centers. In some cases, book borrowing services would move to book lockers or pop-up libraries, or mobile book-mobiles.
The Santa Rosa Library is across the street from the city’s Santa Rosa Recreation Center, where more students have begun to spend time following recent incidents between children and other library patrons, the report said. In response to those incidents, a significant portion of the library costs go toward hiring a daily security guard.
The report also notes that during a two-month closure period for the library, local schools, Head Start and the recreation center successfully hosted library programming. The Santa Rosa location sees high attendance and program use.
Jesús Celaya has been the principal of Drachman Montessori Magnet School, which sits immediately adjacent to Santa Rosa, for 18 years. When he first became principal, Santa Rosa Library gave students access to computers at a time before all schools had a device for every child.
These days, some students go straight to the library after school, but most people he sees using the space are unhoused. Celaya says he has seen an ongoing number of safety issues between students and some individuals who use the library, and wishes there was a better way to address the safety matters.
“I would be sad to see it leave,” he says, though not surprised.
The Dewhirst-Catalina Library, which has higher operational costs because the county must lease its building on North Oracle Road in Catalina, would be replaced with 24/7 book lockers at a nearby community center. 53% of the library card holders at Dewhirst-Catalina are not Pima county residents, and the library has low rates of wi-fi usage and program attendance, the report said.
The Joel D. Valdez Main Library, a downtown landmark for 34 years with its recognizable red statue, “Sonora” out front, would be downsized and eventually moved to a new location. The building, owned by the City of Tucson, is in desperate need of repairs, the report said. Among them are a need for new elevators, a new roof and a new heating and air conditioning system. The estimated time for the temporary closure would be December 2024. The report says the library system is in conversations about how to move and decentralize services housed at the Valdez library, such as the Arizona research resources and reference material.
The Southwest Library is in a building leased from Tucson Unified School District off Valencia Road near Pascua Yaqui land. It is “in need of large renovations” and therefore not conducive to providing library services, the report states. Instead, the library system will work with the Dr. Fernando Escalante Tribal Library to provide services to the area. The closure would not occur until the nearby Richard Elías-Mission Library branch is reopened after renovation work is complete. The work on a new Southwest Library building would be slated to begin in 2026. Residents in this area will be part of a community engagement process to make sure the new facility meets their needs, said the report.
The Frank De La Cruz-El Pueblo Library near Irvington Road and Sixth Avenue, a “unique and cherished community resource,” the report notes, has struggled for the last several years with increasing calls for service related to feces removal, drug paraphernalia and broken glass. In response, the library discontinued its snack program, limited bathroom use to patrons with library cards and an ID, and reduced branch hours.
The site would become a Community Engagement Hub. No longer public facing, the engagement office will hold outreach materials, special services like Ask a Librarian and Book Bikes; and services including youth engagement, workforce development and Latinx community outreach, the report says.
The changes will allow the library system to reallocate staff to cover a chronic staffing shortage. Pima County’s staffing has followed national trends, the report says: libraries saw better-than-average employee retention following the recession, in part because many retirement savings took a hit, but then saw a slew of librarians retire during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
For some other programs, the report’s proposal is unclear: the Valdez branch receives nearly 350 letters a month from incarcerated people around Arizona, which would be shifted to the community engagement hub to develop a “statewide consortium.”
Increased need
When Angus Wensel first moved to Tucson in 2016, he needed help: a spiffier resume, a professional shirt and tie and steady access to a printer. His friend, a local librarian, told him he could find it all at the Valdez branch.
Eight years later, Wensel is in the final year of his nursing program at Pima Community College. Most recently, he picked up squash and pepper seeds at the seed bank. And occasionally, he goes to the library to study, though he wishes it was open later.
“Studying at a bar sucks, you know? You have to buy alcohol and, once you’re two drinks in, you’re not getting anything productive done,” he laughs. “It would be nice if libraries had a reawakening and people started going there again.”
At the core of library services is offering books for loan; computers for internet access; and a rich trove of historical documents and newspapers for public perusal.
Still, many libraries don’t stop there. They offer story hours for young children and citizenship classes, community meetings for people who have lost a spouse and sewing classes for anyone looking to master a needle and thread. In Pima County’s Prosperity Initiative, a 2023 document of policy recommendations to support county residents, the library is mentioned as an institution that supports digital literacy, small business owners, and could be a partner in increasing access to health care coverage.
As the need for social support has risen along with rising rents and rising homelessness, the library has met those needs as well: as cooling centers amid extreme heat, a place to borrow a blood pressure kit, grab a free COVID-19 test or see a visiting nurse. And as the fight over the future of LGBTQ-related books in public libraries has increased around the country, librarians have been at the forefront of pushing back against book bans.
Liz Casey, an organizer with the mutual aid group Community Care Tucson, said she has seen libraries function not only as a place for unhoused people to wait out the hottest part of the day, but also as a place to find housing or work resources that may bring more stability into their lives.
“It’s obviously devastating” to close libraries, said Casey. “It’s extremely troubling that their solution to saving money is essentially closing these really necessary services.”
Mathewson said she believes that libraries are an important part of the effort to fill the gaps of a threadbare social safety net, but said there must be other social supports.
“We’re happy to be a part of that. We just can’t be the only answer,” she said.
Mathewson said the library is exploring a plan to have social workers stationed in the library to provide support for library users who need help accessing other social supports. She points to a 2012 initiative that brought Pima County nurses to local public libraries, but that has been impacted recently by a nurse shortage.
Casey said she recognizes the library is not a social service agency. But without other resources more broadly available, she is concerned people will fall into deeper distress. “By taking away these services without offering anything else, it is just going to continue to perpetuate these cycles and make social issues like generational poverty, mental health and drug use worse.”
The report also states that the library system’s previous small library approach, created several decades ago to mitigate inequities in underserved communities’ access to libraries, only deepened them by spreading resources too thin.
“There are not any communities within Pima County whose needs can be truly fulfilled by the reduced resources of a small library location; time and again we have found that small locations must be expanded,” the report said. “Over time we’ve spread our time, energy, and talents across all these service areas in a way that has diluted our ability to provide any of these services exceptionally well.”
Library director Mathewson said the library is trying to reach a broader group of people who are not engaged in the library. They hope shifting resources from the closed libraries can help get those folks involved by bringing programming to them.
“While we do see people coming into the library, they’re not coming in in the numbers that they were prior to the pandemic, and so we really want to be able to take services to where people are,” she said.
Amid these questions, the cost of resources continues to rise. Books that cost $23 each in 2014 could now cost up to $40 per copy, the report said. And digital materials remain more expensive than physical materials due to digital rights management. The Pima County Public Library system now circulates about 50% physical and 50% digital materials, the report said.
“This is both a burden and an opportunity for public libraries: while more of our budgets must go to provide digital materials, we can be flexible and meet many more people where they are,” the report said.
Still, some Pima County communities are in the midst of library investments: the Martha Cooper library is expected to reopen in fall 2024 for a library nearly double the size of the original. The Richard Elías-Mission Library is also in the midst of a closure until the summer of 2025 — when reopened it will have an expanded children’s space and dedicated teen space.
Derenburger, who mostly uses the main library, said he regularly attends an event called Our Space. The library provides a bagged lunch for homeless patrons who can be connected to services, or just hang out.
He is also partial to holding a book in his hands and reading, he says, even though he acknowledges so much of the library material is digital. “I like sitting down with a book, yeah?” he says. “I know lots of books get stolen, taken, never returned, but [to have them], it’s a service to the community.”