Bernier, Anthony

English

San Jose State University

A library ‘TeenS’cape’ against the new callousness

SJSU ScholarWorks

San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksFaculty Publications School of Information8-1-2000A library ‘TeenS’cape’ against the new callousnessAnthony BernierSan Jose State University, anthony.bernier@sjsu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slis_pubPart of the Library and Information Science CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in FacultyPublications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@sjsu.edu.Recommended CitationAnthony Bernier. "A library ‘TeenS’cape’ against the new callousness" Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) (2000): 100-191.AUTHOR: Anthony Bernier TITLE: Los Angeles Public Library’s TeenS’cape Takes on the “New Callousness”SOURCE: Voice of Youth Advocates v23 no3 p180-1 Ag 2000 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced withpermission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.During the past year, two of the largest and most famous public scandals ever torock a city have rocked Los Angeles. The police department’s notorious RampartDivision threatens to bankrupt the city treasury from lawsuits. Recently unraveledcorruption and misconduct has the Department of Justice threatening to take over.Then there is the Unified School District’s Belmont High School catastrophe. Plannedas the most costly high school in the nation, the half-built project must be scrappedentirely, due to mismanagement. The doubled-barreled ricochets of both scandals fit afar larger pattern. And in California it’s looking like an old story. In the 1980s, former Governor Pete Wilson gained national reputation byincarcerating more youth than in any other state and by raising fees and repealingAffirmative Action at the University of California. Despite the city’s burgeoning numbersof young people (100,000 more today than in 1980) and population densities that rivalManhattan’s, Los Angeles has failed to build a single high school since passage of thelegendary Proposition 13 sparked a national anti-tax revolt in the mid-1970s.Meanwhile, the District Attorney has inspired a region-wide flood of dubiously legal“zero tolerance” crackdowns against youth: new injunctions, curfews, andyouth-targeted “nuisance” ordinances control what teens wear, who they can be seenwith, where they can and cannot be. L.A. arrests 12,000 youths every year for curfewviolations alone. In addition to these anti-youth tactics, in March of this year, voterspassed into law the jailing of fourteen-year-olds with hard-core career criminal adults.Considering this anti-youth legacy, it is not difficult to see how L.A. regards itsyoung people. National conservative columnist Arianna Huffington calls it part of “theNew Callousness,” where even with our own youth, retribution is the only answer.California State Senator, Democrat Tom Hayden, calls it “an emerging garrison state”for the poor and the young. I call it a “Geography of No.” No place for youth to grow.No place to learn. No place to hide. And no room for mistakes. This all-punishment-all-the-time age-profiling public policy flies in the face of factsgathered from every major category of youth behavior. As sociologist Mike A. Malestells us, teenage felony and murder rates are lower today among all races/ethnicitiesin L.A. than they have been in a quarter century, despite a doubling in youth povertyrates. Youth, Males rightly claims, are being “framed” and “scapegoated.” On the other hand, there is the Los Angeles Public Library, the unsung civic hero,standing up against this bitter wind for the young people it serves. As of March 14,2000, the Library launched its spectacular TeenS’cape enlargement, which sitssmack-dab in the middle of the city’s cherished 1926 Central Library. At 3,780 squarefeet, TeenS’cape is arguably the biggest, the best, and most technically sophisticatedlibrary space for teens anywhere in the country. Set against the city’s anti-youthGeography of No, this elegant and affirming gesture might find another name:reparations. Local youth named TeenS’cape when it opened two years after the 1992 L.A. riots.They wanted the name not only to reflect a territory of escape but also to suggest ameasure of ownership and community. In its small, experimental, cramped, leftoverspace, the original TeenS’cape received no redesign, no furniture, no permanentstatus, no directional signage, or even a place on the building directory. Still, during itsincubation stage, the facility was popular with teens. Recent reports document a 26%1jump in computer usage between 1997 and 1998, and an even higher rise in readingmaterial circulation. However modest its beginnings, TeenS’cape served as a bibliobeachhead, seekingto correct the previous total “erasure” of young adults from their own library. Far moresignificantly, it initiated new criteria by which to assess library space programming. InLos Angeles, at least, teens no longer get leftover library space. Triple the size of theoriginal, the enlarged and renovated TeenS’cape embraces visitors with excitingpost-modernist architecture—juxtaposed against, yet respectfully nested within thebuilding’s historic walls and ceilings. TeenS’cape is executed in six separate “zones.” In Cyber Zone, the department’ssignature element, one enters under a metal mesh awning—sleek, scalloped,teal-colored, and decoratively lit from beneath. No slapdash acoustic-tile drop ceilingand institutional fluorescent lighting here! The awning creates a room-within-a-room.Together with colorful patterns of wall-to-wall carpet, it raises conversation comfortwhile suppressing ambient background noise. Design here evokes the emerging newwave of Silicon Valley’s ultrahip “dot-com” start-up spaces. Cyber Zone also playfullyanticipates tomorrow’s techno-savvy collaborative work spaces. Four circular blondwood cafe tables support nineteen flat-screen Virtual Library computer terminalsconnecting teens to the Internet, as well as to over five hundred electronic databases,LAPL’s online book and magazine catalog, and a state-of-the-art array of electronicresources. Peripheral wall alcoves cuddle eleven multimedia computers for privatemusic listening and computer gaming, as well as accessible message boards andglass-enclosed display cases. The Living Room is another TeenS’cape zone, well-appointed with a fifty-inchplasma-screen television; DVD, CD, and video equipment; a Dolby surround-soundsystem; and un-library seating options such as plush sofas and movable cushy loungefurniture. The Living Room encourages solitary recreational reading, complete withadjacent magazine display shelving. It is also a versatile space capable of hostingsmall performances and class visits. During a bevy of re-opening activities, forinstance, TeenS’cape hosted a dramatic performance by New York’s American PlaceTheater. Local high school classes comfortably enjoyed the production of ClaudeBrown’s 1965 classic, Manchild in the Promised Land. Undisturbed by activity in otherzones, the Living Room’s great sound system ably accompanied the performance withthe beats and pulse of period jazz. The Lounge zone provides space for out-of-the-way activity. Here TeenS’capemeets history. Appointed with the same custom furnishings that appear in the LivingRoom, the Lounge perches just behind a low-slung curved wall, adjacent to theLibrary’s historic domed rotunda with its stunning 1930s Federal Artist Project muralsof California history. For all its size, however, TeenS’cape surprises at every turn and in every corner.Life-sized blowups of Spiderman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Star Wars’ Yodaentreat the city’s youth to use the library to “get the bad guys” and to stay in touchwith The Force. On the way from the Cyber Zone and into the Lounge, young adultspause at the automated “Self-Check” bay to borrow library materials without waiting inlines with all those—well—adults downstairs. As one young man, quoted in the LosAngeles Times, characterized it, “This is way off the scale. It’s like landing on Mars!”In TeenS’cape, the hip, the mod, and the magnificent come together in a monumentalcivic structure. But TeenS’cape is not all fun, games, and kicking back. The Study Lounge zoneprovides eight dedicated word-processing computers adjacent to shelves of readyreference volumes. Another zone offers three canvas-roofed small group Study RoomsAnthony Bernier:  Los Angeles Public Library’s TeenS’cape Takes on the “New 2that face a reference desk staffed by professional young adult specialist librarians anddevoted paraprofessionals. The TeenS’cape collection includes nearly 30,000 books, afantastic magazine collection of 150 different titles, graphic novels, videos, and CDs.That collection only serves as a springboard, however, to the Central Library’s massiveholdings and to the almost six million items housed in LAPL’s expansive sixty-sevenbranches. Los Angeles City Librarian Susan Kent says that “TeenS’cape demonstrates the LosAngeles Public Library’s commitment to meeting the educational and recreational needsof our city’s teenagers.” But Kent does not go far enough. The energy propellingTeenS’cape also rejuvenates the way in which new branches design space. Votersrecently approved a bond measure to rebuild many of the huge library system’s olderfacilities. Blueprints now inscribe young people into the plans rather than erase them.With TeenS’cape, LAPL shows a kind of courage. The Library assumes a morefitting role within the community and in the lives of the young people it serves.Envisioning teens on this higher and more optimistic ground—more true to evidenceabout youth culture—rejects prevailing anti-youth hysteria. Furthermore, beyond servingas response for damage done to teens elsewhere, TeenS’cape also nails young adultspaces to the public library design agenda. Isn’t it about time! ADDED MATERIAL Currently a Young Adult Specialist for the Los Angeles Public Library and a doctoralcandidate in history at the University of California, Irvine, Anthony Bernier is alsoco-editing a book on teens and library space equity with Catherine M. Ortiz. In 1994,together with colleague Ann Hoffman, be executed the service plan for LAPL’s originalTeenS’cape. PHOTO CREDIT: Russell Garrigan Cyber Zone’s Virtual Library Terminals. The versatile Living Room Zone. To submit your YA dream space for consideration, request a YA Spaces submissionform from Cathi Dunn MacRae at toll-free phone (888) 4 VOYA 97 or e-mailcmacrae@voya.com. Anthony Bernier:  Los Angeles Public Library’s TeenS’cape Takes on the “New 3

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A library ‘TeenS’cape’ against the new callousness

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