Weeding, Director at Heart of
Chicago Library Fracas
Chicago Public Library officials met for three hours August 23 with supporters of the Sulzer Regional Library on the city’s north side to allay fears that the city intended to reduce the facility’s status to a branch and downsize its collections or cut its hours of operation. Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey agreed to the formation of a Sulzer citizen advisory committee and promised to retain the library’s regional status, the August 24 Chicago Tribune reported.
The meeting came in the wake of a confrontation August 21 with 47th Ward Alderman Eugene Schulter, who had been tipped off that truckfuls of volumes were being weeded from Sulzer. Schulter told the north-side weekly newspaper Inside that he and members of the Friends of Sulzer were ordered by a senior CPL staffer to leave the basement area where discards were being boxed. Dempsey denied that Schulter was asked to leave and said that the weeding at Sulzer was a routine operation.
She declined to comment on the status of Leah Steele, Sulzer’s director since 1979, who in early August refused a transfer to a position at CPL’s downtown Harold Washington Library Center. Steele told the Tribune that the transfer order had followed what she described as a “very nasty and horrible” confrontation with Dempsey over the future of Sulzer’s popular media center.
Posted August 27, 2001.
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