Gast Builds Collection at Palisades Library

If you can’t find a particular book at the Palisades Branch Library, you might want to tell the new senior librarian, Janet Gast. She’ll write it down on her list of books, audiocassettes, CDs, videos and DVDs that need to be ordered for the growing collection. She’s been adding science, history and literature books to the collection since she started on September 7. “Science” includes animals, technology and home improvement. “There are gaps in this collection and we’re trying to fill them,” says Gast, who ordered 150 books this month and has been spending “a few thousand dollars every month” on collection development. “We’re buying a lot more classics and college preparatory books.” She says some patrons might be interested to know that the library is beefing up its classics section with novels by Agatha Christie, Jane Austen and William Faulkner, among others. She also ordered “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which the library didn’t own. “We buy the ‘best of breed”the best there is to offer in [an individual] category,” says Gast, who describes the Palisades as “a very literary area, a high reading area.” “The community is very well-mannered, well-educated and docile”‘”not as aggressive” as the patrons who used the West Valley Regional branch in Reseda, where she formerly worked as adult librarian. Gast lives in Tarzana, and her long commute to get here is the one downside to her job. A native of West Los Angeles, she has worked as a librarian with the L.A. Public Library for more than 30 years at about 10 different branches, and substituted at more. “This is not the busiest library,” she says of the Palisades Branch, but adds that “we’re open extended hours’until 8 p.m.” The library is open until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and until 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. According to Gast, children make up about half the circulation and they check out books for school assignments, as well as CDs and DVDs for entertainment. Patrons can check out best-sellers for 25 cents a day through the library’s “Project Bestsellers” program. The active Friends of the Palisades Branch Library group donates $50,000 to $70,000 a year to help the library fund the purchase of books, audiobooks, music on CD, video recordings and DVDs, as well as children’s programs and refreshments, library furniture and maintenance. The group raises money through periodic used book sales in the parking lot. They also sponsor authors’ programs, says Gast, who has a lot of experience working with Friends groups. She also brings her friendly attitude and sweet spirit to the Palisades library. “Come on in!” she tells an employee waiting politely at the door of her office, which is located at the front of the library, overlooking the parking lot on Alma Real. “She is warm and approachable and loves input from patrons on what they would like to see on the shelves,” wrote Alice Inglis, president of the Pacific Palisades Library Association, in the fall Biblio-File newsletter. Part of the reason Gast chose to pursue a career as a librarian was because, as a child, “we had family friends who were librarians and they seemed happy.” She attended University High School and then went on to UCLA, where she majored in literature and minored in science before going to the library school in 1971. “I was one of the last ones to graduate in [UCLA’s] one-year program.” She started cataloging books at a library in Kern County and then joined the El Sereno library as a young adult librarian. That’s when the fun began. “I decided to do a fashion show program for the community,” says Gast, who went around to the local dress shops in search of outfits to model. While working at a branch library in the East Valley, she helped start the “Book Blitz,” a program in which librarians in the region would get together and go to one school a month to talk about books and services. About 10 years ago, she and a librarian at the Central Library in downtown L.A. put SAT and AP (Advanced Placement test) study guides into the system. “They didn’t have college directories either,” she says of libraries at the time. Certainly, times have changed. Being a librarian used to be about “classics and books,” she says. Now, “it’s technology”‘books on tape and DVDs. “I don’t think people read as much. I don’t think they can write as well either.” But she shrugs off the changes, saying “It’s okay.” A mother of three grown children, Gast says “I kind of know what young people like.” She’s noticed that children check out more books at once these days, whereas when she was growing up, she’d check out one or two at a time. Her mother started taking her to the West L.A. Regional Branch at Santa Monica and Federal when she was in first grade, around the time when she was learning to read. “I remember my mother putting in [postal] reserves. They were 2 cents, then 25 cents; now they’re free.” According to Gast, one of the underused sections at the Palisades Branch might be the general nonfiction section’history, social sciences and philosophy. She is a nonfiction reader herself. “I read the newspaper,” she says. “I read the L.A. Times every morning. I can’t leave the house without reading it. I like to be informed.” One of her favorite sections is business, because she believes it affects what goes in the other sections. Gast encourages people to check out the databases on the Los Angeles Public Library Web site, www.lapl.org. The categories range from health to history, geography and genealogy to U.S. government documents. “We’re like a little Yahoo!” But nothing beats making a personal trip to the library. “Come visit me,” Gast says.