On June 6, 1978, California voters passed the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation. The measure, known more popularly as “Proposition 13,” capped the property tax rate at 1 percent of a home's full cash value, dramatically reducing a previously abundant tax base that had funded public services, including libraries, statewide. As then-governor Jerry Brown observed, “Things will never be the same” (15). Indeed, they were not, as library materials budgets were immediately slashed by 20 percent and more than 1200 public library jobs (21%) were lost (19). Over the next forty years, Proposition 13 would be blamed for the elimination of approximately 100,000 public sector positions and the closure of 75 branch libraries (18).
Citing more than 200 articles, monographs, and websites, this slender 118-page volume provides a decade-by-decade chronology of Proposition 13's devastating impact on California's public, school, and academic libraries. The first third of the book harrowingly...
