Daily News from New York, New York • 6

JJmtot odd ra I JH 'HI. I -T .4 A 4' Donation box appeal as city cuts hit hard By BRIAN KATES DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER The New York Public Library is going begging. For the first time, neighborhood branches are putting out donation boxes, in a desperate effort to offset budget cuts that mean 3,000 fewer books a year for each branch, reduced hours of operation and interminable waits for best sellers. JOHN TRACY Reader at Fort Washington branch. Sixty-seven of the 85 branch libraries are open only five days a week, something that hasn't happened since the city's fiscal crisis of the 1970s.

Public funding has been eliminated for the popular summer reading program, potentially shutting out about 100,000 youngsters, many of them latchkey kids. Massive staff reductions through attrition 10 of all full-time positions and 20 of hourly workers and a system-wide hiring freeze have forced librarians to do have suffered $10.1 million in cuts since 2001, forcing most libraries to a five-day schedule and reducing book purchases by about 2,500 titles a month. "One of our biggest challenges is trying to protect service for children," said Deputy Executive Director Siobhan Reardon. "But having lost 250 staff members systemwide, that has not been easy." Donation boxes will be in all Manhattan libraries by September, library officials said. No one knows how much they will yield.

But they are part of an un DAILY a NEWS jobs normally performed by clerks and student pages. Essential functions, from an precedented emergency plea for funds from private corporations, founda mm i if" I 'nrj upHyC tions, philanthropists and ordinary citizens. The three-year campaign aims to raise $4 million a year for the Manhattan branch libraries, normally funded by the city, plus $2 million a year for the system's four research libraries, where funding comes from a complex array of sources, most of it private. Empty shelves The consequences of the fiscal shortfall are visible everywhere. Empty shelves at the Mid-Manhattan branch, the system's largest, signal a roughly 30 cut in the number of books it can buy, said library supervisor Elena Bivona.

"I can't remember ever seeing so many books on reserve," she said. If, for example, you wanted to borrow "The Da Vinci Code," the best seller by Dan Brown, don't hold your breath. There are 1,716 readers around the city ahead of you. The system could afford to buy only 107 copies of the book. "Previously, we would have been able to buy many more copies," Bivona said.

At the Fort Washington branch on W. 179th where about 10,000 library users many of them Dominican and Russian immigrants come through the doors each month, children's librarian Ann Pettit now finds herself doing the work of two people, leaving her less time for the scores of young readers she refers to as kids." swering student queries to ensuring that rare books are properly preserved, fall through the cracks. And it could get worse. Still reeling from $16.4 million in city budget cuts this fiscal year, the public library system the largest and arguably best in the world faces a $4 million shortfall next year that could result in more curtailed hours and staff layoffs, reduced access to electronic databases and elimination of library renovations. Mayor Bloomberg restored $7.6 million to the beleaguered system last month after a well-coordinated campaign dumped about 25,000 letters of support from library users on City Hall.

Library President Paul LeClerc called the restoration "a miracle and a huge victory." But, he noted, "the need is still monumental." Program suspended The Queens and Brooklyn library systems, separate from the New York Public Library, are suffering similar funding woes. Queens' 63 libraries are now open only five days a week after a $9.8 million budget cut. The Connecting Libraries and Schools Program for about 150,000 school children has been suspended and the summer reading program has been drastically curtailed. In Brooklyn, the main library, 58 neighborhood branches and its popular business library where use has surged since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -r- New York Public Library donation box at Lincoln Center branch.

Without the assistant she had last year, Pettit relies on little Luz want to be a librarian when I grow Hiraldo, 9, to help with younger kids, perform minor clerical duties and translate for Spanish-speaking parents. Pettit is forced to order fewer books these days and, she saidn "I hate having to lend out books to children that are battered and worn." But her greatest concern is that the library may have to reduce its hours of operation. "If these kids are not here, then they will be out in the streets," Pettit said. The vaunted research libraries are hurting, too. At the main library at 42nd St.

and Fifth one key department, local history and genealogy, has lost one-third of its public service staff, despite a dramatic surge in the number of users. Asa result, researchers must wait longer for materials and the overburdened staff has.diffi- CM 00 T3 2.