Longtime Redwood City librarian retires

A retirement party will be held for Spore-Alhadef at the library’s community room Friday, Feb. 1, and city and county officials will present her with proclamations then.

“I love finding material for people and the reason we all got into the business is because we want that moment when we give someone the material they’ve been asking for, and they might not even know what they’re looking for,” Spore-Alhadef said. “[With this job] you get two things I really enjoy: learning new stuff and helping people learn new stuff.”

Assisting students with research projects and helping residents dig up information about their ancestors were among the most rewarding experiences for Spore-Alhadef, who said she’d also often learn something new in the process.

A local history aficionado, she could often be found in the library’s local history archive room. She’s written articles in various publications about Redwood City, was featured in the sesquicentennial DVD on the history of the city and wrote three chapters of “Redwood City: A Hometown History,” including one called “Saloons, Breweries and Bordellos.”

“I’ve dug up more weird information on this town,” she said. “I’ve never lived in Redwood City, but I probably know more about its history than many of the residents.”

She recalled a time when bordellos were not uncommon on Main Street, for example, and can recount in detail the story of a treasurer who embezzled $80,000 from Redwood City in the 1920s and was later found dead by Emerald Lake.

That scandal led to Redwood City becoming a charter city and a “much better governed place,” she said.

Spore-Alhadef grew up in a suburb of Boston and earned her master’s degree in library science at Peabody University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her career spanned 52 years, the bulk of which she spent at the Redwood City public library and she also worked for several seminary libraries.

She’s wanted to be a librarian for as long as she can remember.

“I remember setting up a library in our house when I was a small child,” she said. “I always loved reading and I’m a historian so I loved reading a special subject area. I love libraries, I really do.”

She began working at Redwood City’s downtown public library in 1978 when it was located across the street. About a month into her new job, California voters approved Proposition 13, which significantly reduced property tax rates as well as funding for city services, including libraries.

“After seven weeks of working for the city I was laid off and out of a job and didn’t know if I’d work in a library again,” she said. “It was tremendously depressing.”

She was rehired a couple of months later to run cataloging and technical services in a building at 900 Main St. that no longer exists. Not long after that, she found herself running the audio/visual center and its collection of 8 mm and 16 mm films and about 10,000 LPs.

Around the time the library relocated to the building it’s in now, the video revolution was about the start, she said.

“By that time the audio/visual collection had expanded to CDs and the CD collection was small and growing. And we were just about to start buying our first videocassettes,” she said.

She spent 10 years cataloging audio recordings and was an avid listener of the classical music, but not so much the jazz and rock, she said.

She also worked at the reference desk for years and more recently, superintended the computer room.

“Technology was being thrust upon us whether we liked it or not,” she said.

Post retirement, Spore-Alhadef expects to spend much of her time reading and volunteering.

“I’ll still be connected with libraries,” she said.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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