“All you athletes, coaches and sports fans out there, take a deep breath, because I’ve got some exciting news for you—there’s a sports library we can use.
It’s not just boring old books at the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s Paul Ziffren Sports Resource Center. They have videos you can watch to improve a particular skill. They have playbooks for coaches to study. They have the freshest sports magazines, sports history and fun things like NBA Bloopers and Slam-dunk videos. They have polite and helpful librarians who will answer all your questions about where things are.
I looked at the material on the front desk and found a little postcard about a great web site for athletes: www.AthleteNetwork.com. At this site, you can get information on hundreds of topics, like NCAA rules and requirements, the National Letter of Intent and recruiting. There’s stuff for parents, coaches and counselors too. You can also access the Internet from the library.
I’d like to see some of those sports videos
Next time I go to the library, I’d like to see some of those basketball tapes so I can improve my offensive game. Actually, I’d like to take my whole basketball team down there and we could watch the tapes together. It’s hard to learn things by studying pictures in a book, but if you can watch it on a tape, you can learn it more easily. (But you have to call to arrange things if you want to take your team there.)
I talked to Michael Salmon, one of the librarians, and he said that once some high school football players came in, looking for videos to improve their game. The library didn’t have them, so they bought some! Then the players came back later and watched them all.
I think it’s exciting to be able to go somewhere to research your favorite athletes, get a little history and background and find out how they played their best. And this library is a beautiful, quiet place where you can also do your homework and catch up on the latest magazine.
Here’s how to use the library:
1. No orientation class is needed. Call in advance, especially if you’re going with a group of people. The number is (213) 730-9696.
2. The library is located at 2141 West Adams Boulevard, near the Santa Monica (10) Freeway. It is open on Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesdays until 8:30 p.m. and on the first and second Saturday of each month, excluding holiday weekends. Elementary and pre-school children must be accompanied by an adult.
3. Once you get there, you park on a side street and enter the place from the front. It doesn’t look like a library, it looks like a big fancy house. Once inside, you sign in on a paper. Then you walk out the back of the house to the backyard. That’s where the library is.
4. You can’t check anything out. You have to watch the videos there, and make copies (10 cents a page) of any materials.
This library has been around since 1988 but unfortunately hardly anyone knows about it. I myself have passed by the building on Adams Blvd., but I just saw the sign outside that says “Amateur Athletic Foundation” and I figured that’s where they kept all the money.
The Foundation does have money, $93 million that was raised during the 1984 Olympics that were held in Los Angeles. Since then, the Foundation has been supporting youth athletic programs, including coaching education, swimming, beach volleyball, in-line hockey, Olympic sports and the middle schools’ Run for Fun program. They give awards to athletes and give grants to other organizations for their sports programs.
The Foundation also started the sports library, which cost $3.1 million. It was named after Paul Ziffren, the chairman of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and the first chairman of the Amateur Athletic Foundation. The library has more than 30,000 books, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, athlete biographies, technical manuals and statistical guides. There are 325 magazines and newsletters. There are 4,000 videos, 50,000 photographs and a whole collection of stuff about the Olympics. You can look up what you need on a computerized database.
It was started by two collectors
A lot of that stuff came from two big sports fans. Bill Schroeder, who started collecting sports books as a student at Hollywood High in the 20s, and Paul Helms, owner of Helms Bakery in Culver City, established the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1932. Schroder became its librarian and continued to collect sports books and memorabilia. They also had a museum. The collection passed to several different owners before the Amateur Athletic Foundation bought it in 1985.
1n 1989, the Foundation also bought the sports collection of Fred Imhof, which included historic media guides and college football programs. The library staff needed four 28-foot trucks to haul the 35 tons of material from San Jose where it was stored.
In addition to helping the public, the librarians also answer sports reference questions and host conferences. Some of the topics of their conferences have been “The Funding Crisis in High School Athletics: Causes and Solutions,” and “Gender Stereotyping in Televised Sports: A Follow-up to the 1989 Study.””