Library News

Reading between the lines on library woes

Letter to the Editor

Washington Post, October 1, 2011

The D.C. Board of Library Trustees policy regarding naming libraries after neighborhoods is a sound one [“Name of new library spurs dispute,” Metro, Sept. 27]. The board should follow it.

Instead, on May 6 the trustees joined in renaming Benning Neighborhood Library after activist Dorothy Height. Having ignored their own policy, the trustees can hardly oppose renaming Washington Highlands Neighborhood Library in memory of D.C. State Board of Education member William O. Lockridge. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) might well be excused for not anticipating their opposition.

That said, the renaming controversy is a trivial sideshow to the relentless reduction in library operating budgets. Mr. Gray should not waste his political capital on a name change. Thankfully, he did commit on Friday to find funds to restore Sunday hours at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown, a good start.

Over the past four years, $180 million has been spent to restore, rebuild and renew neighborhood libraries. We should be celebrating the surge in library usage that has resulted and resolve to keep libraries open more, not less. Instead, the gleaming, wired buildings sit idle most evenings, two weekday mornings and Sundays — the most-used day of the week.

This is a slap in the face to D.C. residents who identified “the library being open” as their No. 1 priority during numerous city “listening sessions” in 2006. No number of architecture awards — and the library has received several — will make any difference to a teenager in search of enlightenment or to the curious child who peers into a glassy new library and finds no light therein.

Robin Diener, Washington

The writer is director of the Library Renaissance Project.

Original post here.