No libraries were closed during the great depression due to lack of funding. But with budgets increasingly constrained, more pressure than ever will be brought to bear to sell public land in exchange for public amenities.
The land IS the amenity. We can use it to fill whatever needs we have at the time.
Library land should remain in public hands as the need for services will only increase, and will be particularly in the immediate future. Libraries are an essential educational and social service that should be funded by the city as one of its highest priorities along with schools and hospitals.
Libraries serve as safe space for everyone, but especially children and elders who are also the two largest user groups.
They can deliver literacy training, job training, technology training, health information, financial information -- all vital to economic improvement.
They serve as centers of civic engagement, from neighborhood polling places to meeting spaces for ANC's and other local groups.
As city owned buildings they can and should be models for green initiatives.
Having been treated to decades of library decay in DC, District residents may not realize that library usage throughout the rest of the US is not declining but increasing steadily. Like private profit-driven businesses, these public institutions have continually evolved and reinvented themselves to meet citizen needs and preferences. In response to the rise of computers, libraries have become technology centers; to address competition from bookstores, libraries have added coffee shops, exhibition space, living room style seating, lectures and book signings.
Communities -- across the country and around the world -- have forged a public library movement that fosters democracy through free access to information, places to assemble, and centers of dynamic, civil society.
Sadly, DC's libraries did not benefit from the city's economic high times. Since 2000, when the American Institute of Architects presented solutions for renovating MLK, officials have "dithered" -- as Washington Post columnist Marc Fishers has put it.
Now that a national financial catastrophe looms, library officials are approaching groundbreaking for the first two four libraries closed for rebuilding in 2004.
Instead of fulfilling the demand for services and programs laid out in so-called "Hopes and Dreams" community planning meetings, library officials have taken to making cuts in design and warning that we will not be able to afford what was planned.
This is a mistake.
In tough times, libraries are one of the best investments of public dollars government can make. Instead of stinting, we should proceed to build the libraries of our Hopes and Dreams as promised throughout the better part of a decade of dithering.
Robin Diener
Director, DC Library Renaissance Project
at the Center for the Study of Responsive Law
Ralph Nader, founder
1530 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
202 387-8030
431-9254 cell
LIBRARY
DYNAMOS