A Lofty Vision For Reviving DC City Libraries

One From The Washington Post An ambitious proposed makeover of the D.C. public library system would take five to 10 years and cost nearly half a billion dollars, up to $100 million of which city officials hope to raise from private donors and foundations, library board President John W. Hill said.

In an interview Monday, Hill called the system “an embarrassment” and elaborated on the draft plan released last week by a task force appointed by Mayor Anthony A. Williams. The task force spent the past year traveling to library systems across the country and comparing them with the District’s library headquarters and 26 neighborhood branches.

February 4, 2006 by Uncategorized 5

You may also like...

5 Responses

  1. birdie says:
    February 4, 2006 at 5:15 am

    I wonder
    whatever happened to Ralph Nader’s grand plan to improve DC’s libraries?
    See earlier story.

    Reply
  2. p-man says:
    February 4, 2006 at 10:03 am

    Re:I wonder
    Nader started the Library Renaissance Project, whose head (Mr. Minsky)was quoted in the article. I hope there can be a turnaround, but there has been so much lack of funding and administrative ineptitude that it won’t happen overnight. The rebuilding of 4 branches, in the work for years and years, has been completely bungled. The contracts were signed, but a different library board and different interim director put the brakes on and started the bidding over. Meanwhile four buildings have sat empty since the beginning of 2005, two of which (Benning and Anacostia) are in poverty-stricken neighborhoods that can ill afford to be without library services. The whole mess shows that a few incompetent folks in key positions can negate the work of many more dedicated employees.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous Patron says:
    February 4, 2006 at 10:09 am

    Re:I wonder
    26 branches? Bite the bullet and piss off someone and close a few. I know, nobody wants THEIR branch closed, but look at the stats on population served nationwide. How about getting pre-1991 items on an ILS?

    Reply
  4. Anonymous Patron says:
    February 4, 2006 at 11:53 pm

    Re:I wonder
    I think there is a big point to local libraries, to real neighborhoods. Of course you have to be sure the neighborhood is still there. Cities keep changing.

    I’m not happy about all that weeding they’re going to do; some certainly, but one of the big points in favor of libraries for me is the books they have that are now out of print. I keep wanting to go back and read earlier books by authors I’ve discovered.

    The cycle of going out of print spins so fast now that if you blink the book is gone.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous Patron says:
    February 6, 2006 at 10:52 pm

    Re:I wonder
    Not happy about all the weeding they’re going to do??? Please put this in perspective. I am a former DCPL employee and while there, I weeded an entire branch, removing about 50% of the titles from the catalogue. Note this is not the same thing as removing 50% of the books. As a reference librarian I was tired of patrons coming to me with a call number they found in the catalogue but not able to find on the shelves. When I went to the catalogue record I easily found out why – the book last circulated in 1979. Safe to say, it was GONE. The DCPL collection has *never* been weeded. There are records in the catalogue for books that went missing before I was born! In order for anyone to find anything, you have to remove the materials from the catalogue that no longer exist, as well as the materials that aren’t circulating.

    This is particularly true in DC. We are a local branch, serving local community needs. It is not our mandate to keep every book ever published. This ain’t the National Archives! Any of our patrons who don’t feel our collections are large enough can get off their fat asses and walk the two blocks to the LoC, or drive the 20 minutes to the National Archives just up the street. Sheesh!

    Weeding creates room for new, more popular materials on crowded shelves. Weeding is a way to monitor theft from libraries, replace missing copies and worn out books, discover gaps in your collection coverage, remove outdated texts so old they are dangerous (think health/medicine!), etc. My branch looked fabulous once it was weeded. I didn’t get a single patron complaint.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives