At the Board of Trustees Meeting last night, long awaited new Library "Chief" Ginnie Cooper announced that Sunday hours would begin in October, as originally requested by Councilmember Kathy Patterson. Patterson had pushed for the money to keep libraries open on weekends, in response to requests by citizens at last winter’s library "listening sessions."

Earlier this month, the Washington Post had reported Cooper promising Sunday hours would begin in January 2007. That apparently was stale news.

Having chided Cooper here (Million Dollar Baby, Welcome) in response to the Post report, we now send kudos for her stated determination to carry out the expansion of hours as originally intended. Given the past history of failure to carry things out as promised here at DCPL, it is good to have the new Chief agreeing to meet a deadline outlined before her arrival. October is not far off and if Cooper can deliver Sundays on time, she will have officially started the Turnaround.

Attend this Public Event

Board of Library Trustees Meeting Wednesday August 9th at 6 pm Chevy Chase Branch Library 5625 Connecticut Avenue, NW

directions www.dc.library.org/branches

Speak Out

These monthly meetings of the Library Trustees are an opportunity to add your voice to the call for a well-run and responsive library system for the citizens of the District of Columbia.

For further information, contact:

Robin Diener, DC Library Renaissance Project

c/o CSRL

P.O.Box 19367

Washington, DC 20036

202/387-8030

All eyes are on new Library Director Ginnie Cooper, handpicked by the Board of Library Trustees to oversee the “transformation” of our library system in exchange for a million dollars over five years – a bargain, given the disastrous state of the DC Public Library.

Cooper spent her first week visiting branch libraries where she was heard to comment on the clutter. That’s an accurate observation even in the tidiest branches. It owes, at least in part, to a small thing: the lack of consistent signage – something librarians and library patrons have requested for years – and a simple enough fix.

Problems at DCPL certainly go deeper than signs, but Cooper would be right to focus on superficial improvements that can be carried out quickly — both because they would be immediately visible, and because people have asked for them specifically. Library users who particpated in last winter’s “listening sessions” asked DCPL to focus on the basics. Simple cleanliness and good lighting were mentioned repeatedly, as well as things like security and working systems which, understandably, will take longer to implement.

But another easy-to-implement request was for longer hours.

Education and Libraries Committee Chair Kathy Patterson heard that loud and clear. She worked with DCPL and the Library Trustees to find and approve the necessary funding to open libraries on Sundays starting this fall. Hence, Marc Fisher’s column today reporting that Ginnie Cooper told him she “pledges to have all branches open on Sundays by January” comes as a disappointment.

In DC, we have a long acquaintance with obfuscation, postponement, and other tactics of delay. The Board of Library Trustees has elevated — to an art — the serving up of broken promises as gifts. We don’t need spin that “pledges” to achieve what we were already promised for an earlier timeframe. Ginnie Cooper, please, bring us a fresh approach – something more along the lines of what bookstores do, since Fisher quoted that as part of your strategy — deliver what we’re paying for.

The person who pulls off the transformation of DCPL will deserve every penny of a million bucks, but that transformation should start this fall with the keeping of a simple promise – to extend library hours to Sundays.

Once attention was finally focused on DCPL, it was inevitable that someone would clean house. In the last week, five top-level employees have been let go, ostensibly as a result of restructuring to facilitate the transition for new Library Director Ginnie Cooper, expected to start work on Monday (July 24). Interviews leading to the firings have been conducted by recently hired “transition” manager Larry King – a former DC Control Board associate of Library Trustee President John Hill, with unknown expertise in library arts and sciences. King’s recent round of head-chopping represents a further application of the corporate model favored by the Williams administration.

DC Library Renaissance Project has long held there is a high level of incompetence at DCPL. Therefore, we welcome changes in management. Before endorsing the shakeups, however, we want to acknowledge that a major reason behind DCPL’s poor performance goes beyond personnel to the Board of Library Trustees.

The Trustees, all mayoral appointees, have left DCPL adrift for more than three years. Since the departure of Library Director Molly Raphael in 2003, the Trustees have hired only “interim” directors, thus ensuring there would be no real day-to-day leadership for the large, complex institution that is the DC Public Library. Without a permanent director backed by the Trustees, it is difficult to maintain order, let alone improve a situation. Three years of interim directors is a failure by the Board of Library Trustees to carry out one of its most basic charges.

The decision to terminate employees may have been “authorized” by recently designated Acting Director Ellen Flaherty, as Hill stated to the Washington Post (7/20/06, Metro, page 2), but it came only after King had completed his interviews. Flaherty, temporarily elevated from Director of Human Resources for DCPL, at the same time King came on board, must have had her hands tied before, because the termin-ees were all employees of long standing.

For her sake, we hope Flaherty doesn’t get the axe from the Trustees as most recent interim director Francis Buckley did – by email, no less – after he dutifully represented the Trustees to the public and to City Council on the subject of the abandonment of MLK, the granting to DCPL of independent procurement authority, and other aspects of the Trustees’ transformation plan.

And in fact, we understand that there are no routine personnel reviews conducted, no standard operating procedures in place, and no program plan for DCPL. The development and implementation of such should have mandated by the Trustees in performance of their oversight duties. Direct intervention in the basic running of an institution should not be the purview of its Board of Trustees, but in this case, since they had failed to provide an executive for so many years, the Trustees had little choice but to take on the executive role and order the shake-ups.

After three years, the sudden switch to an action-oriented agenda further traumatizes staff who have been kept in the dark, along with the public, about the future of their library. Staff was not included in the research and writing of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Libraries draft report. And a 40-point program plan for DCPL is secret to everyone except architect James Polshek, who has been speaking on behalf of the Mayor’s iconic new central library, and who revealed the existence of the plan but none of its content at the June 15 City Council hearing about the Mayor’s legislation to lease the MLK building.

No one would deny that changes needed to be made at DCPL staff-wise, but the Mayor and Trustees should bear in mind that the public holds them responsible for DCPL having devolved to the present deleterious state. The public confidence is not easy to restore. And leaving the public out of all planning, as the Trustees have assiduously and successfully endeavored so far, in spite of repeated criticism, is not the way to earn it back.

Carrying out these firings now leaves the new director without blood on her hands. That is probably a good thing for her and for the future of DCPL. Only time will tell if Cooper is the professional DCPL needs to retrieve it from the wretched state into which it has fallen, and over which the trustees have presided. Incoming Library Director Cooper has a gargantuan job to right this ship, but the cleaning of the Augean stables has been begun by the Trustees.

… would smell sweeter, actually.

Having gone to great lengths to resuscitate the AIA/Cooper study for renovation of MLK, swept under the rug by Mayor Williams for six years, advocates now find that the word “renovation” is clouding discussion of the plan’s merits. The AIA/Cooper plan was properly called “a feasibility study of possibilities for the renovation of MLK.” However, if people equate renovation with half measures taken on the cheap, then renovation is the wrong word.

What the AIA/Cooper study proposes is transformation.

Cost is further confusing matters. In fact, the transformation of MLK will cost less than building the Mayor’s new smaller library on the old convention center site, because the major construction work – foundation, footings, and superstructure – are already in place and in good condition. The resulting lower price tag – usually considered a plus – seems to be causing people to think of a patch job, instead of the total transformation outlined in the AIA/Cooper study.

The transformation proposed by Cooper and his team is radical surgery that would cut MLK back to the bone, and will include: taking down most walls, building a central staircase from the ground level to a new main reading room on the second floor, removing central portions of three floors in order to carve out an atrium and allow all floors to look out onto the new main reading room, adding a fifth floor and roof terrace, reconfiguring the basement level for a new centrally located auditorium, installing the marble facing called for in the architect’s original plan, and the replacement of all systems.

These are hardly half measures and should receive full consideration.

Renovation of the “architecturally significant” Mies van der Rohe building we already have is possible, less costly, and potentially far more thrilling than anything the Mayor has shown us.

Evidence just keeps mounting about the value of renovation over building new, in terms of cost. The July/August issue of Preservation featured the capitalist-of-all-capitalists Donald Trump in the monthly column The Short Answer. Asked if it’s cheaper to build anew than to adapt an existing structure, Trump responded, “I’ve always found that it’s much cheaper to use an existing structure.”

He continued with what may well be the rub for DC, “Doing so is more complicated, and you actually have to be a better builder to do that kind of work, but if you know what you’re doing, it costs you less money.” Are there developers ready to take up Trump’s challenge of being “a better builder” by taking on the renovation of MLK? We’ll see if any builders start lobbying the Mayor or City Council for the opportunity. Read more about Trump’s thinking on the subject of preservation at www.preservationonline.org.

According to Mayor Anthony Williams, residents are “afraid of building a new library.” This is a bizarre, and essentially unserious, argument in favor of his plan for a new main library. It would be accurate, however, to say that citizens are afraid of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial library, because of the frightening state into which it has fallen — a condition for which Mayor Williams, as chief city caretaker, is ultimately responsible.

In the seven and a half years he has been in office, Williams has done nothing — not a thing — to improve the public library system of the District of Columbia.

A year and a half ago, he allowed four libraries to be closed for rebuilding with no plans

for interim services (children in these areas are facing the second summer without access to a neighborhood library). Then, he allowed his appointed Board of Library Trustees to cancel the publicly approved plans for rebuilding them. The Mayor’s net effect on the library system, after seven and a half years in office, is a negative. DCPL is down by four.

Having demonstrated a complete lack of interest in improving the library system, Mayor Williams now asks to be given permission to build a new central library.

Building the main library as planned by the Mayor would be a step backward to a smaller facility, in an inferior location, sandwiched into a mixed use complex, funded by leasing air rights. And apparently the Mayor and Trustees don’t feel that learning is its own reward; the new library they envision will be enhanced with jugglers and restaurants and, of course, shopping.

A library is a storehouse of the treasures of civilization, and thus on its own merits a highly diverting place. Let’s not send in the clowns.

Perhaps, like most citizens of D.C., the mayor probably doesn’t use the library. Those who have the option travel to the very adequate libraries maintained by tax dollars of surrounding jurisdictions such as Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery counties. Or they use the Internet in the comfort of their homes, offices or local cafes.

Fifty years ago, the city fathers conceived of a new central library as an engine of economic revitalization. Congress appropriated money specifically for a central library (raising the question of whether we are even legally able to move MLK). The architect was renowned Bauhaus master Mies van der Rohe, known for his maxim, “God is in the details.” Yet, as is the way with city fathers, the details were shortchanged from the beginning in favor of the bottom line. Banks of elevators were cut, the marble facing was deleted, a fifth floor never built. Even so, the library opened to accolades.

Over the 40 years since MLK opened, and while the city around it gradually came back to life, the library was left to deteriorate, its original vision compromised from the outset.

What reason is there to believe that a new library will fare any differently?

Indeed, the area around MLK has prospered. Our pioneering iconic building

is now perfectly located to provide maximum enrichment to the life of the city. Now is the time to thoroughly renovate the building to fulfill the vision of the architect, to honor the legacy of Dr. King and to show our children what it means to take care of things.

As deteriorated as it undeniably is, the claims that MLK is unsalvageable and terminally sick are false. A through renovation of MLK, addressing the problems patrons and librarians have identified over forty years of use, was in fact proposed six years ago by the Urban Design Committee of the American Institute of Architects. Since it was proposed in 2000, there have been many requests from Library Trustees, the Committee of 100 and ordinary library-going citizens to have this study “costed-out.” Mayor Williams has steadfastly refused.

Perhaps the mayor’s greatest failure in terms of the library was the rejection of this study.

Everyone wants a better library. Many disagree with the mayor about the best way to get one. The community has been kept out of the process of determining what exactly would make a better library and thus they have many questions about the advisability of what the Mayor has planned.

After nearly eight years of his neglect, Mayor Williams simply has no standing when it comes to the library. His legislation should be dismissed out of hand.

Mayor Anthony Williams published an op ed in the Washington Post on June 13 arguing that the District needs a new Library at the Downtown Convention Center site.

The Mayor’s op ed is full of half truths and outright misrepresentations. He says, for example, that the Mies van der Rohe building has “little architectural significance.” Tell that to the Committee of 100 on the Federal City that recently testified that “MLK is a great example of austere but elegant ‘International School’ architecture in a city largely filled with neo-classical and baroque buildings.”

The Mayor complains about the “awful conditions of the current Martin Luther King Jr. Library” when he produced those very conditions by failing to maintain the building. Indeed, in 2003, the Mayor actually recommended a cut of one million dollars to the Library’s operating budget, when he had already pared it to the bone in previous years.

We thought then, and still think, that the Mayor had cooked up a real estate deal involving this very well-situated and valuable property, and was simply trying to evict the present tenants with time honored slumlord tactics – hasten the decay of the building by refusing maintenance, and evict the tenants to protect them from unsafe conditions.

The Mayor also cites the Blue Ribbon Task Force as though it is a fount of authority on the issue, when the Task was flatly told (before their work even started) that the decision to build a new Library had already been made. Subsequently, the Mayor permitted no one to investigate or assess any alternatives, and extended that policy to the so-called “listenings” in which any citizen who raised the possibility of rehabbing MLK was silenced.

Thus, the decision to build a new Library has very little to do with producing a warm, welcoming, educationally useful Library, and is very much more a real estate deal packaged and planned at least two years ago. That there has been no needs assessment done- ever – points to the bankrupt rationale for building an entirely new Library.

The Mayor claims that he wants a “sunny and airy” new Library “filled with the latest technology,” and we agree that this is indeed desirable. However, the plan to rehabilitate the MLK that we have recently unearthed (following this entry) made by architect Kent Cooper, fulfills all of the requirements for an “airy” library “filled with the latest technology” and at a cost that would come at thirty percent less than that of building an entirely new Library.

This would represent a savings amounting to at least 60 million dollars (depending on the true costs of building new), and could be applied to eliminating the extraordinarily high adult illiteracy rate in the District, that, if we add teens and children, engulfs 62 percent of the District’s population. The costs to the District of this high rate of illiteracy are incalculable, but surely the mayor would want that 60 million dollar savings to be applied to eliminating this shocking social problem, rather than building a new Downtown Library for the few who would need or use it.

A new Library Downtown, however, will not provide resources to people who have these needs, most of whom go to their neighborhood libraries for help.

Meanwhile, the DC Library Renaissance Project has been pressing the Library Trustees for two years to provide such programs, but has been ignored by Trustees more interested in an expensive and needless Library Palace, rather than serving those whose voices have been muted or stilled for lack of local Library service, and who are denied the literacy that would enable them to speak for themselves.

Architect Kent Cooper recently released an expanded version of his 2000 feasibility study for rehabilitating the MLK Jr. library. It offers an alternative to a new downtown central library for the District of Columbia. Architect David Hamilton provided the additional drawings.

Read the study in PDF form.

WHAT MLK MEMORIAL COULD BE:

This renovated downtown flagship library is the vision that the mayor doesn’t want you to see!

Teach-In: How to Revitalize MLK

Wednesday, June 7 @ 6:30 p.m.

Carnegie Science Building

1530 P St., NW

Free and Open To The Public

Come see the downtown library renovation design that the mayor doesn’t

want you to know about. Learn the history of the first public building in

the country dedicated to slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King,

Jr., the only library in the world designed by famed architect Ludwig Mies van der

Rohe, and the first District building constructed under Home Rule.

Renderings by David Hamilton, Jin Hee Kim and Jongyan Kim.

Architect’s vision of 2nd Floor Reading Room Atrium with skylight over the new 5th floor.

Undertaken by local architects at the library’s request in 2000, this

design study for the renovation of MLK library was created in

collaboration with library staff and users, resolving the problems they

identified in an innovative and dramatic fashion. Overlooked at the time

and ignored since, you can see the vision for MLK’s future that the mayor’s “Blue Ribbon” library task force was not shown.

Become fully informed about all options before the June 15 City Council

hearing on the mayor’s plan to abandon the historic, stand-alone MLK

library in favor of a new central library to be part of “mixed use”

development at the site of the old convention center. Your questions and

concerns will be addressed by Kent Cooper, AIA, original lead architect of

the design study, in an open Q & A.

Sponsored by the DC Library Renaissance Project

For more information, contact Robin Diener at 202/387-7776

or [email protected]