Seeking to Turn a Page on Disrepair
After Languishing for Years, the District's Libraries Are Getting New Attention

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page DZ10

 At the Robert L. Christian Community Library one day last week, Dennis C. Johnson sat in the main reading room, eager for customers.

But in nearly three hours, only four patrons came into Johnson's tiny library at 13th and H streets NE, and three of them  left shortly after getting there. They didn't hang around because the library's three computers -- free for public use -- were down. A worm detected on a server and other problems disrupted all 440 computers in the District's public libraries for most of last month, and R.L. Christian  lost Internet access.

As branch manager, Johnson has tried his best to make his 5,000-book library a safe, clean haven for the neighborhood, decorating the red-carpeted reading area with two lamps from home, keeping a donated goldfish named Big Goldie in an aquarium to capture children's attention and overstuffing the place with college financial aid books, black history hardbacks and classic John Steinbeck paperbacks.

But no amount of decorative flourishes can hide the building's neglect. The blue aluminum-and-plexiglass structure looks older than its 23 years, its bubble-shaped windows caked an unnatural, murky brown. At one corner window, someone fired a bullet that left a silver dollar-size hole in the plexiglass, a scar that has been there since Johnson became branch manager in June.

"I look at it from time to time," Johnson said, "and shake my head."

The troubles at R.L. Christian illustrate the difficulties facing the city's public libraries, a 27-branch system that has struggled over the years with underfunding, understaffing, crumbling facilities and low use. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has focused increased attention on libraries in recent weeks, making new appointments to the library's board of trustees and announcing the formation of a task force to look into the system's strengths and weaknesses.

The state of the District's libraries has frustrated community activists and library patrons and staff members for years. In a city with a high illiteracy rate and a troubled public school system, Washington's neighborhood libraries are for the most part overlooked by many residents as hubs of community activity and extended education.

Johnson, a 64-year-old former principal of Ballou Senior High School, is a one-man information center, eager to hand out pamphlets and documents on city history, health care, scholarships and a host of other topics, but his reach is limited when the computers are down and his reading area is full of empty chairs. The library system has been allowed to languish not because of mismanagement, library supporters said, but because of a steady reduction in financial and political support from the current  and previous administrations.

One librarian, who did not want to be identified by name as criticizing the library system's problems, said staffing is so low that branches often open late or close early if a staffer calls in sick and a replacement can't be found.

  "We've made do with very little for a long time without complaining," the librarian said. "The libraries are just crying out for help."

The $28.6 million library system has shown signs of disrepair in a variety of ways. The District spends less than one percent of its overall budget on libraries. In contrast, Milwaukee's city libraries receive 1.6 percent of the overall budget; in Seattle, the figure is 1.7 percent, according to figures compiled last year by the D.C. library system. The nearly $32,000-a-year starting salary for a librarian with a graduate degree lags far behind what Montgomery County, Baltimore and Alexandria pay.

The Prince George's County Memorial Library System has fewer branches than the District's system does and received about $8 million less in fiscal 2004 than the District libraries did. But more books, tapes and other materials were checked out in the Prince George's system last year than in the District's: 3.9 million compared with the city's 1.1 million. The county's starting salary for librarians, $36,018, is higher than the District's.

  In 1975,  the equivalent of about  620 full-time  employees worked in 20 District library locations. Today, 431 employees operate 27 sites.

The head of the city's library system, Molly Raphael, announced her retirement last year and is  the director of the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Ore. That library system has fewer branches than the District has, but it has a $45 million budget, and almost 18 million items were checked out of it last year. Raphael said only sustained, long-term investment in all aspects of the D.C. libraries will revive them.

  "Even with investment, it's going to take some time before it can be built back up again," she said in a recent phone interview.

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown, rows of little-used wooden card catalogues take up space. Officials cannot afford the more than $65,000 it would cost to remove the files from the granite floor.

It took years for one neighborhood library in Northeast to enter the computer age. Without a computer for staff members or patrons, librarians at the cramped 120-square-foot Deanwood Kiosk had to keep track of books with paper and pen. New kiosk manager Lisa Hook started using a library-issued laptop late last year.

"The library of the capital of the nation should set an example for all of the libraries in the country," said Leonard Minsky, director of the D.C. Library Renaissance Project, an advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader in December 2002. "We should be a model for other libraries to emulate. Right now, we're at the bottom of the list."

Nader's group has rallied patrons to the cause of increasing library funding -- and drawn more attention to the declining state of the system. The group runs a Web site, www.savedclibraries.org, on which visitors can watch a slide show spotlighting the disrepair at many branches. The photos show empty shelves and damaged carpet at the Anacostia branch and phoneless phone booths at the King library.

Richard Jackson, interim library director, said the library system recently developed a plan to address the lack of resources, calling for a $10.2 million increase in funding over three years to boost staffing and materials and make other improvements. He said library officials plan to present their request to the D.C. Council later this month.

"We're one of the few free services where one can walk up and actually see their tax dollars at work by actually walking away with materials," Jackson said.

City officials said the idea behind the proposed new task force is to explore ways to modernize and rejuvenate the system's buildings and operations. The task force, which is in the initial planning stages, will have from 14 to 16 members and might include representatives of the library system's board as well as experts from the business and nonprofit communities.

"We're hoping to bring in some of the very best people around the country to look at how we can refurbish and recommit ourselves to our libraries," Williams said.

Some library advocates support the mayor's plans for a task force. Miles Steele III, president of the Federation of Friends of the Library, calls it an overdue step in the right direction. "I think it's a good idea when anyone stands up and has something to say about the libraries. In the past, we've been shuffled to the back somewhere," Steele said.

But others, including some librarians and former staff members, said they are skeptical of the mayor's commitment to libraries.

Last year, the D.C. Council restored nearly $1 million to the library system's operating budget for fiscal 2004 that the mayor had proposed cutting, and added funds. Library officials said that if the budget cuts had been approved by the council, they would have been forced to close two branches. Previous cuts caused most city libraries to close one additional day a week and led to the system's less-than-convenient hours of operation, in which 21 neighborhood libraries went from being open 52 hours per week to 40 hours per week.

Changes are in store, including major renovations or rebuilding at four branches in Southeast, Northeast and Northwest.

City officials are pursuing the idea of building a new central library downtown in a 50,000-square-foot area where the old convention center sits, though plans are  in the conceptual stage. The city is not opposed to mixed-use development at the new library and some branches, which means the library could share space with residences, retail or city offices or recreation centers. But that idea has generated controversy among some library advocates who worry that private development will get the better end of the deal.

R.L. Christian is getting a face-lift, Johnson said. Thanks in part to a $15,000 donation from Jane Lang and her husband, Paul Sprenger, trustees of the Sprenger Lang Foundation, the library will close for about two weeks this month to get a fresh coat of paint, new carpeting and, he said, new windows.