Officials Ask Residents to Consider A Brighter Future for H Street Library

Rita Thompson-Joyner, the D.C. Public Library's associate director of lifelong learning, spoke to neighborhood residents at a meeting at Miner Elementary School on Tuesday evening. The meeting was organized by the D.C. Office of Planning and the D.C. Public Library to inform residents about the city's plans for the library and to hear what types of services residents would like to see at an upgraded library.

The city is trying to figure out how best to include the R.L. Christian Library, at 1300 H St. NE, in its strategic plans for the revitalization of H Street: How big should an upgraded library be? Should it be a stand-alone building, or should it take up one floor in a multi-use building? Should a library be combined with a private cafe of some kind, or should it contain a conference room or party room that it would rent out to help raise revenue?

Also present at the meeting were Karina Ricks and Derrick Woody, staff members in the D.C. Office of Planning. They said the big problem will be finding the money needed to upgrade the library significantly.

Two of Robert Lee Christian's daughters were present — as was his grandson. All three spoke about their desire to see a library built that really honored Mr. Christian's memory.

Officials urged residents to let them know their wishes for the library by filling out surveys available at the library. They also said there would be more such meetings. Excerpts from Ms. Thompson-Joyner's comments follow...

To our chagrin, the city has not been able to fund the library at the level that would enable us to continue to maintain it in the way that it deserves to be maintained. Anybody going into the R.L. Christian Library today can see evidence of that. It's really a sad situation, and it's not gonna change until we get enough community uproar that convinces those who make decisions that the library really needs to be funded at the level that will enable us to do some of the things that we know need to be done. We have the talent to do it, we have the skills — it just can't be done without any funding. R.L. Christian isn't the only library that suffers such a crisis.

We did a strategic plan in 1999. In that effort, we had a 29-member community group that helped us come up with the library program at that time. We also had surveys that we asked community members to complete. We got back 3,479 surveys telling us what they'd like to see with our libraries.

The number one thing that people told us — the top priority was clean, safe, comfortable, attractive library buildings. That was above any books, or CDs, or any type of materials — that was above children's programming. It was even above computer use. We have tons of computer users in each day. But the building was the top priority. Therefore the library has embarked on a building program — we're calling it "Building Renewal." We've got a plan in place that, if funded, would be able to address each of our libraries over the next 10 to 12 years.

Already, we've done it in a small way, where we have closed down three libraries temporarily, this past fall. They just opened up a few weeks ago. We made their restrooms ADA compliant. We also did some painting and some other kinds of changes that would make it a more livable space, but these are minor renovations.

Later this year, we expect to do major changes to four buildings: the Benning Library is gonna be torn down, and a brand new one built. Same thing for the Tenley Library. We're gonna make major changes to the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library, and also to the Anacostia Library. Those are the first group. But what we're aiming to do is to seek funding so that each year we can address three to four libraries, and by the time a decade goes down, all of them will have been addressed.

A library needs to reflect its community. If there is a particular interest that you'd like to see made a priority, particularly when we get to looking at the list and may not have funding to do everything, it's important to us to know what the most important to you? What should we make sure that we include, if we can't get everything in there? §