Ralph Nader Aiding DC Public Library

-- Library Journal, 12/17/2002

Ralph Nader, who found fame in the 1960s as a consumer advocate, is stepping back into his role as public watchdog, this time as a paladin of the financially strapped District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL). Nader, a long-time citizen of Washington, DC, told the press that "reading about the state of libraries made me blush with shame." Nader grew up within the shadow of his Connecticut boyhood's town library and said that, next to his parents, libraries were the largest influence on his development and continued to be a weapon in his arsenal as a consumer advocate. Nader is setting up the D.C. Library Renaissance Project, which will aim to raise as much as $350,000 to help libraries with everything from operating hours and book budgets to physical repairs to buildings. To launch the program, Nader December 11 hosted a $1000-a-plate dinner to bring the problem to the attention of the district's upper crust in hopes they will whip out their check books. The event raised more than $70,000.

DCPL Director Molly Raphael told LJ Nader is setting up a two-prong project to last 18 months. "The two things he wants to do," she said, "is organize at the neighborhood level community support for the library, and do things to help raise people's expectations about what libraries are and can be." Raphael said that Nader wants to "go into neighborhoods and meet with branch staff and the community people involved with the library." The second prong is to try to attract resources from the private sector. "Nader told me months ago was that he's never seen a city where the civic leaders and people with financial resources are less engaged in the local community than in Washington," Raphael said. Nader attributes that to the number of people who move to the area as adults because of the federal government but never get involved on the community level.