Washington, DC, ALA 2007: Cooper's Challenge

As the DC Public Library makes up for lost time, community expectations compound

By Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 6/1/2007

A funny thing happened while the District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL), already suffering from deteriorated facilities and systems, slogged through stasis (and three interim directors) after the 2003 departure of Director Molly Raphael. Mayor Anthony Williams presided over the city's economic turnaround—or, some charged, cozied up to developers—and then focused on neighborhood issues, including new resources for DCPL, in his second term.

As the Williams-appointed library board and task force prepared ambitious plans for a new central library and revamped system, the city boom continued. Now DCPL, with many of its 27 locations long overdue for updates and with Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper on board since July 2006, finds itself in an enviable if not quite comfortable position. It owns some valuable sites, including an outdated central library in an unloved but architecturally notable building, but the future of those sites remains controversial. This despite the task force's endorsement of a plan for an ambitious new main library, for which the mayor nearly won city council approval in December 2006. The city council passed a plan to market library properties aggressively.

However, Williams's anointed successor lost to Adrian Fenty, who has a different, though supportive, library agenda. Now, DCPL leaders recognize that grand plans must be preceded by steady fixes. They're working to upgrade facilities, processes, and leadership; basic functions like the library's web site, ILS, and procurement require significant changes.

The mailing of overdue notices, suspended for eight years owing to budget cuts, was reinstituted in April 2006, before Cooper's arrival. But she's already presided over some palpable corrections. Systemwide Wi-Fi was added last September, and Sunday hours—a city council response to community concern—were restored a month later. Downloadable audio began May 1. An expected budget boost will enable Cooper to emphasize one of her signature goals, service to children and youth. But, in a place as complicated as DC, there's no magic wand.

Consider the fate of four branches. On December 30, 2004, DCPL closed them, announcing replacement libraries in 18 months. That schedule was upended by DCPL management changes, leaving those communities—three of them in poorer neighborhoods—in the lurch.

While the city in 2004 had allocated $5 million for each of the new branches—a sum quickly eclipsed by rising construction costs—the new DCPL board deemed the plans inadequate. Now, the replacements—funded at about $15 million each—are due by early 2010, but the communities have already relied on bookmobile service and, finally this spring, interim libraries. (The five-year capital budget proposes $170 million more for branches; a good chunk has been funded.)

The grand opening of an interim library in hardscrabble Anacostia in Southeast DC brings LJ to Washington at the end of March, the same day, not coincidentally, of the library board's bimonthly meeting there. The longstanding brick branch sits shuttered behind a fence, with a colorful banner pointing visitors down the hill to the interim facility. (The building, which suffered from a frequently flooded basement, should be demolished by the end of July.)

Balloons garnish the wooden stairway and interior of the temporary library. Some books are displayed face out. Over the course of the day, school and adult groups meet for classes and performances. Fenty and other politicos express their appreciation. Cooper, in her ninth month at DCPL after an uneven stint at the Brooklyn Public Library, NY, asks for a “library cheer.” The response could be louder.

Washingtonians haven't become accustomed to cheering for libraries. Still, as the day progresses, branch users seem satisfied, especially those at the bank of 20 computers. Some DCPL branches have as few as four computers, and those don't always work.

Eleven board members, and more than 30 audience members, squeeze into the back of a building that, like the other interims, lacks meeting space. “It was wonderful to see this place packed with children,” says board president John Hill, whose upbeat assessment is later tempered by recognition of remaining challenges.

Cooper has good news to report: a 12 percent proposed increase in city support, which would bring the overall budget to $47.6 million. The library would add 41 FTE employees, an 8.2 percent increase, to 541. The $5.3 million overall new funding, Cooper says, would buy additional technology, including 330 computers; support children, youth, and teens; and foster the library as a community place.

“I'm personally delighted with the proposed budget,” declares Richard Huffine, president of the DCPL Federation of Friends, noting that the permanent adjustment to DCPL's funding base will guarantee Sunday hours and facility support. Huffine, a federal government librarian and the closest thing to a board gadfly, has pushed DCPL to be more publicly accountable.

DCPL's physical plant is on the mend, Cooper reports, noting that no branches closed in January for lack of heat, while the two that closed in February were back in four hours. Six elevators in the system were on schedule to be repaired. Disorderly conduct statistics were up, but Cooper is nonplussed: “It's probably that we're reporting it more.”

In the audience is Michael Ciccone, the new associate director for collections, just arrived from the New York Public Library, as well as a new acting IT director. Elissa Miller also has been hired from the nearby Arlington Public Library, VA, to supervise new library services, and Anne Menzies, from the Salt Lake City Public Library, will oversee the branches. DCPL purged five top managers before Cooper came to town, and she installed Bridget Bradley of the Urban Libraries Council and Nancy Davenport, formerly of the Council of Library and Information Resources, on her team.

The board members in Anacostia must address a proposed policy regarding mixed-use ventures on library property. While mixed-use may seem sensible to urban theorists, in DC it is politically charged. After all, in January 2006, the city council agreed to establish a task force to explore mixed-use projects combining libraries with “revenue-producing ventures” and selling or leasing library air rights and property; under Fenty, the task force has essentially been shelved. “The library will not take the lead, but it will be a participant if there is community interest,” Cooper asserts. “As Chairman Hill has said, this board is about library service, not development.”

For now, DCPL's only mixed-use project involves a planned parks facility to replace a tiny library kiosk. Other efforts have fallen flat. Last year, for instance, a nonprofit organization announced plans for a housing project incorporating the now-closed Benning branch but backed down after local opposition.

In the audience is DCPL's most persistent critic, Robin Diener, the main staffer at the DC Library Renaissance Project (LRP; www.savedclibraries.org), formed by Ralph Nader in 2002 to bolster the library. LRP has criticized DCPL for focusing on new buildings before solving pressing problems and examining past mismanagement.

Diener confers with Rick Tingling-Clemmons, an activist from the Benning area, in nearby Southeast DC. “We feel for some odd reason our libraries are under attack,” Tingling-Clemmons, a man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and dreadlocks, tells the board. He wants the branch building reopened to serve local organizations. A young man who played on a chess team that met at the library had recently been murdered. “If he had a place to go...,” Tingling-Clemmons laments.

The soft-voiced Hill is solicitous. “I know you're very sincere,” he says. But, he argues, the new library will be a vast improvement.

“We plan to fight you every inch of the way,” Tingling-Clemmons insists.

“I hope that what you do does not cause the community to wait any longer,” Hill replies.

An Anacostia resident offers a spontaneous rebuttal. “I'm very pleased with this library,” she declares. “When our new library comes, I'll be even happier.”

In the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown, Cooper's office is enormous, befitting an oversize building that is highly inefficient. She's more comfortable, though, than in Brooklyn, which she left some 18 months before her five-year contract ended. Interviewed by DC's library task force about Brooklyn innovations, she took an interest in the director spot when her relationship with the Brooklyn board got rocky. A five-year, million-dollar contract didn't hurt.

In Portland, OR, where she'd built a national reputation heading the Multnomah County Library, Cooper observes, “I saw the kind of passion I see here.” Still, in Washington, the passion for local politics doesn't guarantee high expectations for the library.

“People complain less than I think they should,” says Cooper, citing carpeting in one branch “that's held together with duct tape” and a failure, until she arrived, to provide access to the online archive of the Washington Post.

Similarly, the DCPL web site is balky, designed on the cheap, and should be revamped by summer. The staff intranet was finally updated in April. By the American Library Association (ALA) conference in late June, Cooper hopes that the SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS, installed in 1999, will meet current standards, offering, for example, book jackets and reviews. “Our goal and SirsiDynix's is that none of us are embarrassed,” Cooper says.

She must move more subtly regarding DCPL's unusually high proportion of MLS holders among the staff. It's at 44 percent, which means that DCPL's personnel budget is well above average, even as the library has a healthy per capita budget, booming from $49.56 in 2004 to about $80 if next year's funding is approved. Cooper expects that attrition will bring realignment.

Meanwhile, DCPL's new budget allots more money for training. “We need to train staff more, ask more of them, pay them more,” says Cooper. Toni White-Richardson, president of the union that represents DCPL professionals and paraprofessionals, says library workers seek new opportunities for professional growth.

White-Richardson offers a positive take on staff longevity, citing the value of institutional memory. Others have been more critical. Huffine says Cooper must do more to connect with staff and lift morale. LRP's Diener last year charged that “nepotism, absenteeism, and theft are rampant” at MLK and remains skeptical about staff inertia. (LJ's impromptu visits to several branches suggested generally good service, though hardly uniform.)

“The problem here is less dollars and much more process,” says Cooper, leaning forward for emphasis. “This is the only place that hasn't figured out you have to buy books all year.” That's partly because of the cumbersome procurement process. Orders not delivered by the end of the fiscal year in September are automatically cancelled, so DCPL has typically stopped ordering books in July. The City Council is expected to reform the procurement system this summer.

Cooper and board president Hill have a mutually appreciative relationship, and Hill's understated demeanor does not obscure his role as a city power broker. Trained as a CPA, Hill was executive director of the District of Columbia Control Board, the federally mandated agency that oversaw the city's budget in the late 1990s when Williams was the city's chief financial officer, independent from Mayor Marion Barry.

Now Hill is CEO of the Federal City Council (FCC), a nonprofit group that has organized business and government leaders to advocate for the Washington Metro, public charter schools, and redevelopment of Union Station, among many projects. The FCC operates discreetly—an unelected power elite—but its history is titled Make No Little Plans.

Hill says Williams finally recognized what new and renovated libraries did for other cities, so the mayor invited him to lead a new board. The FCC web site announces that Hill “and a number of members have been deeply involved in a major effort to rethink and restructure the District's public library system.” Two are on the board; more were on the mayor's task force, and they can help with things like procurement, facilities, and fundraising.

To envision a new library for the city, Hill and task force members—sans anyone from the LRP—visited major urban libraries from Seattle to Miami in 2005. The “Blueprint for Change” report, written by Dubberly Garcia Associates [note: the original version of this article erroneously attributed the report to former St. Louis Public Library director Glen Holt], teems with examples: mixed-use libraries in Miami, homework help in Brooklyn, bulk best sellers in Queens, NY. After a draft was issued, locals finally got input in “listening sessions” scheduled with pressure from the city council. Low expectations emerged even then. “It's hard for people to think about teen rooms and puppet theaters when bathrooms don't work and roofs leak,” Hill observes. “I learned there's a lot of anger in the community, that the only reason anyone would be interested in the library is as a potential development ploy,” he adds.

Hill has little time for LRP's criticism, suggesting Diener “has an axe to grind” because the library has rebuffed an LRP plan to coordinate citywide literacy efforts. Though Diener called the report a “blueprint for cynicism” because it didn't draw sufficiently on local residents, library advocates, and staff and bypassed issues like homelessness and the valuable Washingtoniana Division, she's become more diplomatic. At the city council meeting April 26, she says “many, many good things have started to happen” and praises Cooper for “an outstanding job.” She's less positive about the board, however.

Some DCPL branches are within walking distance of one another, which suggests the system might be overbranched, but the buildings are small, and Cooper's challenge is to improve rather than winnow facilities. “It ought to be a given that our libraries are clean, safe, and open when they should be. Until recently, we haven't met that standard,” Cooper tells the city council on April 26, pledging progress on bathrooms, carpeting, and the HVAC.

Exterior improvements at the historic Mount Pleasant branch are nearly completed. And the interior renovation of the Southeast branch, a Carnegie building, is due by the ALA conference, thanks to a partnership coordinated by LJ with architect Henry Myerberg in collaboration with Beatty, Harvey Associates and numerous vendor donors.

The interim Tenley branch, which occupies a storefront in the city's Northwest section, points to the future, with track and indirect lighting, a stylish clock, and the system's first self-check (barcode) machine. A short drive away, the Shepherd Park branch, an oasis among fast-food joints, has nice plants and art, but the YA loft lacks ambience, and a sign on an armchair warns, “No sleeping in the library.“

Even progress isn't always noticed. Vincent Morris, of the Friends of the Northeast Branch, tells the council how an actress had appeared at a “beautiful” library program tied to the National Endowment for the Arts–supported “Big Read,” featuring Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. “The only problem was that there were only about six people to hear it,” says Morris, who suggests more money for marketing. DCPL actually has an active PR department; a receptive public may take time to develop.

“When we hired Ginnie Cooper, we thought our job would get easier, but we were wrong,” Hill observes. “It actually gets harder, because the pace quickens, and the need to help her has also increased.”

Union head White-Richardson is cautious, unwilling to turn in a report card yet. “You may have all the vision in the world,” she says, “but if you don't have buy-in from the citizens and the politicians, you can be stonewalled.”

As DCPL moves forward, Cooper welcomes scrutiny, since it suggests a culture of raised expectations: “The better we get, the more you're going to hear requests about [improved] buildings and the more you're going to hear complaints about what we do,” she notes at the April hearing.

Four days after that city council hearing, DCPL faces an unexpected facilities disaster, when a fire decimates the historic Georgetown branch. The building had been in the first stage of a $6.9 million renovation, and the cause of the fire remains in dispute.

The damage was extensive, but the historic documents are recoverable. Mayor Fenty quickly announced that he'd direct excess revenue to rebuild the branch and the historic Eastern Market, hit by a separate, devastating fire. While the Washington Post praised Fenty for his response, it called the city's lack of urgency regarding other closed libraries “appalling.” So, for DCPL, the pace—of challenge as well as progress—continues to quicken.