In the wake of controversy over the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s April 10 decision to close five underused branch libraries, Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley has requested that the library postpone shutting any of them down until the end of the summer. Library spokesperson Judy Cooper confirmed June 6 that none of the branches would close before mid-August.
“There might be other community uses that we can place in those if we just had a little more time to focus on it,” O’Malley said in the June 7 Baltimore Sun. “In some neighborhoods, it’s not so much the loss of the branch that people are upset by as much as it is the loss of an after-school center for kids to go to do their homework.”
Residents of areas where the branches are slated to close have opposed the decision at public meetings and with petitions. Catherine Evans, president of the Friends of the Govans Branch, told the Sun she left a petition of 450 signatures protesting its closing at Pratt Director Carla D. Hayden’s office June 4.
At a June 7 meeting of citizens concerned about the closings, the head of a nonprofit learning center that replaced a Pratt branch in 1997 said that no alternative can sufficiently replace a closed library. Village Learning Place Executive Director Jennifer Feit said, “If you can find corporate sponsors and foundations, get them to sponsor a Pratt branch, not close the building.”
Posted June 11, 2001.