SAVE OUR D.C. LIBRARY!

The DC Public Library's (DCPL) Master Facilities Plan proposes CLOSING the Juanita E. Thornton-Shepherd Park Library. The Friends of the Shepherd Park Library are organizing to save our library–sign our petition to tell DCPL to save our branch!

When the Shepherd Park Library opened in 1990, it culminated residents' five-year struggle with the landowner's plan for a Wendy's on the site. Students from Shepherd Elementary School took their "Books Not Burgers" campaign to the City Council, aided by savvy adults such as Juanita E. Thornton, the library's namesake. This library has been and continues to be a community resource. 

The DCPL Master Facilities Plan would close our library–the only full-service library it plans to close. They would build a new library for Brightwood Park and Manor Park. While there is a genuine need for new libraries, including in these neighborhoods, enfranchising areas of the city while disenfranchising another is myopic. This plan creates a vast new library catchment area and needlessly pits several DC neighborhoods against each other.

DCPL placed closing our library in the city's capital budget WITHOUT engaging Shepherd Park community members. Those who would be most impacted by this decision have not been given a meaningful way to share their feedback with DCPL. At this time, DCPL has not made any effort to measure the impact of closing our library. 

Shepherd Park library is highly used by residents in not only Shepherd Park but also Colonial Village, North Portal Estates, North Takoma, and the new residents of Walter Reed. In the last pre-Covid ranking, 2019, the library's use fell squarely in the middle of all 25 branches on four of the five criteria gauging library use -- visits, materials checked out, computer use, and program participation. It was in the first wave of libraries reopened after COVID shut down much of D.C. Our library doubled its circulation in the spring quarter of 2021. Recently it had one of the top three totals of Spanish-language titles in the DCPL system. It also is closer to its pre-pandemic circulation level than any other branch, as of spring 2022. 

Closing our library will deprive our residents of a neighborhood center. It will put a library beyond the reach of children, walkers, and those in the northern part of the ward. 

Tell Richard Reyes-Gavilan, Executive Director of DCPL not to close or move the Juanita Thornton-Shepherd Park Public Library.