Transforming: Services

What’s in a Name? Rebuilding a Library named after Martin Luther King Jr.

Monday, June 27, 2022

9:00am – 10:00am

Location: Washington Convention Center, 145A

DC Public Library held hands at every level of our organization and community to design a modernized central library where our namesake - Martin Luther King, Jr. - would be front and center. Our goal was to go beyond visual representations and have MLK’s legacy permeate how we operated and what we offered. Learn about this multi-year process with activities and examples to bring back and honor the place-based history of your community.

Participants will leave this session being able to discuss the power of creating guiding principles at the outset of a project and when and how to revisit them; develop synergies between your programmatic approach and visual cues and physical spaces; and describe how a community’s past, present and future - it’s memory, identity, and aspirations for justice - can be infused into the character of a building.

Learning Objectives:

Discuss the power of creating guiding principles at the outset of a project and when and how to revisit them.
Develop synergies between your programmatic approach and visual cues and physical spaces.
Describe how a community’s past, present and future - its memory, identity, and aspirations for justice - can be infused into the character of a building.

Main Contact(s)

Maryann James-Daley

Director, Public Services -- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
DC Public Library

Speaker(s)

Maryann James-Daley

Director, Public Services -- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
DC Public Library

Moderator(s)

Maryann James-Daley

Director, Public Services -- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
DC Public Library

Speaker(s)

Kim E. Zablud, MLIS, PMP

Founder & Senior Consultant
Advancing with Purpose
Kerrie Cotten Williams

Head, Manuscript Division Reference & Reader Services Section
Library of Congress
RR

Rich Reyes-Gavilan

Executive Director
DC Public Library