The Ouachita Parish Library Board is moving at a snail’s pace toward getting a new Carver Branch Library, it’s so slow that one library supporter Maxine Tatum believes the Lord will call her home to glory before it gets done.
Mrs. Tatum is not alone in her frustrations about the Carver Library. She has been a supporter of the library for many years and clearly remembers when it was a one-room army barrack on N. 10th Street.
She has watched the library grow, begin to use computers, and expand its use.
In the Renwick community, when Maxine Tatum speaks people listen. She is well-read, articulate and knows how to rattle cages until she gets things done.
What she is upset about is the delay in plans to build a new branch facility near the present site. She says the need is present because the branch, presently being used by both Carroll High School and Carroll Jr. High students as well as the general public primarily in the Booker T. Renwick community, has outgrown its space.
Besides being a historic facility, the library has outgrown its storage capacity. It was once a depository for every physical copy of the Monroe Free Press and Monroe Dispatched. As the years passed, the library is pressed for space. Carver Branch even stored value first edition copies of Jet Magazine that covered decades.
Space is a problem. It needs more computers, technology rooms and meeting rooms for reading groups and after school study areas for students.
Maxine placed her hopes on plans police juror Pat Moore announced in recent years to build a new facility some where on Renwick Street. When Moore was elected State Representative for District 17, it seemed that the plans dropped.
She became disheartened this year when she learned that the Library Board planned to renovate and expand the 18th Street Library and once that was completed then “renovations” of Carver Branch would be next.
The word “renovations” wasn’t the original language. A new facility, much like the Ollie Burns facility on Highway 165, is needed.
Mrs. Tatum became even more frustrated last week when she attended a library board meeting only to learn that although the library board had begun plans to renovate 18th Street, it is now shelving those plans in favor of purchasing another building and starting the process all over again.
In Mrs. Tatum’s mind, that means a delay in upgrading the 18th Street branch pushes any expansions or “renovations” for the Carver/McDonald Branch further down the road.
So Mrs. Tatum is doing what she does best, making phone calls, and knocking on the doors of her neighbors to raise the Renwick community’s awareness that even though the Library board is headed by an African-American, no one seems to make it a higher priority.
Since the board is starting its 18th street plans over, why not move Carver/McDonald up on the list? It’s out of space…now.
When Mrs. Tatum started her door knocking, she started with a neighbor who lives three doors away from her home.
That neighbor is the publisher of the Free Press.
She plans to keep making noise until someone makes expanding Carver/McDonald a priority….
….in her lifetime.
When Maxine speaks, the people in the Renwick neighborhood listen.
..including the neighbor three-doors from her home.
