On a sweltering Tuesday afternoon, Chante Richardson walked up two flights of concrete steps, past a sign reading “Happy 100th birthday Govans Branch!” and to a book drop that was filled to the brim with hardbacks and DVDs.

Richardson couldn’t fit the two volumes she was trying to return past a bulky copy of William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” and dozens of other books haphazardly jammed into the bin. With the doors of the Govans branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library locked, the 33-year-old Baltimore resident was not able to take back books she had checked out for her goddaughter or pick up scanned documents she had accidentally left last time she was there.

She tucked the books under her arm and resolved to try the Northwood branch, about two miles away, next.

But that library would be closed too.

Six of Baltimore City’s 22 public library branches were shuttered as of Tuesday, according to Meghan McCorkell, the chief of marketing, communications and strategy for the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Five branches — Govans, Northwood, Canton, Hamilton and Reisterstown Road — were closed because of broken air conditioning systems, McCorkell said. The sixth, Clifton, is closed long-term due to other building issues.

For patrons like Richardson, books are only one of many purposes a library serves. She uses her library to print and scan documents and to hop on a computer to host tutoring sessions for students. The city encourages residents seeking relief from extreme heat to visit their local library branch — a particularly vital service as high temperatures reached the mid-90s this week. But with the closures, all that is not possible at about 1 in 4 of the library system’s branches.

“We haven’t gotten the funding we needed to maintain our buildings,” McCorkell said. “Many of our buildings are 100 years old, the youngest are 50 to 60 years old.”

The city’s Department of General Services, which funds the Enoch Pratt Free Library, has not budgeted enough money to upgrade and fix HVAC systems, preventing branches from opening. It would cost an estimated $1.2 million to replace the HVAC system for the Northwood branch alone, McCorkell said. The library system received a total of $1.2 million in capital improvement funds for all of its branches last year, she said.

McCorkell said the library system also applied for federal dollars from the federal American Rescue Plan through the mayor’s office to fix HVAC issues but has not received approval. The office of Mayor Brandon Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The extent of the problems with air conditioning varies by location and vendors are working on repairs, with work at one location paused as crews wait for parts, a DGS spokesperson wrote in an email. When branches will reopen will depend on repair needs, according to the email.

“Some may open by the end of the week, some may take longer if special parts are required. DGS is working closely with Libraries to provide routine updates on the status of each branch. The age of the systems and components may extend lead times due to availability and supply issues with Covid,” the email said.

Hamilton’s and Canton’s HVAC systems went down during last week’s storms, McCorkell said. The Northwood branch’s HVAC system is original to the 62-year-old building and needs to be replaced, according to the DGS spokesperson. The problem at Govans appears not to be an easy fix either, McCorkell said. At Reisterstown Road, the system needs new parts that are difficult to find due to age.

“I know infrastructure is at a critical state pretty much all over the city, so we understand this is a problem for many, many agencies,” McCorkell said. “It’s not just us.”

Debbie Land, a 54-year-old Cedarcroft neighborhood resident, said she typically goes to the Govans or Roland Park library branches at least once a week.

“We need places where people can go that are cool, where they get the information they need and use computers,” Land said. “It’s not fair these libraries are closed and not funded. I see libraries as an important equalizer in people having access to information.”

The library system is considering stopgap solutions funded by private donors, McCorkell said.

Temporary air conditioning units installed at Govans and Northwood were meant to alleviate the problem in the short term, but they proved too much for the old buildings’ electrical systems to support, McCorkell said. Officials are considering finding temporary locations in the neighborhoods with closed branches where they can offer library services should the timeline for repairs extend too long.

“We understand libraries are critical to our communities,” McCorkell said. “Pratt staff has made some pretty heroic efforts to keep our buildings open. We’ll work nonstop to try to find ways to provide services to our community.”

alissa.zhu@thebaltimorebanner.com

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