LA Wants To Name Library for Bradbury

Future Ray Bradbury branch library?

At their August 9 meeting the Los Angeles Public Library’s Board of Library Commissioners approved the first step in a process that will lead to renaming its Palms-Rancho Park Library after Ray Bradbury. (See the supporting documents here [PDF file].) It’s the branch closest to his Cheviot Hills home and already houses the “Ray Bradbury Meeting Room and Terrace,” dedicated in 2007 at the request of the Friends of the Palms-Rancho Park Branch.

The city’s process for naming a branch library after an individual begins with a written recommendation to the Board of Library Commissioners about the person’s contributions to humanity, the city, the library or the community:

The justification…should demonstrate that the character and achievements of the individual set standards of excellence, served as a role model, and reflected the principles and ideals of American democracy, its diversity and plurality.

Now that it has been approved by the Board, the recommendation will be posted for three months in all LA city libraries and on the LAPL website. The staff will consider public comments, then submit a report to the Board for its consideration.

Bradbury’s LA city councilmember, Paul Koretz, and the Westside Neighborhood Council have already thrown their support behind the idea.

Koretz is also working with the Bradbury family to name the Central Library Plaza (in downtown LA) after the late author.

Coincidentally, the Palms-Rancho branch adjoins the park where LASFS was meeting when I joined in 1970. We met in a low-slung community building (not the library) on Thursdays, the same night kids came to the park to race their moto-cross bicycles — one memorably riding his bike across the roof of our building during a LASFS meeting.

The club soon moved.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

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