Members of an activist group that won an election battle to shrink the size of the City Council took on the Enoch Pratt Free Library last night at a public meeting in South Baltimore.

Chanting and waving placards that read "Save Our Libraries," nearly two dozen members of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) barged into a meeting at the Pratt's Light Street branch and derailed a discussion about the future of city library services.

About 30 city residents and library officials sat as ACORN Chairman Willie E. Ray and member Glenn Scott took center stage, voicing disapproval with the composition of the library's self-governing board and last year's closure of five branches -- Dundalk, Fells Point, Gardenville, Hollins-Payson and Pimlico.

During the five-minute takeover, Scott, with his 7-year-old son in tow, presented library officials with an ACORN report card that gave them a failing grade in several areas, including minority representation on the board, the subject of a lawsuit filed by the group in April.

ACORN's lawyer has argued that Pratt's board of trustees violates the state's Library Act, which requires board members to reside in and be representative of the area served. Most of the trustees live in affluent pockets of North Baltimore, far from the shuttered library branches, ACORN maintains.

The report card had only one good grade -- an "A+" -- for "closing branches in low-income neighborhoods."

ACORN members said they resorted to the invasive tactic out of concern that low-income neighborhoods were being neglected in community forums -- including last night's session -- held by the Pratt to solicit input from city residents for future operations and development.

Scott described the process as "bogus" because library officials have failed to hold meetings in neighborhoods where libraries closed last year.

"They're talking about the future without talking to neighborhoods where they were closed," said Scott, a resident of Carrollton Ridge and former patron of the Hollins-Payson branch.

Carla D. Hayden, the Pratt's executive director, said the meetings were planned for library branches "in the four corners of the city" that could accommodate at least 100 people.

She also said ACORN already had made the same points before barging into the meeting last night, but hopes that the concern over branch closures and the need for improved services "gets to people who can affect our funding.