A Scene Report of Some DMV Libraries
8 February 2025
Choose 3 libraries. Write a profile for each one that describes the services and programs being offered. Of what's being offered, what's most noteworthy in your opinion?
Fredericksburg Branch Library
The Fredericksburg Branch Library, part of Central Rappahannock Regional Library (CRRL), is located in the heart of the city of Fredericksburg, itself serving as the center of the greater region that includes five other counties, though only two are officially part of the system. As such, the Fredericksburg Branch serves as an axis that a sizable portion of the system’s user base revolves around, with patrons from the surrounding localities choosing the branch to fulfill their needs. It’s also the branch that I currently work at. Even at 39,700 square feet spread across four floors (CRRL, n.d.), including a lower level and atrium theater, every available inch of every floor feels like a premium with how much goes on each day.
The first floor houses the circulation department and the adult fiction collections, but foot traffic for the front desk overwhelmingly outpaced by that for the computer lab, located right in the center of the floor past the front door, with two printers, and a desk for Adult Services staff stationed just nearby for assistance. The second floor is entirely devoted to Youth Services, with the sides devoted to juvenile and YA materials, respectively, and their requisite spaces: the Learn and Play Room for the children, and a devoted computer lab stationed adjacent to the Teen Zone. The third floor holds a second desk for Adult Services, to assist with the requisite adult nonfiction collection, as well as the Law Library, and the majority of numerous meeting spaces dotting the building. The lower level, often overlooked by most conventional users, houses the Virginiana Room, a depository of artifacts and genealogy records for the region, and two of the larger meeting rooms. As one of the few venues in the city that allow patrons to use their meeting spaces for free, meeting and study rooms see heavy use by both individual patrons and longstanding community organizations.
Many of the recurring programs held at the Fredericksburg Branch are what one would expect: storytimes, book clubs for teens and adults, ESL classes, conversation groups, game nights, a seed library, devoted tech support slots—the works. Since downtown Fredericksburg is just about the area in the region with the density resembling an urban metro, there is a sizable population of low income and unhoused folk who visit the branch almost every day. A handful of outreach services have been established to directly assist these patrons, including biweekly visits from the local Department of Social Services, tenant rights advisory meetings from a local law organization, and even free haircuts offered by a local barber school bimonthly. One specific systemwide arrangement that is likely designed for these patrons but benefits everyone is one that has few of the issues common guidance would caution against: copying and printing services are entirely free of charge—with a restriction of just black-and-white paper provided by the library.
John Marshall Library
The John Marshall Community Library, part of Fairfax County Public Library, is located in the Rose Hill neighborhood on the eastern edge of the county, just southwest of Alexandria. John Marshall is the very first library I worked at as a page, and despite getting to know the staff fairly well, I almost never heard much about the branch’s “actual” services. Though there wasn’t much for me to keep up with, since it’s a relatively small branch at 14,700 square feet (Woolsey, 2018), and as a community library it’s open for less hours than the county’s regional branches. Other than the extra addition that houses meeting spaces, the public floor is laid out over one big, airy room. The juvenile collection sits closest to the entrance, stretching to the right all the way towards a nook housing picture books and easy readers and a single early literacy computer; while the teen collection lies further in on the far left side of the branch, with a nook more akin to a lounge at the end, which has a flatscreen TV with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch consoles. Directly past the combination information and circulation desk is the adult collection with devoted sections for Korean and Vietnamese language books, and stuffed in a corner behind the desk are the computers and printers, an arrangement that still seems surreal after witnessing multiple branches with heavy computer usage.
It’s been long enough that I can’t remember what recurring services John Marshall offers offhand, but looking at the events page I could probably fit most of them in a single phrase: storytimes and playdates, dedicated seed library exchanges, and an English conversation club, all recurring each week. Something that I’m almost certain was not happening while I was there, though is the eBook Clinic—patrons who want to learn about borrowing eMaterials can make an appointment to bring their devices and passwords (the latter are likely forgotten at least half of the time) and receive a crash course on how to properly use the associated software (Fairfax County, n.d.). There’s an excess of evidence that eMaterials are taking patrons and subsequently collection budgets by storm—see this piece written by Kelly Jensen (2025) at Book Riot published just this week for some eye-bulging numbers—but the number of times I’d heard of eBooks even mentioned while I was working there could fit on one hand.
Quince Orchard Library
Quince Orchard Library, part of Montgomery County Public Libraries (MCPL), located on the very southwestern tip of Gaithersburg, Maryland. If that out-of-state location piques your curiosity, this is indeed a library I have not worked at—instead it’s one that I still am? was??? hoping to work at, and researched quite a bit as a result. It’s also one that I visited very briefly a couple weekends ago, giving me a minor window into its operations. Assuming the building hasn’t received any major renovations in the last quarter of a decade, Quince Orchard is almost 18,000 square feet (Hayes, 2000), which lined up with the “like a little bit bigger than John Marshall???” impression I got. Like John Marshall, the public floor is laid out over a single, rectangular-ish floor, but instead of entering from the corner one of the wide side, one enters from the shorter, which lets you see down the entire length of the library from the entrance.
Despite how small it is, Quince Orchard seems to have enough going on to rival a branch twice its size. Outside of the staple services you’d expect, there are a lot of offerings that I’ve seldom seen (or at least noticed) at other systems: a “Discovery Room” play space that can be reserved like a study room, a Chinese language collection specific to Quince Orchard, a dedicated assistive technology workstation, and even account management for the greater Washington metro system. There’s also no small amount of programming: a dedicated teen time twice a week, a fiber arts meetup, a mahjong club, therapy dog sessions, classic board game nights, a LEGO challenge, English conversation clubs, Sunday poetry afternoons, a teen writing workshop—and these are just the events that happen on a regular basis (MCPL, n.d.). It might seem like a shock that a small branch can consistently hold such a diverse array of events, but Quince Orchard is quite possibly in the prime place for it, as Gaithersburg has been consistently ranked as one of the most culturally diverse cities in the entire country for some time now (McCann, 2024).
References
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. (n.d.). Fredericksburg Branch. Retrieved February 4, 2025, from: https://www.librarypoint.org/locations/HDQTRS/
Fairfax County. (n.d.). John Marshall Library. Retrieved February 4, 2025, from: https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/branches/john-marshall
Hayes, P. (2000, January 12). Montgomery in brief. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2000/01/13/montgomery-in-brief/53e45327-c7e9-4197-bcbd-db567109706b/
Jensen, K. (2025, February 4). Your library’s hoopla digital collections are breaking their budget. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/library-hoopla-subscription-costs/
McCann, A. (2024, April 15). Most diverse cities in the U.S. WalletHub. https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690
Montgomery County Public Libraries. (n.d.). Quince Orchard Library. Retrieved February 4, 2025, from: https://montgomerycountymd.gov/library/branches/quinceorchard.html
Woolsey, A. (2018, October 26). John Marshall Library prepares for public after full makeover. Fairfax County Times. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/john-marshall-library-prepares-for-public-after-full-makeover/article_8776fd2c-d95f-11e8-8b63-f7f05b8979b8.html