Silver Spring Library turns 75 years young!
Cultural events enhance literacy programs
by Tamra Tomlinson
On a brilliant, windy Saturday afternoon, sunlight pours in through the high, rectangular windows of the Silver Spring Library. Snippets of conversation in several languages float up between the stacks. Old and new friends, from toddlers to seniors greet each other and sample richly decorated cakes on a table near the circulation desk. A little girl exclaims, "I love books! I love books! That's why I got three!"
| Photo: Tooky Bunnag |  |
| The Silver Spring Library's winter family festival series celebrating world cultures featured Brazil on February 17. |
Downstairs, the Silver Spring chapter of Friends of the Library and the Silver Spring Library Advisory Committee stage a used book sale and a bake sale. Visitors scoop up cookies and cupcakes, histories and "how-to"s. In the adjacent meeting room, Devonna Rowe unpacks a trunk of masks, instruments and lengths of vibrantly patterned cloth in preparation for her presentation of "Songs of Africa" as a staff member circulates among the crowd upstairs, inviting parents and children to stay for the performance.
These scenes were part of a day that was full and energetic even by the standards of such a busy place, as staff, patrons and county officials celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Silver Spring Library on February 10.
Invited guests for the event included Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett, Delegate Tom Hucker, Gary Stith, director of the Silver Spring Regional Services Center, Montgomery County Council members Valerie Ervin and Marc Elrich. Also present were members of the Library Advisory Committee and Althea Grey-McKenzie, liason of the Montgomery County Library Board, members of the Sliver Spring chapter of Friends of the Library and Maryland state Sen. Jamie Raskin.
| Photo: Tooky Bunnag |  |
During his remarks, Raskin praised the library founders' "visionary investment" in pursuing the establishment of a library in a place that was essentially countryside, in times that were economically lean. Ervin presented a proclamation of the Montgomery County Council affirming the library's role as a community resource and pledging the council's continued support for it. Leggett cataloged some of the improvements will be required in order to allow the library to keep pace with the demands being placed on it by the diverse uses it serves. These included longer hours, a larger collection, greater investments in technology and more space.
Sliver Spring Library manager Carol Legarreta praised the Silver Spring community's continued support and dedication to their library as well as their "clear vision" for its future at a time when there are so many other outlets for obtaining information and media. She said that observing the ways in which the library serves so many purposes for so many people in the Silver Spring community is "energizing" and that she was pleased to work with a community of patrons "who are not afraid to ask for what they want."
| Photo: Tooky Bunnag |  |
A history of the Silver Spring library, by Robert, E. Oshel, Ph.D. credits the Silver Spring Woman's Improvement Club with establishing the Silver Spring library in 1931. It was originally established as a children's library and served its first patrons on July 1 of that year with a collection of 600 books, housed in three rooms of the East Silver Spring School. After the library's initial success, the Woman's Improvement Club began, through card parties, bake sales, rummage sales and benefit movies to raise funds for a permanent home for the library. By Dec. 1, 1931, the library's collection had expanded to 1,000 volumes and moved to a new single-room location within the school.
On Sept. 15, 1934, the library moved into the renovated first floor of the Jesup Blair Community House — the former home of Violet Blair Janin at Georgia Avenue and Eastern Avenue, which had been donated to the state of Maryland after her death. In 1957, the library relocated to its current site at 8901 Colesville Road, in a building designed by architect Rhees Burket.
| Photo: Tooky Bunnag |  |
As a consequence of the multiple and expanding roles that the library has taken on, its functions have outgrown its physical capacity. This problem will be addressed in the next two years, as the Montgomery County Planning Board has proposed the relocation of the Silver Spring Library to a much larger site within downtown's Commercial Business District. The site, which is still being assembled, according to the Montgomery County government's Redevelopment Projects site for Silver Spring, will lie along Fenton Street at its intersections with Wayne Avenue and Bonifant Street. Construction is slated to begin in 2008.
Legarreta's wish list for the new facility includes a bigger collection, more meeting space, a larger staff, larger computer labs and facilities that will allow the library to undertake the more programs and outreach.
The first program Legarreta would like to implement at the new site would be a "reading buddy" program in which high school students work one-on-one with elementary school students to improve the younger students' reading skills. She would also like to see the establishment of more book groups for children.
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