Public Libraries

I have had a library card for as long as I can remember and have a long history of reading far more books than I can afford, so public libraries have always been important to me. While I was in college in Los Angeles and graduate school in Boston, I mostly read books from my university libraries. However, both as a child and since I moved back to the DC area in 2015, the region’s libraries and particularly the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System (PGCMLS) have been my main sources of reading material.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library is the central branch of the District of Columbia Public Library. Image from Wikipedia.

Although each county and county-equivalent jurisdiction in the DC region (except the City of Fairfax) has its own public library system, residents of the region are not limited to the library system of the jurisdiction they live in. As I discussed at length in a January 2018 article for Greater Greater Washington, these library systems nearly all have agreements allowing residents of much of the region to use their services and facilities. At some point, I hope to put together and maintain an up-to-date database of which library systems residents of each jurisdiction can use but, for now, the information in that article is still relatively up-to-date.

A 1951 bookmobile in Woodmore, Prince George’s County. Image from the US National Archives.

More recently, in November and December 2020, I wrote a series of five articles on the history of PGCMLS from the opening of the first public library in Prince George’s County in 1908 to the 1946 establishment of the library system to the present day:

Recently, I have been working on an analysis comparing the budgets and services provided by the various library systems in the DC region. This work was delayed by the need to focus on completing my Master’s thesis, but I hope to have it ready to publish some time in 2021.