Cherrydale Branch Library

Serving North Arlington since 1922

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History

'Save-the-Library' Pin
Pin designed and produced by Michael Gessel
and worn by library defenders, Feb.-Apr. 1998

Letter from Greg Embree to Members of the Arlington County Board, March 16, 1998, addressing issues raised in the report by the Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission.

Members, Arlington County Board
#1 Courthouse Plaza
2100 Clarendon Boulevard, Suite 300
Arlington, VA 22201

Dear Ms. Favola and Messrs. Zimmerman, Eisenberg, Ferguson, and Fisette:

I am writing again in defense of Cherrydale Library and to address the arguments for its destruction presented in "Arlington County Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission Report To the County Board--FY99 Budget, Budget Area: Libraries--Tab I".

The "Overarching Issue"

The Advisory Commission report opens by stating that the "overarching issue" raised in the discussion of library budget options is "What is the role of the modern library system?

As devoted users of Cherrydale Library for the past 11 years, my wife and I have been remarkably untormented by these questions. For us, the "overarching issue" raised in the discussion of the library budget is "Do we citizens want neighborhood libraries or not?" For us, a library is a place where one can get books that one wishes to read. This fundamental function of a library remains unaffected by and is unrelated to the development of other "repositories and purveyors of information." Just as radio did not cause the disappearance of newspapers and just as television did not cause the disappearance of radio, so will the Internet not cause the disappearance of libraries.

To the extent that libraries should be elements in the "mosaic of education," Cherrydale Library is at least as well equipped as Central Library to fulfill that role. H-B Woodlawn School is around the corner; its students and teachers rely heavily on Cherrydale Library. Elementary-school-aged children in the North Arlington area use Cherrydale Library unaccompanied by parents, who have told me they would never allow their children to visit Central Library without an accompanying adult.

The Rationality of "Neighborhood-Based Convenience"

One of the questions posed above warrants a lengthier answer. With regard to whether a modern library system should "provide neighborhood-based convenience," my answer is "Yes! The more 'neighborhood-based convenience' in this life, the better." Technology--in the form of computer networks, the Internet, and fax machines--strengthens neighborhood libraries. Through the recent revolution in communications, one can acquire any available book in the world at one's neighborhood library. Thanks to modern communications, the flow of all human organization nowadays is toward physical decentralization, not centralization. One need not go to a huge centralized library for most of the services available now at neighborhood libraries. Rather than neighborhood libraries' representing a drain on the resources of Central Library, one could more rationally argue that Central Library drains resources from neighborhood libraries, with little compensating advantage in the larger library's capabilities.

Libraries, the Internet, and the Citizens of Arlington County

The report's assertion that libraries' principal "challenge" is to educate people in the use of the Internet and to train them to apply their "judgment to the immense volume of material becoming available" strikes me as irrelevant to the question of the value of neighborhood libraries, as well as arrogant and condescending. The citizens of Arlington are capable of making their own judgment regarding "the immense volume of material becoming available" and need no training from their County Government's Department of Libraries. Moreover, if people want to use the Internet, they will learn how to use the Internet. But it is their decision to make. Our democracy rests on the premise that every adult knows what is best for himself and is capable of making sound judgments about his own welfare. The right of each person to pursue happiness in his own way was asserted in our Declaration of Independence. I find repellent and wrong-headed some social engineer's notion that everyone should give up his neighborhood library and instead learn the Internet--and I am an enthusiastic user of the Internet.

Many of the 607 people who signed the petition to keep Cherrydale Library open, which my wife delivered to the County Board on March 3, were elderly. Several of them have told us that they have no interest in learning the Internet. They would probably bristle at the report's idea that they were destined to become "road kill on the Information Superhighway" and therefore needed to be reeducated or fixed by the County Government's Department of Libraries. They would, however, be devastated by the loss of their easy access to books if they lost Cherrydale Library.

The Allegedly Meager "Time and Distance Penalty" If Cherrydale Library Were Closed

The proximity of Cherrydale Library to Central Library is the core of the report's argument to close Cherrydale. The authors assume that a "time and distance penalty" is the only tradeoff faced by citizens experiencing the closure of their neighborhood library and forced to drive to Central Library. Many of the petition signers said they found Cherrydale Library a more human-scaled and congenial place than Central Library, which many said they found huge, impersonal, bureaucratic, and officious. Many said they would choose to patronize Cherrydale even if it were adjacent to Central.

Moreover, the authors' methodology of comparing the accessibility of the Cherrydale and Central libraries--measuring the traveling time between the two on a "parking lot to parking lot" basis-- is flawed. Driving into Central Library's parking lot does not get a desired book into one's hands and back to one's home, the ultimate purpose of most library visits. My own experiment regarding this issue is more valid. During the weekend of March 14-15, the time it took me to walk out of my house and return with a newly acquired library book was as follows:

A more appropriate comparison would have been for me to have made the Central Library excursion on foot. The time required would have been even greater. Walking to Cherrydale Library, of course, had the added virtue of adding no additional traffic to Arlington's roads and no additional pollution to Arlington's air.

The Alleged Insignificance of the Usage of Neighborhood Libraries

There is a more practical matter associated with closing Cherrydale Library and selected other neighborhoood libraries that the report overlooks, a matter that should give pause to even the most earnest partisans of Central Library over the neighborhood ones. The report recommends closing three neighborhood libraries and implies that closing all the neighborhood libraries in Arlington would be the ideal. Please consider what this would do to the facilities at Central. The following figures come from the graph included in the report and from figures drawn from Arlington's Web site:

Library Annual Checkouts Annual Visits
Central 925,000 800,000
Aurora Hills 90,000 100,000
Cherrydale 100,000 67,000
Columbia Pike 125,000 130,000
Glencarlyn 71,000 70,500
Shirlington 170,000 100,000
Westover 175,000 125,000
All neighborhood branches 731,000 592,500

Eliminating neighborhood libraries and relying exclusively on Central would increase the crowd using Central Library by a factor of 74 percent. It would increase the number of items handled at the checkout desk at Central Library by a factor of 79 percent. Thus:

This would make using Central Library a living Hell. The parking lot the whole year round would resemble the Ballston Common garage at Christmastime. Checking out a book would be like clearing Customs at Dulles Airport. A onetime pleasure would become just another stressful chore.

The Alleged Inequity of Only Some Neighborhoods' Having Libraries

The report argues that "it is most unfair to other neighborhoods that the county provides a mere six branch libraries." The report in effect is implying that because Arlington County cannot afford to build a library in each neighborhood, it should destroy those neighborhood libraries that already exist. If the County were unable to provide adequate street lighting to all neighborhoods, should it destroy a certain number of lights in adequately illuminated locales out of fairness to neighborhoods less well lit?

All six neighborhood libraries have existed since the 1930s. Arlingtonians for decades have been able to choose if they wanted to live near a neighborhood library or not. For some of us, our choice was to buy or rent a home near a local library. Those choosing to buy or rent homes in neighborhoods without libraries evidently regarded being near a neighborhood library as a low priority. How many petitions does the Arlington County Board get each year from citizens requesting that a library be built in their neighborhood? How many speakers at the annual public budget hearing ask that a library be built in their neighborhood? My wife and I, on the other hand, along with many of our neighbors, chose our houses chiefly because they were near a neighborhood library. This is why we are trying to keep it.

Sincerely,

Gregory J. Embree



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