Shopping For a Modern Library?
Twenty years ago, who had ever heard of a public library inside a shopping mall? Certainly not me. At 14 years old, I did a lot of socializing at the Westfield Annapolis Mall—shopping the teen fashions, hanging out in the food court with girlfriends and going to the movies to see romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant.
My 14-year-old self would be surprised to learn that in 2020 the spaces formerly occupied by American Eagle and Charlotte Russe are now a state-of-the-art Anne Arundel County library branch.
A pilot program begun in spring of 2018, Discoveries: The Library at the Mall offered a functioning library right alongside mall shops and restaurants. It’s one of those ideas that sounds odd, but after you experience it you wonder why every mall doesn’t have a library. Parking is plentiful and you can visit the library, get lunch and take care of other errands without ever having to step outside in the rain or cold. It was only the second mall library in Maryland.
The Discoveries Library experiment proved so successful that on Tuesday Feb. 18, a new, 13,000-square-foot Discoveries branch opened (follow signs for Crate & Barrel to find it). The expanded Discoveries has a spacious dedicated room for library programs, a teens-only space and a children’s area with STEM–inspired building toys, kid-friendly seating and a sturdy wooden play kitchen.
A few days after last week’s opening, I brought my 22-month-old son Christian to the new Discoveries for a mid-morning children’s program. The branch opened at 10 a.m., and by 10:05 there were at least 20 toddlers and their caregivers happily playing in the children’s area. The place smells new, the toys still have all their parts intact and Christian thinks the selection of board books excellent.
Anne Arundel County Public Libraries says Discoveries has the highest program attendance of all 16 county branches, and that may be partly because it is easily accessible to those who don’t usually seek out a library. Indeed, I noticed some curious faces on the folks strolling by the library entrance, obviously seeing it for the first time.
“Discoveries reintroduced the library to many county residents. We are excited to open in a larger space to better serve the needs of our customers and the community at large,” says AACPL CEO Skip Auld.
On this day, the children’s program was called World Music Africa, an interactive lesson in African songs and instruments led by former Anne Arundel County Public Schools music teacher Lynn Terrell Arnold. Barefoot and dressed in colorful garb trimmed with cowrie shells, Arnold taught a call-and-answer “welcome song,” adding hand motions along the way and then passing out percussion instruments to each child.
Arnold had a captivating presence and even the distractible preschool crowd was drawn in by her vibrant music lesson. I later learned she’d taught music at my elementary school, taking the job just a handful of years after I’d been there. A personal connection like that one underscored, for me, the specialness of putting a community center smack in the middle of the mall.
After the program ended, I left the children’s area to explore the rest of the branch. The Club 1117 teen space has its own room with lounge areas to read in or work on homework as well as a TV with video games and movie offerings. I found a young man in headphones on a laptop in the corner, enjoying the independence that comes with a separate teen space.
The adult section in the library has its own café-style booths, evoking the feeling of working remotely in a coffee shop, as many self-starters do these days. Librarian Rebecca Hollerbach also told me the mostly-retired “mall walkers” who come to Westfield Annapolis before the stores open often stop in to thumb through books afterwards.
When I asked Hollerbach what she thought of the idea of malls becoming more community-focused, she gushed: “I wish there would be more [community-based] stuff in the mall, like a post office. Because this is obviously where it’s at.”
The new Discoveries Library location serves customers Monday-Thursday from 10am-9pm; Friday and Saturday 10am-5pm, Sundays (September-May) 1-5pm. For a list of programs: aacpl.net/location/discoveries.