Chinn Park Regional Library is located in Prince William County and sits next to the Chinn Aquatics and Fitness Center. When you look up this library online, you will find a brief history of the namesake, Mary Jane Chinn. The site, https://www.pwcva.gov/department/library/chinn-park-regional-library, then goes into a description of the resources you can find at this library. If you click on the Menu button, you are taken to a variety of headings such as Events, How To, Services, and My Account. If you dig deeper, you can renew books, find book recommendations, do mobile printing, or pay fees. The only thing I did not like about the site was, if you tried to return to the previous page, you would be sent to the home page instead, which adds additional steps when doing any type of research. Overall, I was impressed with the amount of information provided.

When you arrive at Chinn Park Library, you may park in one of their 175 parking spots. There is a standing sign as you walk up the middle sidewalk that displays the library’s hours. The double doors are glass, and there is a neon open sign lit up. When you walk through the doors, you find yourself in a lobby with bathrooms to the right. After that, you walk through another set of doors to find yourself in the front of a well lit and welcoming library. To your right are bulletin boards covered with flyers from all over the community, and to your left, there are two sets of doors that lead to community rooms. If you plan on picking up a lot of materials, the library has supplied several shopping carts for the patrons to utilize.

The information desk is a semicircle that utilizes plexi glass to help keep the library staff at a safe distance. On the desk resides a turtle named Squirt, who has been a famous fixture for over 18 years. If you turn to your right, you will find slots to return your books and other materials. Next to that is where they display their new books; they also set up a circular stand-alone display titled “Reading Makes Cents” that showcases literature related to money. If you want to use the catalog to locate a book, there is a wall across from the display that has four computers, accompanied by a printer and two self-checkout stations. Diagonal from those is the circulation desk where there were four staff members waiting on a variety of patrons, ranging from a teenage girl to an elderly man. If you continue down the right side of the library, you will come to several rows of computers offering public access to the catalog and internet. Behind these computers were three sets of tables with four chairs each.

As you approach the back of the library, you find yourself standing in front of a glass room with the word “MAGIC” painted across the top. MAGIC stands for Management and Government Information Center. Two librarians and their assistant maintain the special collection and answer any questions a patron might have about business, state and local government, budgets, demographics, zoning, and regulations. In essence, they are there to assist business owners in any way they can. This help center and collection is unique to Chinn Park Library and is staffed during the same hours despite being a separate entity.

Beyond the MAGIC center is a large open space where people can sit and read in chairs that line the wall and windows. One wall of chairs sits next to the Quiet Study Room. Inside this room you will find tables facing away from the rest of room. Each table has two chairs, and you don’t have to face anyone else, which provides you with often-needed privacy. Every table has a long overhead light and electrical outlets for your computers and phones. The door remains shut at all times to assure the room remains silent.

Across the aisle from the room is the adult fiction collection, which houses mysteries, science fiction, and large print books as subcategories. Next to these shelves is the non-fiction area, with foreign libraries and biographies broken into separate categories. At the end of this section are the Books to Go bins, which are designed for book clubs. These kits include 10 copies of a title, including a large print edition, and a notebook with supplemental discussion materials.

Working your way to the left side of the library you will find the juvenile and children’s sections. Juvenile books are divided into non-fiction, biographies, fiction, and audio books. There are more tables, each with four chairs and computers that have catalogs pulled up on their screens. Between the children’s and juvenile departments is a large open room with only a rocking chair in the back. This space is where the weekly storytime sessions are performed. Next to that area is the children’s space, where you will find a dozen kid-sized tables and chairs that match the colors of the rainbow. Most of these tables were occupied by little children reading their books. On one wall there were two felt boards decorated for the season. Beyond that wall you will find the children’s early fiction and board books. There was also a row of bags titled “Grab-and-Go Bags” that had five themed books in each bag; several moms were looking through these. The final wall had a children’s world language section that was decorated with numerous stuffed animals.

Throughout the library, you see stand up desks that house catalog computers with a supply of scrap paper and pencils for you to write down the location of your book. Additionally, there were baskets full of free COVID tests available to any patron. There were pamphlets covering numerous topics on shelf end caps and flyers advertising educational and social library programs displayed as well.

Overall, I felt very welcomed and comfortable in the Chinn Park Library. It was well lit and had numerous places for you to sit and tables for people to study. The collections were easily identified and locating a book is quite easy. All the rooms were spacious and kept clean, and you could see a diverse population utilizing the library services. This library definitely supports the belief that Rubin and Rubin (2021) hold, which describes a library as “a place in which many important things happen: informational, recreational, educational, cultural, and civic” (p. 83).

References

Rubin, R. E. and Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.