Gordon Avenue Library
The Gordon Avenue Branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library system is located in Charlottesville, Virginia. The neighborhood includes university student housing, fraternity and sorority houses, a nursing home, and two elementary schools. It’s also rapidly gentrifying—what used to be a historically Black neighborhood that served the staff of the University of Virginia is developing into a neighborhood for the (mostly white) professor class.
The Gordon Avenue library is a two-story building surrounded by magnolia trees and wildflower gardens. The “red-brick trim 12,384 square foot building was designed to hold 25,000 volumes” (Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, 2022). It has a small parking lot with accessible parking (though patrons will have to travel to the other side of the building from the parking lot to access the ramp to get inside). There are bike racks and, curiously, a permanently-parked shipping container full of boxes of used books. That’s because almost the entire downstairs section of the library is dedicated to the bi-annual Friends of the Library Booksale, a labyrinthine treasure trove of used books at deeply discounted prices. Books are collected at another branch in town year-round and then shipped to Gordon Avenue to await the book sale. Last year, for the first time, the book sale was held off-site and far from the downtown core of Charlottesville. It was well attended and much more physically accessible once patrons got there—but it didn’t have the local, welcoming feel that the Gordon Avenue branch provides. When Gordon Avenue isn’t hosting the book sale, the downstairs is dedicated to meeting rooms.
Upstairs is where the main action of the library happens. “Filled with natural light and a cozy atmosphere, it is a place for students, families, retired people and anyone to stop and stay awhile, discovering favorites old and new” (Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, 2022). The majority of the right-hand side of the library is given over to the circulation, reference, and children’s desks which are staffed by a diverse group of librarians. Their ages range from their late 20s to their late 60s and represent multiple races and ethnicities. The librarians are all women or nonbinary. It’s not easy to access staff by name online because the JMRL system doesn’t list staff (beyond the branch managers) or their contact information on their main or branch websites. However, the staff is incredibly accessible and helpful in person.
The left section of the library contains adult fiction and non-fiction, digital media, public computers, the Roland Beauford African American collection, and a popular jazz CD collection. The biggest section of the library is in the back, however: that’s completely given over to the “forest-themed” youth and children’s section, which has its own row of computers and a small, indoor “amphitheater” for storytime activities. Gordon Avenue really caters to younger patrons, which is part of what makes the library feel so welcoming overall. According to their website, Gordon Avenue offers “as many as eight programs a week…for infants, preschoolers, school-age children and teens, including a drop-in storytime every Saturday morning. Adults, as well, enjoy a variety of programs such as book discussions, movies, and community groups for handcrafts or games” (Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, 2022). According to an online Google review, it is: “A perfect neighborhood library. Has a small town feel compared to the central or northside branches, which I love. The librarians are knowledgeable and friendly. I also love that I can request books from other branches and pick them up here” (Betts, 2022). Ordering material from other local libraries but picking them up at Gordon Avenue is very useful, especially because this library caters so much to young people.
While diverse families with young children are the most frequent visitors seen at this library, there are also almost always adults working at the public computer workstations, “and public wireless access [which are] used for everything from job searching to social media, educational research and communication” (Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, 2022). I use the library this way all the time. Mathews and Soistmann (2020) point out that people like me are “not coming to libraries only to get work done; they also want an audience and to join the performance. They position themselves around other people who are working on their own assignments. We’re all in this together. It’s a shared effort. Being surrounded by other productive people is a powerful motivator.” I find the library very welcoming in that way—it is quieter and less distracting than a coffee shop but the feeling of collective productivity keeps me focused more than solitary freelance work at home does. Somewhat surprisingly, few university students seem to use the space for that reason, despite it being located in the middle of university housing.
The mission of this library to serve its community is very apparent. The library is plastered with lots of brightly colored, easy-to-read signs—some that indicate the general rules of the library but most of which invite participation in upcoming events; invite patrons to browse collections of books (what’s popular in YA literature, for example); or point to interactive artistic or research activities that can be done both right there in the library or at home. In the spring of 2022, the Gordon Avenue branch hosted a “plant swap,” where patrons could bring a clipping or starter or potted plant to exchange with other patrons on the library’s front walkway. They provided outside access to gardening books to check out on wheeling carts, gave away free wildflower seeds, and collaborated with a local agricultural organization to provide on-the-spot education about native plants and pollinators. According to Rubin and Rubin:
“Increasingly, public library mission statements recognize their broader obligation to participate in civic engagement: to inform the citizenry about social and political issues and to encourage and facilitate participation in democratic processes. The increasing emphasis on public libraries as community hubs suggests the increasing vitality and importance of the public library in the public sphere” (2020, p. 107).
Events like the plant swap make Gordon Avenue Library feel like a hub for exchanging public knowledge, specifically around addressing environmental issues on a hyper-local scale.
REFERENCES
Betts, H. (2022). Gordon Avenue Library [Review of the Gordon Avenue Library by H. Betts].
Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. (2022). Gordon Avenue Library. https://beta.jmrl.org/gordon
Mathews, B. & Soistmann, L. A. (2020, September 1). Encoding space: Shaping learning environments that unlock human potential. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/09/01/encoding-space-library-design/
Rubin, R. E., and Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.
The Gordon Avenue Library sounds like a lovely neighborhood library. I love hearing about all the different children’s, teens, and adult programs that are offered! I love the idea of the plant swap that they hosted. It sounds like a great way to draw community members in and then check out gardening books while they are there. It sounds like the bi-annual book sale is a big event. I wonder if they make a lot of money to fund other things from the library that way. The public libraries in my area have a Friends of the Library book sale going that runs year round. Do the Jefferson-Madison Regional libraries also have a smaller set of books for sale year round and only a bigger event twice a year? The public librarian that I interviewed mentioned that their Friends of the Library sales have been able to fund a lot of new things for their library. Thanks for sharing about Gordon Avenue Library with us!
I’m definitely curious about the impact of gentrification on libraries. I love how they have a book sale with so many books in it! It’s good they found a place that’s more physically accessible, but I can understand missing that local feel. I’m glad the staff was helpful to you in person. I like that you found so many online sources talking about this library. Colorful, readable signs in libraries are fantastic, and I appreciate the variety they have at this location. A plant swap is such a clever idea! I wonder how well-attended it was.
It is nice to see the age variety in the people who work at the Gordon library, not too surprising that they were all women or non-binary though. I really love the children’s section in this library where they made it look like a forest. Public libraries always seem to be so cozy and much more welcoming than others. I hope that book sales make money that goes back into the library. I wonder how this library may have changed since the area has become so gentrified.
What a lovely space. It looks inviting, like a safe space. I like that their mission is to serve its community by participating in civic engagement. This library reminds me of the setup at the Culpeper Literacy Council.
I like they are a diverse library. I like the idea of a plant swap. It allows people to get advice on how to better take care of their plants. I think having friends of the library is so important to libraries because they bring book sales as a way for the library and patrons to sell books and bring in money to the libraries to use to buy more books and help at buying the decore for the library.
I like how the Gordon Avenue Library is diverse, with both patrons and staff. We need more of that in our libraries. I also like how the library looks. It looks inviting and eye catching. It also reminds of a bookshop. It must be nice to have a book sale in the library. It must draw in people to see what books they can get at a low price. I wonder what determines the books that the library decides to sell.
The Gordon Avenue Branch library was my favorite childhood library in the late 60’s to the early 70’s. What an enchanting experience with so much to discover and learn in such a warm and inviting setting.