Space, Physical Access and People

The school library I chose to visit is the Brookfield Elementary School library. Brookfield is a Title 1 school in Fairfax county, located in the heart of a neighborhood of older single family homes with a median selling price of about $580,000 (Neighborhoods.com, n.d.). The school also serves about 800 K-6 students, with just under 50% identifying as Hispanic or Latino (FCPS, n.d.). Many of the 800 students come from apartment complexes surrounding the immediate neighborhood.

The first thing the librarian did when I arrived at the front of the school was to escort me to the library itself. She called it a ‘dungeon’ and said she almost didn’t take the job offer because the library was so far from the entrance to the school. We had to go down some stairs and down a couple of long hallways to get to the library. Once we arrived, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The library is a large space filled with colorful, eye-catching murals. The librarian was particularly proud of one that covered the entire wall of the ‘everybody’ book section. It was an original composite of timeless book characters. I asked to take a picture and she allowed me to, but because of copyright restrictions I have shared only a small portion and blurred the characters for purposes of this blog.

This library has one librarian and one part time aide who mostly does all of the shelving.

I went on a summer day so the library was understandably not in the school year ready form. Many of the chairs were up on the bookshelves or risers, and there were boxes of books that had arrived but hadn’t been processed.

Collections

The library is clearly meant for an elementary aged clientele. The books are divided into three main sections. There is an everybody section filled with picture books, a fiction section with chapter books, and a nonfiction section. This library uses the dewey decimal system for non-fiction, but I was particularly impressed with her biography section. She had them divided and color coded into career types, such as politician or sports figures (see photo). She said often children will come interested in a subject but not know names, and this system helps her point them in the right direction.

Her fiction section is mostly alphabetized, with the graphic novels in their own section. She also has special shelves for every grade. For instance, 2nd graders get exclusive use of the longer early readers such as Elephant and Piggie, while 6th graders get authors that cover weighter subjects such as Jerry Spinelli or R.J. Palacio. It gives every grade a section to look forward to as they age up. The 5th and 6th graders also have exclusive use of their books on tape. 

The library has a makerspace filled mostly with building materials. Because this is a Title 1 school, this library doesn’t have access to more state of the art technology that schools with a more robust PTA funding stream might have. As such, its job is as “an important place to teach problem-solving and collaboration” (Rubin and Rubin, 2020, p. 157) rather than an intro to new technology.

Digital Access

There were no computers other than the checkout computer, and the librarian said they took out the desktop computers when their school went one to one with technology. There are some ebooks, but the children don’t really use them. The catalog is online at https://brookfieldes.fcps.edu/library, but I’m not sure how students are supposed to access it while at the library. It’s possible they all bring their devices every time. Students may request holds via the website, and the librarian stated that they have a long list of holds most weeks. 

Overall Impression

I liked the way this library was arranged and I liked the physical space, in spite of it being so far away from the entrance to the school. I was uncomfortable with the lack of access to technology in the library, and I was uncomfortable with the lack of a self-checkout feature. The library is not super accessible for English learners or those with physical disabilities. I think the librarian has done what she can given her budgeting and staffing constraints.

Resources

Fairfax County Public Schools. (n.d.) Brookfield Elementary School demographics. https://schoolprofiles.fcps.edu/schlprfl/f?p=108:13:::NO::P0_CURRENT_SCHOOL_ID,P0_EDSL:263,0

Neighborhoods.com. (n.d.) Brookfield-Chantilly, VA quick facts. www.neighborhoods.com/brookfield-chantilly-va

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