Falls Church library officials are seeking to increase awareness of the rights and responsibilities of youth using their facilities.
An updated portion of the Mary Riley Styles Public Library website focused on young people “will be a really great resource for people who want to know more,” city library director Megan Dotzler said at the Sept. 16 meeting of the library’s board of trustees.
The Arlington library system has developed a creative tool to bring the county’s Black history to life.
Using photos taken of youth participating in recreation activities during the era of segregation, library officials have commissioned a number of jigsaw puzzles to engage children and youth alike.
A successful advocacy effort to keep Cherrydale Library open earlier this year has received honors from the Virginia Library Association.
The organization gave the Citizens for Cherrydale Library its 2026 Advocacy Award for lobbying county leaders to turn back from plans to shutter the library during the local government’s fiscal year 2027 budget process.
Markers honoring dozens more people once enslaved in Arlington are slated to be installed by the end of the year.
The Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington project has been in the process of installing “stumbling stones,” brass markers embedded in sidewalks. They mark places where those enslaved in Arlington lived and/or worked between 1669 and 1865.
One entrance to Central Library has temporarily closed, kicking off several months of renovations to stop water from getting into the building and its parking garage.
The public entrance to the library on N. Quincy Street closed last week and is currently fenced off. Much of the patio has been torn up into piles of bricks as the $2.3 million project, first approved in the county’s 2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), gets underway.
County Board candidates say economic uncertainties make it unlikely a new branch library for Columbia Pike is on the horizon.
“I would love to see a [new] library on Columbia Pike,” Julie Farnam said at a July 20 candidate forum sponsored by the Douglas Park Civic Association. “But right now, I think that’s not feasible.”
County Board members have directed staff to move more quickly in considering future uses of the Central Library and Lee Community Center parcels.
In a change from the plan as proposed by County Manager Mark Schwartz, Board members said on Tuesday that staff should hire a consultant in fiscal year 2029 to develop a plan for potential uses of the Central Library site in Virginia Square. That timeline will allow planning to advance on roughly the same timetable as consideration of future uses at the adjacent Quincy Park.
County Board members are wrestling with the timing and potential scope of future changes to Central Library and adjacent Quincy Park.
At a July 14 capital-spending work session, Board members tried to find common ground on how to approach what could become one of the county’s most contentious planning efforts of the 2030s.
Having saved the Cherrydale Library from closing, advocates now want the county government to address the building’s accessibility issues.
Making upgrades to reach Americans with Disabilities Act standards “will allow the library to better serve the neighborhood and the county, and strengthen its long-term viability,” said Michael Gessel, president of Citizens for Cherrydale Library, at a public hearing on the proposed FY27-36 capital improvement plan.
With a promised community library for Crystal City on the sidelines for now, one library advocate has floated an alternate proposal.
Speaking at the July 7 public hearing on the county’s new 10-year, $4.3 billion capital improvement plan, Crystal City resident Michael Skros urged county leaders to focus instead on upgrading the nearby Aurora Hills branch library.
Arlington’s proposed 10-year capital improvement plan (CIP) includes no funding for planning or building new library facilities near Columbia Pike, despite the desires of some in the area.
Still, County Manager Mark Schwartz says he and his staff haven’t forgotten residents’ wishes for an expanded or brand new community library.
The Arlington library system has opened a new window on the county’s history during the 1980s-90s.
The library’s Charlie Clark Center for Local History has digitized approximately 3,000 photos from the Arlington Courier, a weekly newspaper covering the county during that period.
