Faith in the Library's Future

An area of the library designed as a hangout for teenagers has beanbag chairs and cafe-style seating at a counter. On both levels of the public library, if there's a place to sit, there's a place to plug in. The 99,000-square-foot building has a third floor for county administrative offices and nonprofit groups.

"Inside, the library is no longer what is inside the walls," said B. Parker Hamilton, director of public libraries. "It's really what's inside the world. There are no frontiers."

The new library has provoked controversies. A spat over a plan to charge patrons for parking in the nearby public garage was settled in the spring when the County Council agreed to make parking free. A plan to name the building after outgoing County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) stalled this week.

Some critics fret that the library, in trying to offer something for everyone, will end up serving no one well.

Rockville residents Irwin Charles Cohen, who led the campaign against paid parking, and Jacques B. Gelin said they often criticize the county libraries because they're always noticing things that bug them. "The bricks-and-mortar stuff is going really well," Gelin said. "I'm really interested in what goes on inside."

In a county where about 135 languages are spoken by students enrolled in public schools, the library system's collections are a sore spot. The new library will have collections in Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Russian. The county also has a call-in language line and a subscription to a database called Rosetta Stone that provides instructional materials for learning languages.

Policies on language collections and on the library system's collections overall have not been revised in years, Hamilton said. But she said the policies will be reviewed next year. "The county is becoming more diverse, even compared to 10 years ago," Hamilton said, "and for including language collections, the question becomes: What is the criteria?"

Jung Moon, a mother of two from Clarksburg, regularly visits libraries across the county in search of Korean-language books and intends to visit the new library soon. She said that the county's selection is limited and that she often must get on a waiting list to borrow books.

"There are so many Koreans in this area," Moon said. "They need more space so they can have more books."