The grand opening of the new Laurel Library in November 2016. Image by Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.
This is the fifth article in a series about the history of the Prince George’s County library system. Read parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
The story of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in the 21st century is a story of renovations and replacements. Besides addressing maintenance backlogs in older branches, these changes have marked a more fundamental pivot: away from printed books, and toward more electronic services.
Recent years have seen a number of libraries in Prince George’s County closed for major renovations or replacements, but the series of renovations is finally coming to a close, and PGCMLS hopes to open a new branch in Langley Park in a few years. As uncertainties around the pandemic abound, it remains to be seen whether the latest period of renovations will lead into another era of growth.
Beltsville was supposed to get a new library in the 1970s, but budget cuts almost shuttered it altogether. The building shown here exists only because of community activism. Image by Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.
This is the fourth article in a series about the history of the Prince George’s County library system. Read parts 1, 2, 3, and 5.
The 1960s and 1970s saw major growth in the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System (PGCMLS), both in the number of branches and in moves to new, larger buildings that allowed more comprehensive library services. But at the end of the 1970s, that growth ground to a halt when residents passed a racially-motivated referendum limiting the county’s taxing authority. That restriction, a form of which exists to this day, brought about an era of austerity for the library system that lasted a generation.