Montgomery County Public Libraries – White Oak Branch

I go here on Saturday’s to be alone and catch up on reading. Staff are very helpful. I love this place.

Not one of MoCo’s best, I’m afraid to admit.
While it contains a bigger selection than the downtown silver spring library branch and does feature a good number of DVDS and CDS, it’s not the most welcoming atmosphere. At least it wasn’t the few times I’ve been here to try to get some work done in a quiet space. There’s a few computers, the wifi is ok, but some of the patrons can get a bit unruly and the librarians and staff may or may not intervene. It’s difficult to focus on a task when you have two people sniping at each other letting their voices carry on as if they’re in their backyard. Also, there’s not many sitting/​desk areas next to big, open windows… you feel like you’re in a relative’s musty, forgotten basement when sitting in some areas of this library.

I have many fond memories of this library. I used to come here after school to study before my mom picked me up, and as it was a popular pick up spot for various other high schoolers, I have a few stories that just came to mind. Let’s see:
1)Emily Gould (currently writing for gawker, can be seen being made a fool of by Jimmy Kimmel on youtube) getting fingerblasted in the stairwell, cheating on her boyfriend (who was one of my friends) with this 13 year old swimmer dude.
2)Meeting this girl I had a super huge crush on, after she woke me up while I was napping in a library chair. With a vintage playboy covering my face. While I was drooling. Needless to say, I did not get anywhere with said girl, although she is still famously hot to the point where girls that went to other MoCo schools still know who she is when I say her name.
3)Some dude showing me some child porn in the stacks. He was like «Yo, check out these naked kids» and I was like «why are you showing me this» and he was like «it’s art», which I found dubious.
4)This dude who is now a famous DJ in DC and NYC used to work there as a teenager. At one point he asked me to loan him 100 bucks so he could run away to new york. I was like «how would I get the 100 back?» His response was «I’ll become a teenage male hooker. I can make a lot of money like that». I did not give him the 100 bucks.
Also this library has a good collection of movies and books and whatnot, plus the attendants are quite nice and polite, and helpful. If you are going to go to a library, why not here?

Well, libraries are inherently good, because they contain books. I can usually find things I’m interested in here, although I’ve sometimes been surprised to not find anything or much by classic authors. Edith Wharton was pretty scant, as was Evelyn Waugh. Shirley Jackson didn’t get much notice. I could have used more Thomas Hardy. Etc.
But librarians are inherently evil, and White Oak Lib is no exception. They have that typical persnickety teacher attitude. They sit behind the desk and don’t appear to be unduly pressured by their demanding work, but they put up signs requesting that we patrons organize our books to line up and be facing the same direction so they don’t have to make too much effort to check them back in. They put up a nice sanitizer machine and then about week later it went into a decline and now is permanently out or order. I’ve been there trying to work during power or cable outages a few times, and two of those times people were talking quite loudly — one was conducting a job preparatinon class while the other seemed to be tutoring — and no librarian said a word. But when I got on my cell phone with my company’s help desk to get some help with my failing VPN connection, one of the libs came zipping over to chastise me with a look on her face like an avenging fury. I started walking toward the approved area but apparently not quickly enough — she frantically shooed me and I got the impression she was about to grab some other librarian thugs and toss me out on my ass. Sorry, librarian lady! I’ll try to return my books in a more timely fashion!

This is the best library in East County. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable, they have plenty of space to study or bring your laptop and they have good programs. I don’t check out books that often, but this branch generally has a good selection of commercial fiction. Any other genres I can’t really speak on.