Lynchburg Public Library moves books, programs ahead of renovation, takes stock of 60 years of memories

It’s been 60 years, but Margie Lippard can still remember the crisp scent of 35,000 new books as it wafted through the stacks of the Lynchburg Public Library at its grand opening. 

She was 11 at the time, so she gravitated to Pippi Longstocking and Charlotte’s Web on that spring day in 1966, she said. She can still picture the illustrations on the covers. 

She can still hear the brassy notes of the E.C. Glass High School band, which played “The Star-Spangled Banner” as residents entered Lynchburg’s first integrated library. 

“But what I remember most vividly,” Lippard said, is the pride of the “pioneers who had accomplished their vision.” Her father and mother, Carroll and Sally Lippard, were leaders of the grassroots Friends of the Lynchburg Public Library organization that advocated for the library as the Civil Rights Movement made its way to the Hill City. 

In 1966, “segregation was a fact of life” in Lynchburg, Lippard said, so the Friends’ slogan for “a library to serve all citizens” was significant. Looking back, she sees the library’s opening day as a “watershed moment” in the integration of a city often resistant to change.      

Over the decades, the library has changed locations, adapted to the digital era and grown with Lynchburg’s population. The city’s public library system — which today consists of a main library on Memorial Avenue and a downtown branch — sees about 175,000 visitors, circulates about 330,000 materials and supports about 10,000 library card users per year, said Library Director Beverly Blair. 

Today, the library is at a crossroads, Blair said: its staff and supporters are reflecting on 60 years of history while looking ahead to a more than $10 million gut and overhaul of the main library. 

The library’s youth section closed Dec. 1, and other sections will be packed up in phases until the library closes to the public entirely on Dec. 29. The building will remain closed until summer 2027 as it undergoes renovation, and temporary programs and services will be offered at the Miller Center, the headquarters of Lynchburg’s Parks and Recreation department. 

In the meantime, the fanfare of Lippard’s memories has been replaced with empty shelves, caution cones and stacks upon stacks of moving boxes. 

The growing pains are necessary to continue the library’s mission, said Lippard, now a trustee for the Friends’ endowment and a former president of the Friends’ board.

“We’re still fulfilling the promise of a library to serve all citizens, just in new ways, every day.”

A library to serve all citizens 

The main branch of the library was first located on Main Street but moved to a bigger building on Memorial Avenue in 1984 to accommodate Lynchburg’s growing population. The city had annexed 25 square miles from Bedford and Campbell counties 10 years before, which about doubled the size of its footprint. 

The Memorial Avenue building was originally constructed as a Sears & Roebuck in 1959 before being acquired and renovated by the city. While the department-store-turned-library served its purpose in the ’80s and ’90s, Blair said, the building’s aging infrastructure and outdated technology have made it difficult to meet the needs of 21st-century library users. 

Renovations will address those challenges, according to the library’s renovation webpage, bringing a digital media lab, makerspace, upgraded printing and copying center, and other modern amenities and designs to the Memorial Avenue building.

Blair said the renovations also focus on strengthening community spaces and will update the current large-group meeting room and bring additional tutoring and small-group study rooms.

As in the current layout, patrons will turn left from the main entrance to access the youth section and turn right to enter the adult section in the new library. Renovations will make better use of existing layouts rather than scrap them entirely, Blair said. For example, in the adult section, stacks will be moved to the perimeter of the space, and tables and chairs will be moved to the center, creating a community hub rather than isolated seating spots.  

As the library’s services have changed over the years, amenities have been “cobbled together” as needed, Blair said: “If you look around, it’s easy to spot things like that: This wasn’t intended to be a study room, but we needed one, so we made it one.” 

With the new design, library staff can be intentional about how sections of the library flow together and what set-ups will be the most functional for patrons to use and staff to run. For example, Blair said, the redesign will push the welcome desk farther back into the building to avoid bottlenecks that currently happen at the door.  

The renovations speak to the library’s continued mission to “serve all citizens,” Blair said: those with varying levels of access to technology, education and community support. Libraries have always been known for providing free access to books, she said. Today, in a digital age, free access to other resources such as computers and wifi, educational programming, and community events and gathering places is just as important, she said. 

“You don’t have to be a big reader, or a reader at all — the library has become an environment that means a lot more,” Blair said. “For some people, it’s a safe space. For some people, it’s a connection point. That’s what libraries thrive on.”

Taking the library’s mission on the road

Lippard said she also sees the library’s new bookmobile as “an embodiment of the mission” to serve all Lynchburg residents. There are many barriers that could keep people away from the library, she said, ranging from a lack of transportation to physical disability. The bookmobile will help to eliminate those barriers by bringing the library to areas of the city that currently don’t have a branch. 

The bookmobile is set to hit the road this summer, Blair said, which will help supplement the library’s services as renovations at the main library begin. The mobile services will be crucial, she said, as Lynchburg’s main library and downtown branch are already spread thin to serve the city’s 80,000 residents. 

Neighboring Bedford County — which has about the same number of residents as Lynchburg — has six library locations.

According to the Library of Virginia, the state has more than 370 public library locations. That averages out to about one library location for every 24,000 Virginia residents, compared to Lynchburg’s one location per 40,000. 

The bookmobile will operate like its own library branch with its own collection, Blair said, and more details about its programs and routes will be available after the library hires a bookmobile librarian this winter. Residents can expect to find the bookmobile at pre-existing community spaces such as daycares, senior centers and city events, said Maegan Fallen of the Friends of the Lynchburg Public Library at an October council meeting when the bookmobile’s funding was approved.

How to find your favorite books in their temporary homes

Renovations of the main library are set to wrap up by summer 2027, Blair said. The long timeline is needed in part because the building will be undergoing significant infrastructure overhauls, she said. Currently, aging sewer pipes lead to frequent back-ups, a 20-year-old roof causes leaks that can “create ponds” in staff office spaces and other HVAC and electrical problems have become “ticking time bombs,” she said. All will be addressed during the renovations. 

During the year and a half that the main library is closed, the Miller Center will house a temporary library space where residents can browse a limited selection of books, attend programs and pick up books that they’ve put on hold, Blair said. 

The majority of the library’s collection will be held in storage at the former H&R Block storefront in the shopping plaza adjacent to the main library, Blair said. Patrons can request books online, through the library’s app or by calling the library. Library staff will then retrieve books from the storage space and bring them to the Miller Center for pickup, Blair said. 

The downtown library branch and the privately owned Jones Memorial Library, which operates on the second floor of the main library, will remain open throughout the construction period. 

Of the main library’s approximately 60,000 physical books and media, about 35,000 will be moved to the storage location and 5,000 will be on display at the Miller Center, Blair said. 

The other 20,000 are being removed from the library’s collection, either because they are outdated, infrequently checked out, in poor condition, or some combination of all, Blair said. Library staff are hoping to use the move as an opportunity to revamp a collection that has aged just about as poorly as the building they’re housed in. 

Each book that is weeded from the collection will either be sold at the library’s ongoing book sale or donated to local schools, nursing homes and other private libraries in need, Blair said. She plans to add at least 10,000 new books back to the collection when the library reopens in 2027 to fill the gap left behind, she added. 

It’s all hands on deck to get each book in its appropriate box on the right pallet by the time the library closes at the end of December, said Olivia Eaton, the library’s collection development coordinator. It’s difficult to reduce tens of thousands of materials to just 5,000 that will be on the shelves in the library’s temporary home, she said, especially when she wants to make sure a variety of stories are represented. 

“Diverse collections are important because we all love to see ourselves reflected authentically in what we read,” she said. “But there’s the other side of it, too, that getting to read about characters different from us helps us to understand and interact with our friends and strangers and neighborhoods in our community.”

Library was a step toward integration in 1960s Lynchburg

While the library’s staff and supporters are looking ahead at how the renovations will prepare the library for the next 60 years, they’re also reflecting on how far the library has come in its first 60 years, Blair said. 

In the early 20th century, Lynchburg had two prominent libraries, according to a 2016 article from Lynch’s Ferry Magazine, the official publication of the Lynchburg Historical Foundation. The Jones Memorial Library for white residents, and the Dunbar High School Library for Black residents. 

Hermina Walthall Hendricks, who graduated from Dunbar High School in 1969, said she remembers segregation as the “law of the land” when she was growing up, and she “never really thought about the possibility of a public library because Lynchburg was the city that it was.”

At the Jones Memorial Library, “people of color were not allowed to even step on the premises, let alone venture into the front door, let alone access books or even go in to speak to someone,” Hendricks said. She relied on Dunbar, which she remembers having everything she needed: a vibrant music and art scene, academic support, research resources and a community that supported her. 

While Hendricks studied at Dunbar, the newly formed Friends of the Lynchburg Public Library launched a grassroots campaign to advocate for a public library. They went door to door and spoke up at PTA meetings, church services and every community forum in between, Lynch’s Ferry reports. By early 1965, the Friends had recruited 5,500 residents to become members. 

By March 1965, the Lynchburg City Council was convinced by the outpouring of public support that the city needed an integrated library and voted unanimously in favor of it, according to Lynch’s Ferry. The Lynchburg Public Library opened in the downtown C.B. Fleet building on April 16, 1966, with help from a state program that furnished a starter collection of 35,000 books.

Hendricks said it took years after the 1966 grand opening for her to ever venture into the new library. 

“We were very cautious, because you’re talking about people who could not sit at lunch counters or the front of the bus, then we go through this transition in the ’60s, and it was hard for people to trust new resources,” she said.  

Hendricks said she tried out the new library when she was in college and now, 60 years later, she sees the library as a part of a significant cultural shift in Lynchburg.

“We were going from one kind of mindset into a different kind of mindset,” she said. “And it took years, but as I reflect, the library certainly was one of the steps that moved us toward integration. Those were all monumental steps that took time.” 

Integration didn’t happen overnight in Lynchburg as elsewhere in the South, said Ted Delaney, director of the Lynchburg Museum. While Lynchburg never experienced major riots or protests, proponents of the Civil Rights Movement were often ostracized and threatened, which made the pace of progress slow. 

“We’re used to seeing very public episodes of releasing dogs on crowds or turning fire hoses on crowds when we think about the Civil Rights Movement,” Delaney said. “There wasn’t anything like that here, but there absolutely was a lot of discrimination and pushback that happened covertly. It really created a culture of fear, like don’t do anything to get yourself mentioned as someone pushing for change.” 

The Civil Rights Movement came to Lynchburg in part due to the city’s changing demographics, Delaney said. Babcock & Wilcox, a nuclear power company, and General Electric created hundreds of new jobs in the Hill City in the mid-twentieth century, and young, highly educated professionals moved from out of town to take them. Those new families changed the political and cultural fabric of the city at a time when national conversations were calling for social change, Delaney said. 

The founding of the Lynchburg Public Library was one of many events that shaped Lynchburg’s civil rights history, Delaney said, including a swim-in demonstration to call for the integration of the Miller Park pool and a decade-long process of integrating the school system. It all culminated in significant shifts in 1970 — the year Delaney marks as the unofficial end of the Civil Rights Movement in Lynchburg — when the last class graduated from the segregated Dunbar High School and when a Black man was elected to the city council for the first time in nearly a century. 

The Dunbar library closed with the high school, and the Jones Memorial Library remained open, eventually integrating, shifting its focus to collecting local history and moving in with the Lynchburg Public Library on Memorial Avenue. 

Community involvement fuels the future

Lippard, who attended the library’s opening day all those years ago, said, “For those of us who lived through segregation and desegregation, the library was a watershed moment” — largely because it evolved from grassroots activism. 

“I remember my mother and father going door to door,” she said. “It became part of our DNA, and what we fought and strived for as a family.”

The Friends of the Lynchburg Public Library is still active today as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — and Lippard is still active in leading it. The Friends provide financial support to the library as needs arise and continue to spread awareness about the importance of accessible library services. Most recently, the Friends coordinated a $300,000 donation campaign to purchase the bookmobile, Lippard said — using the same community connection strategies that her parents used decades ago. 

Sumner Adkins, the Friends’ newest board member, said community action is just as important today as it was 60 years ago. This summer, when the downtown library branch made its way onto a list of city services that would potentially be cut to balance the city’s budget, Adkins started an online petition right away. Within 72 hours, the petition had 1,200 signatures, she said — and the city council voted to protect the downtown library’s funding. 

“It’s so much more than just simply books and resources. It’s a safe place to hang out, learn, make friends, feel welcomed,” Adkins said. “People are willing to stand up for that if they know how to.”

Amy Arranga, the library’s volunteer coordinator, agreed that community members keep the library strong. She manages a team of more than 120 volunteers who help to shelve books, run programs, assist patrons in the computer lab and more. She said she sees the same spirit in them as in the thousands of residents who pledged their support of the library in 1965 before the library even existed. 

“It’s hard to put into words without sounding trite, but communities are built and created here, and that’s what I like to see the most,” she said.

The renovations may put a temporary damper on that community connection, staff members agreed, although they will make the most of the hubs at the Miller Center and carry over as many programs and resources as they can. 

Blair, who grew up visiting the library on Memorial Avenue, said she understands residents’ frustration with the renovations and sadness about saying goodbye to a space that holds so many memories. 

“This is home to me, so it’s gut-wrenching in a way,” she said of packing up the library this month. “I’m right there with the patrons. But I hope everyone can trust the process. This is how the library will have another successful 60 years.”