Retired teacher and librarian Jane Gibson Spain moved to Lucy Corr in 2009, before the Independent Living building existed. A handful of cottages stood on the property, and Jane and her fellow residents discovered a shared problem.

“We soon found out, as everyone does, that we had brought too much stuff,” Jane said. “And a lot of us had brought too many books. We didn’t know what to do with them.”

Someone suggested starting a library. Jane, who had spent more than 20 years as a school librarian in Henrico County, was the natural person to lead it. She spearheaded a committee of volunteers to get it going.

At a dedication ceremony in April 2017, the resulting room on the second floor of the Independent Living building was formally named the Jane Spain Library.

Garage beginnings

The first collection lived in a borrowed cottage garage. Residents were invited to bring whatever they no longer wanted, with no guarantee every book would make the shelves. What arrived was generous and well-kept, if uneven.

“If I had been buying the books, I would have had a more balanced collection,” Jane said. Some categories were robust, while others — namely sports and history — were thin at the outset. After weeks of sorting and cataloging, the team presented the finished library to residents at an open house in December 2009.

When the Independent Living building opened, the library moved into a space designated as the Business Center. The transition was clunky; the built-in bookshelves, it turned out, were shallower than the books were deep.

“We filled them up, turned our backs for two minutes, and all the books fell down,” Jane said. Eventually the maintenance department cut and painted wooden backstops that solved the problem for good. As the number of volumes outgrew the built-ins, Lucy Corr leadership agreed to contribute additional, standalone shelves.

The Business Center never caught on. The single computer stationed there saw only a few users before it broke down and sat unused. Jane asked whether the library could have the space. Today, it houses the paperback collection.

Run on trust

There are no fines, late fees or formal checkout system; because the collection was built entirely from donations, there was never anything to charge for. Residents take what they want and bring it back when they’re done, and almost all do.

Jane cataloged the entire collection using a color-coded system she designed. Large print, she notes, remains a weak spot, as do books about athletics. “I need a sports star to move in here,” she said.

History was once just as thin. Then a resident historian, Brent Tarter, arrived, donating copies of his own books along with much of his personal collection. The section is now one of the library’s strongest.

The library’s value came into sharpest focus during the pandemic, when public libraries closed their doors and many residents no longer drove. “It was really, really used, because we couldn’t get to another one,” Jane said.

Jane also helped found the community’s book club, which she describes with evident pride as a serious one. It meets in the morning, over coffee rather than wine, and hosts authors in person and by video chat. She makes a point of championing Virginia writers.

The art of the display

Before Jane’s library career came an artistic career. She earned a fine arts degree from Richmond Professional Institute and taught art in Southampton and Henrico county schools before pursuing further credentials. At Lucy Corr, she served as the community’s first resident council president and its art display coordinator.

Jane’s love of design extends to her work in the library, where she regularly assembles new displays. “I like decorating,” she said. “Every aspect of putting the library together, I enjoy; it’s not just one thing.”

The displays rotate by theme. A recent one on road trips sent Jane out to buy books themed after the film Thelma and Louise. The library is also considered a seasonal bright spot in the building during the holidays.

Passing it on

At 91, after 17 years of serving as Lucy Corr’s volunteer librarian, Jane is thinking about what comes next. Macular degeneration has made cataloging difficult, and Brent has stepped in to help by reading numbers aloud, shelving and learning the system.

Other residents pitch in, including Ruth Glick, who helped catalog the original collection. And donations still arrive, sometimes unannounced. Jane recently found a box of them waiting for her on the library’s desk.

“Residents arrive here with skills they have spent a lifetime building, and our job is to make room for them,” said Lucy Corr CEO Michael Cunningham. “Jane built something this community needed; we intend to keep supporting it.”

“I just love the work,” Jane said. “It doesn’t seem like work to me.”