Some of the books in the shop downstairs are free.
Not a dollar. Not a quarter. Free, sitting on a shelf on the first floor of a public library, waiting for somebody to take them home.
The rest are priced affordably, and a regular who mentioned the free ones put them in the same breath as the free daily printing allowance. That’s the other thing this branch gives away without making a fuss about it.
Free books in a public library move me. Somebody decided a paperback sitting unread on a shelf was worth less than a stranger carrying it home happy, and I’d like to shake that person’s hand. That kind of small, quiet generosity tells you how a building thinks about the people who walk through its doors.
What is Town ‘N Country Regional Public Library?
A regional branch of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative at 7606 Paula Drive, Suite 120, in the Town ‘N Country area of west Tampa. The system phone is 813-273-3652. Two hundred and twenty-one Google reviews at four point six. Regional means a larger building and a deeper collection than a neighborhood branch, serving a wide catchment. This one runs across two floors with an elevator between them. Ground floor holds the used bookstore. Upstairs holds a nice children’s section and small private study rooms.
For anybody in Pinellas, the relevant fact is distance. This is the closest Hillsborough library to the county line, roughly fourteen miles from Clearwater straight across the Courtney Campbell Causeway. It makes it the easiest introduction to a completely separate library system.
Two systems, one bay
I’ll state it plainly, because it catches people out.
Pinellas runs the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative. Hillsborough runs the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative. They’re different systems with different cards, different catalogues and different rules.
Reciprocal borrowing arrangements exist between Florida library systems, and the Tampa Bay Library Consortium connects a great many institutions across the region, but the terms vary and they’re worth confirming at the desk instead of assuming. What doesn’t require a card at all is walking in, sitting down, using the wifi and reading. Public libraries are public. The card governs what leaves with you.
The split between the two county systems is poor design. People in this bay cross the causeway every day for work and family, and the library cards still behave as if the water were a border. Until somebody fixes that, the desk is where you learn the terms, and two minutes there saves a wasted trip.
The help desk
One review here describes something specific and it’s the most useful thing anybody has written about this branch.
The reviewer said that usually when they visit, they end up needing help with something they don’t know how to do, and that the staff have always been helpful and knowledgeable and have always been able to solve the problem. Always is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and it’s the sort of thing somebody only writes after a lot of visits.
That review is the one I’d put on a billboard. Library staff who fix the printer and unlock the account for free, visit after visit, are doing public work more valuable than most of what gets a ribbon cutting, and they rarely get a word of credit. A patron who writes always has noticed, and the rest of us should too.
That’s the same service Gulfport gets praised for on the Pinellas side: patient, competent, free help with whatever a person has arrived unable to do. Forms, printers, scanners, accounts, applications. There’s no other free counter in a city where you can take that problem.
Working there
One regular summarized the appeal in a sentence: it’s generally a nice place to work on anything you find distracting at home, with a decent book selection.
That’s the honest pitch for a regional library. Not silent, not luxurious, but free, staffed, open late and away from whatever is competing for your attention at the kitchen table.
The small private study rooms upstairs are the upgrade if you need to concentrate or take a call. The daily free printing allowance is the other practical draw, and it’s more generous than most systems offer.
Open until nine Monday through Thursday means a full evening is available, which on the Pinellas side is simply not on the menu anywhere. That nine o’clock close is the detail I’d brag about if this were my branch. Most people with a day job can’t reach a library before six, and a building that stays open for them four nights a week treats working adults as part of its public. Pinellas readers should notice what they’re missing.
What does Town ‘N’ Country Regional Library offer writers?
Access to a second county’s collection. That’s the real argument for crossing the bridge.
Hillsborough buys different books from Pinellas. Different selectors, different population, different priorities. Anything that Pinellas skipped and Hillsborough bought is sitting fourteen miles from Clearwater, and the reverse is equally true for anybody coming the other way.
For research that matters. A title held by one system and not the other is the sort of thing that stalls a chapter, and the answer is often a half-hour drive.
A week lost because the one book you need lives in the other county is a miserable way to stall a manuscript, and it’s avoidable. For a title that unsticks a chapter, I’d call a twenty-five-minute drive across the causeway a bargain.
The deeper Hillsborough holdings are downtown at John F. Germany, which is the system’s reference hub, but Town ‘N Country is the convenient front door to the same catalogue.
When is Town ‘N’ Country Regional Library open?
Ten in the morning until nine at night, Monday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday ten until six. Closed Sunday.
Paula Drive is off Hillsborough Avenue in west Tampa, with parking at the building.
From Clearwater, straight across the Courtney Campbell Causeway and a short way south, around twenty-five minutes depending on the causeway. From Oldsmar or Safety Harbor it’s closer still. It’s the natural first Hillsborough library for anybody in Pinellas, simply because you can be there before you’d reach several Pinellas branches.
Where it sits
Three Hillsborough libraries make this list.
Jimmie B. Keel in north Tampa is the best-rated building in this entire series, with an enclosed children’s wing and a playroom inside it. John F. Germany downtown is the reference hub with four floors and the region’s history collections.
Town ‘N Country is the close one. Two floors, an elevator, private rooms, free books and free printing, open until nine, fourteen miles from Clearwater.
If you’ve never used a Hillsborough library and want to see what a second system holds, start here. I’d send any Pinellas writer or reader across the causeway for this branch, for the free books and a help desk people praise with the word always. In budget season, officials keep treating libraries this generous as optional line items, and this one deserves a full house instead.
I’d send any Pinellas writer or reader across the causeway for this branch, for the free books and a help desk people praise with the word always. In budget season, officials keep treating libraries this generous as optional line items, and this one deserves a full house instead.
