A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Star, by Joseph Hall:
Starting a new chapter
`We have the best library system in the world. We can say that and we should say that'
Toronto has 99 public branches, and it's working on its 100th. Joseph Hall checks them out
Feb. 4, 2006. 03:52 PM
JOSEPH HALL
STAFF REPORTER
Efficiency and effectiveness.
Josephine Bryant, Toronto's top librarian, "hates" this pair of well-thumbed words.
"They're so trite, so overused," the head of the Toronto Public Library system says of the management-speak mainstays.
Nevertheless, this staunchest defender of the first of the three academic "Rs" has used the two big-business "Es" to help build the most successful public library system in North America.
Forced in recent years to use fewer employees to serve a growing and increasingly diverse population, the city's libraries introduced a number of innovative programs and technologies that have not only streamlined the system, but also — efficiently and effectively — taken it to the pinnacle of global Deweydom.
And as the system unveiled its inaugural Keep Toronto Reading month this week — it runs through February and features a wide range of public readings and promotions — it does so as a bibliothèque behemoth.
"We have the best library system in the world. We can say that and we should say that," Toronto mayor David Miller said in an interview.
Lending out a record 30.4 million books, CDs and videos in 2005 — a 5 per cent jump from the previous year — the TPL now boasts a circulation that is a full third larger than its closest continental counterpart, Bryant says.
"It's not that we're in the lead by a small margin," Bryant says.
"The next busiest library system in the United States (in Queens, New York) is around 19 million items circulated."
And with 99 branches across the city — and a 100th tentatively planned for Toronto's burgeoning railway lands in the next couple of years — the TPL can claim more locations per capita than any other municipal system on Earth, Bryant says.
"We are the largest branch system in the world, nobody has that many branches for a comparable population," she says.
As well, while much of Toronto's civic infrastructure is visibly crumbling, the city's library system has been revamping its branches at a furious clip.
The TPL has built up a $10 million a year capital improvement war chest and has used much of that money to bring eye-catching and award-winning architectural revisions into 12 branches since its 1997 amalgamation.
All this from a system that, only a decade ago, was in imminent danger of decline and irrelevance.
With megacity amalgamation forcing almost 200 job cuts and the emergent Internet looming as a potential book slayer, Toronto's libraries faced an uncertain future as the millennium approached.
But Bryant and her team would turn both of these challenges to their advantage and take Toronto's staid old public libraries to the top of the stacks.
"Amalgamation could have been disastrous," says Bryant, who has been invited to speak at an international librarians conference in Boston next week to share the secrets of her system's success.
She says job losses and culture clashes among the merging systems could have crippled the TPL for years.
Instead, she says, the process proved a boon, with the TPL incorporating the best elements of each former system into the amalgamated whole.
Indeed, it was amalgamation that bequeathed the system with a sheer branch volume that may never have emerged had the system been unified from the start.
"All of the (five) separate systems had their own approach to (library building)," Bryant says. "But if we had always been one system, then we might have looked at the territory differently."
Part of the system's success, however, also lies in the temperament of the target population itself.
"Toronto is a city of readers," says Bryant, who notes there are more daily newspapers here (seven) than in any other North American city.
"It's also a city of immigrants, who find great value in the services that the Toronto Public Library provides."
Bryant says many new immigrants make city libraries their first institutional stop after entering the country.
"They often show up within a few days of arriving here," she says.
And the extensive immigrant services that lures new Canadians into TPL branches often hooks them as life-long library users, Bryant says.
Carole Moore, chief librarian at the University of Toronto, says the public library's openness to the city's successive immigrant waves has helped grow its membership significantly.
"It's been a great public library system for some time and it's had a huge recognition around North America for being very forward thinking," says Moore, whose academic libraries are separate from the public chain.
"And a big part of that is that they've been very responsive to all the newcomers to Toronto in terms of providing materials in lots of different languages and in helping people make their own way."
The system, Bryant says, has also developed an innovative collection management program that is responsive to Toronto's highly diverse reading demands and that allows borrowers at any branch to access material from across the city.
"We don't just look at the best seller lists," says TPL planning director Jane Pyper.
"We look at Hindi videos...English as a foreign language books, text books and a whole bunch of different materials," Pyper says.
As well, this diverse material is all listed in a single on-line catalogue that allows all the system's lending materials to be accessed from any branch.
"It doesn't matter if you're in Malvern (branch) in the northeast corner of the city or down at Long Branch in the southwest corner," Pyper says.
"You can see everything, you can place a hold on it, it's delivered to your local branch and there it is."
Since the cross-city service came into effect eight years ago, traditional circulation has increased by about 25 per cent, Pyper says.
The TPL has also used the Internet to its advantage, with each branch sporting a slew of free access terminals and with the system itself creating a host of on-line services and portals.
"Our experience has been, as we've introduced on-line services, our traditional use has gone up," Pyper says.
Partly, the introduction of computers has increased book circulation by making it easier to find and check out desired materials.
For example, a pilot project which allows patrons to check out books themselves — much like the self check-out lines at some grocery stores — is up and running in two branches.
But more than this, the introduction of computers into libraries has served to lure people in to a book-rich environment that many may never have encountered otherwise.
"There's definitely a cross pollination," says Niki Lawrence, head librarian at the sparkling new St. James Town branch near Wellesley and Parliament Sts., which opened last year.
Lawrence says many kids and adults who come in for free Internet access often stay to peruse the books, and quite often end up signing some out.
At the newly renovated Malvern branch, whose tropical décor plays well with the area's large south Asian and Caribbean populations, it was computer access that first attracted Jordan Casanova to the Sewells Rd. facility.
Decked out in a tight nylon toque, black jacket, droopy pants and plenty of bling, the 15-year-old looks nothing like your stereotypical library patron.
But Casanova, who was taking an on-line test to determine which movie star he most resembled, says he's used the library extensively since the computers first drew him in last year.
"There's lots of great stuff, and it's a good place to come to," says Casanova, whose neighbourhood has been among the city's most troubled in recent years.
Since the Malvern branch opened it's 10,000-square-foot expansion early last year, circulation has increased by 80 per cent and shows no sign of flagging, says Vickery Bowles, director of the system's North/East region.
And such renovations have also been a key part of the system's long-term efforts to increase library usage, Bryant says.
"We know that when we improve our public space, that demand for our services increases," she says.
AoD
Starting a new chapter
`We have the best library system in the world. We can say that and we should say that'
Toronto has 99 public branches, and it's working on its 100th. Joseph Hall checks them out
Feb. 4, 2006. 03:52 PM
JOSEPH HALL
STAFF REPORTER
Efficiency and effectiveness.
Josephine Bryant, Toronto's top librarian, "hates" this pair of well-thumbed words.
"They're so trite, so overused," the head of the Toronto Public Library system says of the management-speak mainstays.
Nevertheless, this staunchest defender of the first of the three academic "Rs" has used the two big-business "Es" to help build the most successful public library system in North America.
Forced in recent years to use fewer employees to serve a growing and increasingly diverse population, the city's libraries introduced a number of innovative programs and technologies that have not only streamlined the system, but also — efficiently and effectively — taken it to the pinnacle of global Deweydom.
And as the system unveiled its inaugural Keep Toronto Reading month this week — it runs through February and features a wide range of public readings and promotions — it does so as a bibliothèque behemoth.
"We have the best library system in the world. We can say that and we should say that," Toronto mayor David Miller said in an interview.
Lending out a record 30.4 million books, CDs and videos in 2005 — a 5 per cent jump from the previous year — the TPL now boasts a circulation that is a full third larger than its closest continental counterpart, Bryant says.
"It's not that we're in the lead by a small margin," Bryant says.
"The next busiest library system in the United States (in Queens, New York) is around 19 million items circulated."
And with 99 branches across the city — and a 100th tentatively planned for Toronto's burgeoning railway lands in the next couple of years — the TPL can claim more locations per capita than any other municipal system on Earth, Bryant says.
"We are the largest branch system in the world, nobody has that many branches for a comparable population," she says.
As well, while much of Toronto's civic infrastructure is visibly crumbling, the city's library system has been revamping its branches at a furious clip.
The TPL has built up a $10 million a year capital improvement war chest and has used much of that money to bring eye-catching and award-winning architectural revisions into 12 branches since its 1997 amalgamation.
All this from a system that, only a decade ago, was in imminent danger of decline and irrelevance.
With megacity amalgamation forcing almost 200 job cuts and the emergent Internet looming as a potential book slayer, Toronto's libraries faced an uncertain future as the millennium approached.
But Bryant and her team would turn both of these challenges to their advantage and take Toronto's staid old public libraries to the top of the stacks.
"Amalgamation could have been disastrous," says Bryant, who has been invited to speak at an international librarians conference in Boston next week to share the secrets of her system's success.
She says job losses and culture clashes among the merging systems could have crippled the TPL for years.
Instead, she says, the process proved a boon, with the TPL incorporating the best elements of each former system into the amalgamated whole.
Indeed, it was amalgamation that bequeathed the system with a sheer branch volume that may never have emerged had the system been unified from the start.
"All of the (five) separate systems had their own approach to (library building)," Bryant says. "But if we had always been one system, then we might have looked at the territory differently."
Part of the system's success, however, also lies in the temperament of the target population itself.
"Toronto is a city of readers," says Bryant, who notes there are more daily newspapers here (seven) than in any other North American city.
"It's also a city of immigrants, who find great value in the services that the Toronto Public Library provides."
Bryant says many new immigrants make city libraries their first institutional stop after entering the country.
"They often show up within a few days of arriving here," she says.
And the extensive immigrant services that lures new Canadians into TPL branches often hooks them as life-long library users, Bryant says.
Carole Moore, chief librarian at the University of Toronto, says the public library's openness to the city's successive immigrant waves has helped grow its membership significantly.
"It's been a great public library system for some time and it's had a huge recognition around North America for being very forward thinking," says Moore, whose academic libraries are separate from the public chain.
"And a big part of that is that they've been very responsive to all the newcomers to Toronto in terms of providing materials in lots of different languages and in helping people make their own way."
The system, Bryant says, has also developed an innovative collection management program that is responsive to Toronto's highly diverse reading demands and that allows borrowers at any branch to access material from across the city.
"We don't just look at the best seller lists," says TPL planning director Jane Pyper.
"We look at Hindi videos...English as a foreign language books, text books and a whole bunch of different materials," Pyper says.
As well, this diverse material is all listed in a single on-line catalogue that allows all the system's lending materials to be accessed from any branch.
"It doesn't matter if you're in Malvern (branch) in the northeast corner of the city or down at Long Branch in the southwest corner," Pyper says.
"You can see everything, you can place a hold on it, it's delivered to your local branch and there it is."
Since the cross-city service came into effect eight years ago, traditional circulation has increased by about 25 per cent, Pyper says.
The TPL has also used the Internet to its advantage, with each branch sporting a slew of free access terminals and with the system itself creating a host of on-line services and portals.
"Our experience has been, as we've introduced on-line services, our traditional use has gone up," Pyper says.
Partly, the introduction of computers has increased book circulation by making it easier to find and check out desired materials.
For example, a pilot project which allows patrons to check out books themselves — much like the self check-out lines at some grocery stores — is up and running in two branches.
But more than this, the introduction of computers into libraries has served to lure people in to a book-rich environment that many may never have encountered otherwise.
"There's definitely a cross pollination," says Niki Lawrence, head librarian at the sparkling new St. James Town branch near Wellesley and Parliament Sts., which opened last year.
Lawrence says many kids and adults who come in for free Internet access often stay to peruse the books, and quite often end up signing some out.
At the newly renovated Malvern branch, whose tropical décor plays well with the area's large south Asian and Caribbean populations, it was computer access that first attracted Jordan Casanova to the Sewells Rd. facility.
Decked out in a tight nylon toque, black jacket, droopy pants and plenty of bling, the 15-year-old looks nothing like your stereotypical library patron.
But Casanova, who was taking an on-line test to determine which movie star he most resembled, says he's used the library extensively since the computers first drew him in last year.
"There's lots of great stuff, and it's a good place to come to," says Casanova, whose neighbourhood has been among the city's most troubled in recent years.
Since the Malvern branch opened it's 10,000-square-foot expansion early last year, circulation has increased by 80 per cent and shows no sign of flagging, says Vickery Bowles, director of the system's North/East region.
And such renovations have also been a key part of the system's long-term efforts to increase library usage, Bryant says.
"We know that when we improve our public space, that demand for our services increases," she says.
AoD
