Provincial budget cuts ripple through Newmarket, Aurora public libraries

Some patrons 'impacted greatly' by budget cuts

Yorkregion.com
May 2, 2019
Teresa Latchford

If your library doesn’t have the book you want, good luck getting your hands on it.

Along with libraries across Ontario, the Newmarket Public Library and Aurora Public Library have been forced to cancel their interlibrary loan services due to provincial government budget cuts.

The service that is now suspended until at least the end of May was offered through Southern Ontario Library Services, which had its budget slashed in half by the Tourism, Culture and Sport Ministry.

That means local libraries will no longer be able to borrow books from other libraries. The service previously allowed patrons to request books their local branch didn’t have from another library in the province and it would be delivered to their local branch via the government-funded courier service.

“We don’t have that opportunity now and it will definitely impact our patrons,” Newmarket Public Library CEO Todd Kyle said. “It will hit rural libraries who don’t have a large stock of items the hardest.”

In 2018, the library successfully borrowed 2,500 items and loaned out another 3,000 using the now cancelled service.

People running book clubs who require multiple copies of the same book and patrons seeking archival, academic or genealogical documents will be, simply put, out of luck because the library doesn’t have the means to purchase every item requested and some specialty items are not even available for purchase.

“Those who home school their children and are seeking educational text books or those looking for French publications will be impacted greatly,” Kyle said.

The cuts to this courier service could become very costly to the local libraries. Their bottom line could increase if they begin to purchase requested items, if they have to rely on Canada Post to make exchanges between libraries.

The courier also offered a database service so libraries across the province could see what other libraries had on their shelves, it was all automated.

The service also helps to organize online purchases and negotiate prices for things like the 60,000 electronic books the libraries have access to use and offer their patrons. This could be impacted by lack of funding and the libraries couldn’t individually manage negotiations with suppliers nor build a database in a cost effective way.

“There is no way we would be able to handle that by ourselves and it would take more staff time to call libraries individually to track down an item,” he added.

Aurora Public Library CEO Bruce Gorman agrees that all libraries and their patrons will be impacted.

“We are advocating through our board of directors, the Ontario Library Association and the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport for reconsideration of their decision,” he said.

The York Region library CEOs have been meeting to try to determine the best course of action to deal with the service cuts.

The libraries aren’t the only ones who are advocating to have the service restored. There have been a number of social media campaigns organizing read-in protests at local libraries and a number of petitions struck on Change.org calling on Doug Ford to restore the funding. In less than a month, one petition has collected over 40,000 signatures.

Interlibrary loans are just one of the many services offered to libraries through Southern Ontario Library Services. Others include providing critical training at low or no cost to library staff spanning from kids programming, leadership and skills to help library staff deal with the increase of social issue affecting communities.

The organization allows libraries to come together when purchasing expensive resources in order to lower the cost and it provides resources to Indigenous libraries that help address the shortfall in funding they receive.

A full list of services offered by SOLS is available at Sols.org.