Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year

from the Collingwood Public Library

Please note our holiday hours: We will be closing on Thursday, December 24th at 1 pm and re-opening on Monday, December 28 at 10 am.  We will also close on Thursday, December 31st at 1 pm and re-open on Saturday, January 2nd at 10 am. 

 From everyone at the Collingwood Public Library, have a safe and happy holiday.

You've Come A Long Way Baby

In an earlier posting I mentioned that many early public libraries had "closed stacks." Well, to my delight, Carole Stuart, our expert in local history, found this floor plan for the original Carnegie library in Collingwood--the one that opened in 1904 and burned down in 1963.

 You will notice a couple of interesting features.  For example, there is a separate reading room for men and women, and men were allowed to smoke in their reading room, something that would not be allowed today.  When you entered the library, after first climbing a steep set of stairs (these would never pass current accessibility standards) and passing through an impressive neoclassical portico, the hall would funnel you directly to the librarian's desk.  To the left was the catalogue room, where you would comb through the drawers of the card catalogue, seeking something to read. You noted the title, author and call number of the book you wanted on a slip of paper and presented this to the librarian at her desk.  The librarian would then disappear into the "closed stacks" behind her desk and retrieve the book for you. While it was a very secure system--you would lose very few books this way--I don't think many people would want to return to it.  Most of us enjoy browsing the shelves and the serendipitous encounters with books that ensue, those unexpected gems we discover while looking for something else.

--Ken Haigh

A Year of Personal Favorites

Every year at this time, various magazines, newspapers and websites publish their list of the best books of the year. Here is The Globe and Mail’s list for example.

I thought it would be fun to think back over a year’s worth of personal reading and list my favorites, too.  Mind you, not all of these titles were published in 2015—I’m a bit behind in my reading.  In fact, I have so many books on my “to read” list that I doubt I will ever catch up; but, that said, these were the best books that I read in 2015, and I would heartily recommend them. (Note: most of these titles are available in the Collingwood Public Library, but some you will have to request (as I did) through our interlibrary loan service).

1.       Rosamund Bartlett. Tolstoy: A Russian Life. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

I love big juicy literary biographies, and who is bigger or more fascinating than Tolstoy? Those of you who loved The Last Station, the Tolstoy biopic, will enjoy this.

2.       Patrick O’Brian. The Aubrey/Maturin Series. (Collins).

I decided to read the entire series, beginning with Master and Commander, over the course of a year and finished all twenty-one books.  These are historical fiction set in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, starring Captain Jack Aubrey and his best friend, the naval surgeon and spy, Dr. Stephen Maturin. If you liked C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books, you will love these.  They are not just exciting adventure stories, they are also beautifully written and full of humour.  One reviewer called them “Jane Austen for men,” and that is not far from the mark.  I always felt it was an injustice that O’Brian, who passed away in 2000, was never nominated for the Booker Prize.

3.       Tove Jansson. The Summer Book. (New York Review Books, 2008).

Tove Jansson is best remembered for her Moomin books for children, but she was an accomplished novelist as well, and we are only just beginning to discover this in the English-speaking world, as her adult fiction is slowly being translated.  The Summer Book is a remarkably simple story of an elderly woman and her granddaughter spending a summer at a cottage on an island in the Swedish archipelago.  The book is about life, and learning to accept what comes.  Nothing is stated, but everything is implied.  Beautifully and elegantly written.

4.       Robert Macfarlane. The Old Ways. (Viking/Penguin, 2012).

Macfarlane is hard to classify.  He is a nature writer, but he is concerned about our connection to the natural world and how we both shape and are shaped by the natural environment that we inhabit. In The Old Ways, Macfarlane follows old track ways—pilgrimage trails, holloways, sea-roads, and ancient rights-of-way—in places like southeast England, Palestine, the Scottish Hebrides, and Spain.  Part travelogue, part history, part naturalist’s diary, but all very absorbing.

5.       Sylvain Tesson. The Consolation of the Forest. (Rizzoli Ex Libris, 2013).

Like a modern day Thoreau, Tesson leaves the busy twenty-first century behind and decides to live in a log cabin on the shore Lake Baikal for six months.  He wants to experience life as a hermit, which he claims is the most revolutionary choice anyone can make, since you are not reacting against anything, you are simply turning your back on everything.  He arrives in the depths of the winter, when the lake is frozen solid, and he leaves in summer, when the waters are free of ice and the waterfowl are returning. It should be a boring book, but it is not, and will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the desire to disconnect from our hyperactive wired existence.

6.       Hal Niedzviecki. Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future. (Seven Stories Press, 2015).

Niedzviecki, founder of the Toronto magazine of contemporary indie culture, Broken Pencil, suggests that, for the first time in human history, we are more concerned with the future than we are with the past or the present. Everywhere—in education, business, and science—we are trying desperately to be the first to discover the Next Big Thing.  Millions of dollars are being invested in ideas and products that may never come to fruition.  No one is paying the slightest attention to the present or to what this obsession with capturing the future might cost us. Fascinating.

--Ken Haigh

Library Day at Queen's Park

Yesterday was "Library Day at Queen's Park" when members of the Ontario Library Association and the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries met with members of our legislative assembly and senior staff to promote the value of strong public libraries for the citizens of Ontario.  FOPL created the following short video to show just how well-used these public institutions are.  Enjoy:

The Future Library?

There is a lot of talk these days about what public libraries might look like in the future.  Some pundits declare that libraries will disappear, replaced by the Internet--but then they have been saying that for the last twenty years and it hasn’t happened yet, nor is it likely to happen.

But public libraries will change.  They already have.  Consider this: when the public library system was inaugurated in Ontario in 1895, with the passing of the Ontario Public Libraries Act, libraries looked very different from today.  Many early libraries had closed stacks, which meant that the patron had to approach the librarian’s desk and request the book he or she required, which was then fetched from a part of the library that was closed to the public.  Libraries quickly moved to an open stack model, allowing patrons free access to the library shelves, so they could browse the books at leisure.  Another early and controversial change was the addition of popular reading material, like magazines and newspapers, to library reading rooms.  This raised a lot of eyebrows.  Libraries were supposed to be serious places for self improvement, not squalid dens pandering to the lowest popular taste.  Later we would add movies, LPs, large print books, audio and video cassettes, DVDs, talking books.  Now we even have items, like eBooks, that are not stored in the library at all, but exist only as digital files.  Recently, some libraries have begun lending things like carpentry tools and cake pans.  (We loan ukuleles). One of the biggest changes to happen in the past century, however, has been the creation of a children’s collection and a separate children’s area in the library.  We take this for granted today, but it was once a radical new idea.  My point is that libraries have never been static institutions, even though they are often portrayed that way.

Current thinking seems to be that the next big change will be a shift away from collections to expanded facilities—libraries as the community’s “third room,” or libraries as incubators, or libraries as community hubs, as places where people come together to exchange ideas, make connections, and come up with something new; hence the recent growth in public libraries that contain maker spaces, recording studios, or tool libraries.  What is clear to me though is that, whatever shape the future library takes, each library must be adapted to the community it serves.  There is no cookie cutter model for the future public library.  What works in one place may be completely inappropriate in another.  Future direction must be driven by community consultation.

The Library Board at the Collingwood Public Library is starting to collect data to write a new strategic plan for the library.  In the coming months we will be looking for your input.  What sort of library do you think Collingwood needs?  What are we doing well, and therefore shouldn’t change? And what are we not doing that you feel we should?

In the meantime, here are a couple of recent articles to peruse, giving different views of what the future library might look like. Enjoy.

What will Libraries be like in 2100? (Slate Magazine)

Reinventing the Library (The New York Times)

Keep the Library, Lose the Books (The Atlantic)

--Ken Haigh

Public Readings

At the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2013, the Booker prize-winning author Howard Jacobson raised the question: Are literary festivals, such as Jaipur, becoming an alternative to the activity of reading?  He was making a joke at his own expense, because he admitted that he loved speaking at literary festivals.  It was terrific fun, it was flattering, but it was not really the business of literature. “The novelist should never be seen, should never be heard, for himself.  The book should do all the work.  You open a book, you read the book—all you need to know about the book is in the book.  Everything else is just external flimflam.”

Is he correct? Is there an element of shallowness in going to hear a writer read from their work and then discuss it in front of hundreds of people, many of whom have never read anything by that author, and perhaps never will, and are more interested in the author as a celebrity than as a writer?  What does seeing a writer really contribute to the act of reading?

I ask myself this question all the time.  At the Collingwood Public Library we often invite authors to visit the library.  In 2015 we invited seven authors.  The latest was Debra Komar, author of The Bastard of Fort Stikine, who was here on October 29. We had an excellent turnout for the event, and the audience enjoyed the presentation.

Komar is a forensic anthropologist and her book is about using modern forensic methods to solve a crime that occurred more than 170 years ago.  Her discussion was fascinating. We were dismayed to learn that most of the work forensic scientists do in literature and on film is nonsense.  For example, DNA is not a foolproof method of identification.  In fact, the best it can do is offer a degree of probability. Also, fingerprints are not unique.  It is possible for two unrelated people to have the same fingerprint, which is why police want prints of all of your digits, not just your thumb.  The same holds true for retinal scans.

Komar explained how she solved the murder of a Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor in Fort Stikine in 1842.  She explained the circumstances surrounding the murder, how she recreated the timeline by reading interviews found in the HBC archives, and how she recreated a three-dimensional model of the scene of the crime using surviving sketches and testimony.  And then she stopped.

“But if you want to know who did it,” she said, “you will have to read the book.”

There was a collective sigh of disappointment at this statement, but I think it is fair to say that we will all read the book now.

Komar noted that solving the puzzle was really only part of the issue, perhaps not even the most important part.  She is more interested in questions of justice than guilt.  If we solve a crime and punish the perpetrator, is justice served?  Does mediation, for example, serve the community better than supermax prisons?

I guess what I am trying to say is that we spent a lot of the evening circling around the book, rather than discussing it.  That, in itself, made for an interesting evening.  The book, in this case, was just the hook to get us all in the room.  But not all books lend themselves to this kind of discussion. 

When Cathy Gildiner came to promote her memoir, Coming Ashore, earlier in the year, she did not read from the book at all.  Instead, she retold stories from the book and had us in stitches.  It was like watching standup comedy.  In fact, it was exactly like watching standup comedy.  But wouldn’t the stories have been just as funny if we’d stayed at home and read them for ourselves?  Perhaps.  But, in this case, there really was something wonderful about hearing the author tell the stories in person.

So maybe author events serve a different purpose than close personal reading. And maybe that is our answer to Jacobson. In 2000, J.K. Rowling, gave a reading at Skydome in Toronto to more than 20,000 people, which at the time broke the Guinness record for largest ever public reading.  The sound system was terrible, and the noise of 20,000 excited people in a confined space threatened to drown the proceedings, but the children loved it.  For them it was a celebration of a fictional world that had become as important to them as the factual world they inhabited daily.  They had grown up with Harry Potter.  He was as real to them as their parents.  We do not need an author to explicate her book, as Jacobson contended, the book is sufficient; but that is not why we go to literary events.  We attend these things to share our enjoyment of reading with others.

So join us on Thursday, November 26 at 7 pm for the last of our author events for 2015, when award-winning author Alison Pick will read from her memoir, Between Gods. Pick will be talking about unlocking family secrets and her difficult journey to reclaim her Jewish heritage.  It promises to be another thought-provoking evening.

--Ken Haigh

Georgian Bay Reads 2015

Seven years ago, three Georgian Bay area libraries celebrated the end of Ontario Public Library Week with a gala literary event to promote Canadian literature. Called Georgian Bay Reads, because of its similarity to the CBC contest called Canada Reads, the event now includes five local libraries, who duke it out for the Georgian Bay Reads Trophy and the People’s Choice Award.

Here’s how it works. Libraries choose representatives to “defend” a Canadian book that they feel strongly about and believe should be read by all Canadians. A moderator gives the defenders set questions and time frames to impress the audience with their knowledge of and passion for their chosen book, as well as the ability to convey their thoughts in a timely manner (and bells start clanging if the allotted time is exceeded). With each round of questions, a defender is eliminated until the winner is determined.

This year, Georgian Bay Reads took place on Saturday, October 24 at the Station on the Green in Creemore. It included the following libraries, defenders, and books:

• Clearview Public Library: Beth Crawley defending Unless by Carol Shields
• Collingwood Public Library: Susie Saunderson defending Still Life by Louise Penny
• Meaford Public Library: Cindy Lou LeDrew defending The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay
• Springwater Public Library: Linda Collins defending Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady
• Wasaga Beach Public Library: Ian Adams defending No Relation by Terry Fallis
• 2014 Georgian Bay Reads winner and moderator:  Lorraine Gruzuk

Although they defended their books with well-reasoned explanations and spirited debate, Susie Saunderson and Beth Crawley were voted off in the first half, with Ian Adams succumbing in the third round. Linda Collins and Cindy Lou LeDrew were both passionate regarding the value and meaning of their books, but Cindy Lou LeDrew was the victor, winning both the Trophy and the People’s Choice Award.

Because of Cindy’s win, Meaford Public Library will host the 2016 Georgian Bay Reads event.

-- Dorothy Gebert

Left to right: Susie Saunderson, Linda Collins, Cindy Lou LeDrew, Ian Adams, Beth Crawley, Lorraine Gruzuk

Seed Library

On Saturday, October 17, we wrapped up our seed library for another year.  The seeds we saved will go into a cool dry place until next spring when we start thinking about gardening again.

We started the Seed Library in September 2013.  The idea originated with two local residents, Ivan and Shan, who were also members of Transition Collingwood.  We invited Jacob Kearey-Moreland to come and address a small group on the topic of saving garden seeds. Jacob had founded the Orillia Seed Library, which is housed in the Orillia Public Library. At the time, the Meaford Public Library was also starting a seed library, so the idea was in the zeitgeist.  The following April we organized a fundraiser, screening the film Revolution at the Gayety, and used the proceeds to purchase heirloom organic seeds to launch the seed library properly. In the spring of 2015, we decided to move the seed library from behind the desk to the public area and encouraged people to help themselves. Within a few weeks, all of the seeds were gone—out into the world to feed the families of the Collingwood area.

What is a Seed Library?

A seed library is a place where local gardeners can share seeds saved from their own gardens.  Public libraries are good repositories for these collections, because they are community spaces, their mandate is to facilitate the exchange of information and to create community cohesiveness, and libraries are open long hours, so they are accessible.

How Does a Seed Library Work?

In the spring, we put out bins of donated seeds.  The seeds are packaged in small envelopes and labeled.  The labeling can be minimal—e.g. “Red Sail Lettuce – 2015”—or more detailed, with planting instructions, etc.. Obviously, the more detail, the better, for the gardener who will plant them.  The seeds are free, but we ask that if you take some seeds home to plant then please harvest some of the seed and return it to the library in the fall.  If you are unsure about how to save garden seeds, help yourself to one of our brochures or check our website for some helpful advice.  You are welcome to donate any extra seed you have to the library.  We have launched the seed library with heirloom seed varieties, which we purchased with generous financial donations from the Collingwood community.  Heirloom seeds breed true to type, which is to say, when you plant these seeds, they will grow plants just like their parents.  This can’t be said of commercially grown hybrid varieties.

Why Start a Seed Library?

The idea is to develop a stock of seed over time that is well-suited to the Collingwood environment. Seed sharing builds community resiliency and fosters healthy eating habits.  As seed saving has fallen out of fashion, and as we turn more and more to large commercial operations for our seed stock, many heirloom varieties have disappeared, contributing to a loss of diversity.  Local varieties are often very well adapted to local conditions and generally taste better and are healthier than something you might buy in a supermarket that has had to travel a long way to reach your dinner table.

Also, it’s just fun.

Seven Wonders

People like best-of lists.  It’s fun to argue over what was included and what should have been included.  So in the spirit of fun, I am going to create a best-of list for the Collingwood Public Library.  Here are my nominations (in no particular order) for:

The Seven Wonders of the Collingwood Public Library

       1.  Our Local History and Genealogical Collection – For a library of our size the collection is really quite remarkable, and is the result of many years of careful collection development.  Of particular interest to researchers is our copy of the Jesuit Relations, all 73 volumes of it.  The Relations are letters home from Jesuit missionaries in New France in the seventeenth century to their supporters back in Europe. It is from these documents that we know so much about the First Nations people who lived in the Collingwood area.  The Relations are also the only volumes to be rescued when our old Carnegie library burned down in 1963. If you open them, you can still see the water and smoke damage.

      2.  Our Stained Glass Windows – these were made by Gary Wilkinson,

and each window depicts a Collingwood scene in a different season of the year.  Beautiful.

       3.  Our Living Roof – The new library is housed in a LEED certified building, which is more energy

efficient than traditional commercial buildings.  The living roof absorbs heat in summer, reducing the “heat island” effect created by conventional black-tarred flat roofs, acts as a layer of insulation, creates a habitat for birds and insects, and collects water, which can be returned to the environment through evaporation instead of being directed down storm sewers.  Some of the water is also collected in a cistern and used to water the green roof in times of drought.  Tours of the roof can be arranged, but we can’t let people go up on their own at this time, because the parapet is not high enough to insure visitor safety.

       4.  Our DVD Collection – You might think, in these days of video streaming, that no one uses DVDs anymore, but you would be wrong.  Our large and varied collection is heavily-used.  In fact, DVDs are the most frequently circulated items in our library collection—perhaps because DVDs can be consumed much quicker than novels, so they are in and out of the library faster than books, but perhaps also because we have such a large collection with something for every taste.

       5.  Our Children’s Area – Walking into the children’s area of the library is like entering an enchanted forest.  The architects hit exactly the right note here.

      6.  Our ArtWalk – The main entrance of the library is the perfect place to display art work.  We have new displays of work by local artists every two months.

        7.  Our Donor Pillars – The brick pillars in the interior of the library are graced with the names of local donors who helped to furnish the new library, and are a great tribute to the spirit of generosity found in Collingwood.  What many people don’t know, however, is that the pillars are constructed of recycled brick.  Some of the bricks came from the old livery stable that once stood on this site.  Other bricks were rescued from the old Carnegie library when it was pulled down after the fire.  Something old incorporated into something new. 

Also:

      8.  Our Wonderful Staff and Volunteers – Of course nothing happens without people, and we are blessed with a talented crew of staff and volunteers whose passion for library work makes the library a special place to be each and every day.

Culture and Belonging

The Province of Ontario is currently holding a series of “Culture Talks.” These are town hall-style meetings across the province designed to help shape Ontario’s first culture strategy.  The goals are: (1) to establish what Ontarians value about culture, (2) to identify opportunities to better meet the needs of the arts and culture sector, and (3) to ensure that the government’s policies and programs reflect Ontario’s diverse populations and communities.  Much of the discussion, I’m sure, will revolve around the issue of why culture matters.

There are many reasons to promote culture, but I am going to suggest one that doesn’t often occur to people.  I think artists—and I’m thinking primarily of writers and painters here—create a sense of place.  Wallace Stegner, who memorialized the southwest corner of Saskatchewan in Wolf Willow, wrote: “No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.”  He went even further: “[N]o place is a place until it has had a poet.”

Bruce Feiler, writing in Walking the Bible, wonders why, as an American, the landscape of the Holy Land feels so familiar to him, almost like a homecoming, even though he has never visited before.  At the end of his long journey, having travelled through Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Jordan, he is resting on Mount Nebo, sharing the same view of the Promised Land as Moses once did, and he asks his guide, Avner, if this feeling of “coming home” is rooted in his DNA. No, says Avner, it’s your cultural DNA—your Bible. In other words, it is the stories Feiler was raised on that link him to Holy Land. It is the stories in the Bible that create the feeling of coming home.

By contrast, many Canadians do not feel at home in their own country.  Writers and critics as diverse as Susanna Moody, Douglas LePan, Northrop Frye, and Earle Birney have complained of Canada’s newness and our lack of ghosts.  Canadians from our First Nations and from Quebec have stories and myths which root them in the landscape, but many of us still look elsewhere for home. Yann Martel famously (or infamously) compared Canada to a large motel, and he was chided for it, but he had a valid point.  

Diarist and diplomat Charles Ritchie wrote that he thought of “this country not as young but as old as nature—antedating Athens and Rome—always these hidden lakes and waiting woods.” I’ve always felt the same way about the Canadian Shield country.  It feels ancient. Men feel insignificant, as if our ascendency is also insignificant, a blip, a ripple on the stream of time.  We have yet to fully inhabit the landscape.  Northrop Frye accused us of having a “garrison mentality” and felt that there was some part of the Canadian identity that fears the emptiness of Canada and builds a psychological barrier against it.  I would argue that this is where artists and writers can help. They can give us images and stories that help us to imaginatively inhabit the landscape and allow us to begin to feel at home.

The importance of this sense of belonging goes beyond mere comfort.  If we don’t feel we belong in a place, we will not value it.  We will allow terrible things to happen to that place, like strip mining, clear cutting, or farming the soil to the point of exhaustion and using our water as a source of income or as a place to dump mining sludge or industrial effluent.  There is a difference between a place we simply live in and a place we call home. We protect our homes, we don’t see them as things to be used, but as places we inhabit and value.

Canada has a number of writers and painters who have helped to define us.  They are often, by necessity, regional writers, but that is not a bad thing.  Lucy Maude Montgomery has shaped the way we think of Prince Edward Island.  Orillia will always be the “little town” of Stephen Leacock’s invention.  The Yukon has been claimed by Robert Service’s “men who moil for gold.”  Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have given us a vision of northern Ontario that has become iconic.  Whenever I see a twisted tree on the shore of Georgian Bay, I think of Thomson’s painting “The West Wind” and the world I see is beautiful and familiar.  It feels like home.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend.

--Ken Haigh

Libraries and Privacy II

I’ve been following an interesting item in the news over the past few weeks.  A small public library in Lebanon, New Hampshire has decided to become the first library in the United States to run a TOR server.

The TOR browser was designed to assure user anonymity while on the Internet.  It was developed to protect users (according to Tor's website) from “traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.”  TOR is used extensively by journalists, human rights’ groups and citizen activists.  It is also used by criminals, like the peddlers of child pornography.

The TOR browser “protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.” In order to work, TOR needs organizations to volunteer some bandwidth on existing servers.   The Lebanon library felt that protecting online privacy was a worthwhile goal and decided to become the pilot project for the Boston-based Library Freedom Project.   But it almost didn’t happen.

When the Department of Homeland Security caught wind of the move, they alerted local law enforcement, who asked for permission to address the Library Board.   The project was put on hold until a public meeting could be held.  In the end, after hearing from all sides, the Board decided to go ahead with the project.  They felt that the right to privacy trumped the risk of criminal activity.

How would you have voted, had you been on the Library Board? Is our online privacy sacrosanct? Or should we give it up for the greater good, on the principle that if we are doing nothing wrong, we have nothing to hide? Personally, I find it creepy that someone is tracking my online activity, that every click of my mouse is being studied and analyzed, even if it is only to sell me something.

If you want to learn more about TOR, you can visit their website here.  Here is a good article on the New Hampshire library story.

--Ken Haigh

Censorship

Every month, the newest issue of School Library Journal lands on my desk. One of my favourite columns is “Scales on Censorship” by Pat Scales, a former chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. In each issue, librarians write-in telling of their censorship challenges from co-workers, supervisors, caregivers or Boards, and Scales provides words of wisdom and guidance. When I read this column, I often have visions of the book burning scene in the movie Footloose, and I find myself wondering how censorship remains such a prevalent issue.

In Canada we have a Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ensure access to all forms of knowledge and creativity, and the freedom to express our own opinions. The Canadian Library Association has a Position Statement on Intellectual Freedom outlining the responsibilities of libraries to maintain access to the widest variety of materials, even if society deems them “unacceptable.” Collingwood Public Library has adopted this statement, and also has a policy on Collection Development to ensure a balanced collection is purchased and maintained without biases. Although there are no guarantees, patrons are able to submit a Re-evaluation of Library Materials form, detailing the reasons they feel a title should be removed from our collection.

Every year the American Library Association compiles a list of the top ten frequently challenged books. You can see the 2014 list here – Collingwood Public Library holds nine of the titles on the list. The most frequent objections are offensive language, violence, sexual content, and being unsuitable for the intended audience.  Between 2000 and 2009, 5,099 challenges were reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom, demonstrating that the attempt to censor is very much alive and well. In fact, challenges are so frequent that, in America, Banned Book Week is taking place from September 27 to October 3, 2015. In Canada, we have the same event running from February 21 to 27, 2016, called Freedom to Read Week. Libraries and bookstores across the nation celebrate our freedom to read by displaying banned books and hosting events to promote awareness.

Despite legislature and documents ensuring our intellectual freedom, censorship remains a sensitive issue, and raises many questions, the most important of which is who has the authority to make censorship decisions? In a public library, trained librarians decide what ends up on the shelves, but it is up to patrons and caregivers to decide for themselves and their children what is appropriate.

                                                                                                                           

--Ashley Kulchycki 

Libraries and Privacy

Public Libraries have always felt it was important to protect the privacy of their patrons.  Your reading and viewing choices are your own, and we respect that.  In fact, this philosophy is imbedded in the Canadian Library Association’s Code of Ethics, which states that members of the CLA (the Collingwood Public Library is one) have the individual and collective responsibility to “protect the privacy and dignity of library users and staff.”

As Canadians, we watched with great interest what was happening south of the border where the Patriot Act allowed Homeland Security to enter public libraries and demand the personal information, including borrowing records, of persons who were under investigation.  American librarians pushed back, but the precedent was scary to say the least.

On December 9, 2014, Canada enacted a similar piece of legislation, although for a different purpose. The Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act (previously known as Bill C-13 and commonly called the Cyberbullying Act) contained some provisions which would seem to allow Canadian authorities to have similar powers in demanding private information from public libraries.

The Cyberbullying Act is laudable in intention.  For example, it makes the dissemination of private and intimate images illegal without the subject’s consent. This is an excellent thing.  There can be no debate about that. Posting embarrassing and humiliating images online without consent is now a criminal act. But the Act also gives police broader powers.  In the past, if the police were conducting an investigation and wished to see patron record information in a public library, including records of that patron’s computer activity while in the library, they needed to go through a formal subpoena process. The new legislation would seem to suggest that this is no longer necessary and that library staff would be prevented from seeking legal counsel in such cases.  So far, to my knowledge, there have been no cases of police requesting such records from a public library in Canada.  Still, the possibility is disquieting. It is ironic that an Act that is designed to protect a citizen’s online privacy might also be used to invade it.

We live in a world where the notion of privacy is changing, where it becomes normal to share our most personal experiences with complete strangers.  But I do think that there exists a trust between library patrons and their public library. There is an understanding that when we collect personal information from you, we do not share it.  If that trust is eroded, it makes us feel less secure as citizens.  I don’t think any librarian would stand in the way of a legitimate police investigation (I personally have no sympathy with cyberbullies), but we all need more privacy protection, not less.

--Ken Haigh

Arts & Culture at the Library

The cover story in the most recent issue of Municipal World (September 2015) celebrated how public libraries “are important facilitators and champions of your local culture.”  This should come as no surprise to us here in Collingwood.

At the Collingwood Public Library we do a lot to promote local artists, writers, and musicians. For example, we have regular shows of work by local artists in the library, both in our inviting ArtWalk and also scattered throughout the library in our different meeting rooms. Currently, we are exhibiting the work of two local artists: Tina Bradshaw and Frank Richter. Our popular annual children’s art exhibit, The Magic of Children in the Arts, celebrated its twenty-first anniversary this year.

Most people realize that we regularly bring authors to visit the library—Ian Hamilton, author of the best-selling Ava Lee mysteries, will be here on September 17—but few people realize that we also sponsor a twice-monthly meeting of local authors, where local writers get together, share their work and get valuable feedback from their peers.  We also ran a successful fan fiction workshop for teens this summer.

We celebrate the performing arts in our free noon hour concerts called Performance Workshops.  Our fall series begins on September 15 with pianist Avril Dell, followed by the Georgian String Quartet on October 6.  We encourage you to bring your lunch, settle back, and enjoy some fine music.  For the younger set, we will be starting up our Teen Open Mic nights again as well.  For those who would like to learn an instrument, why not sign out one of our ukuleles and join our ukulele club which meets at the library twice a month?

We could not mention local culture at the library without mentioning our Arts Advisory Council.  The AAC is a group of local volunteers who assist us with arts programming.  Already heavily involved in the arts as individuals, the AAC are our eyes and ears in the local arts scene, helping to bring local artists and performers to our attention.  They recruit performers, vet artistic submissions and help to promote the events.  They make our community a richer place in which to live.

To find out more about what is going on in the library, check out “Arts and Culture” on our library website for a list of upcoming events.

The Life of a Book

I once had a friend tell me they were looking for a book at the library and to their dismay it was listed as damaged. “Oh, that happens all the time,” I said. They were shocked.

As a children’s librarian, I often personify books and have come to believe they have their own lives and destinies. Some have wonderful, long lives full of many journeys to peoples’ homes. Some are savoured by a few friends. And some, unfortunately, meet an untimely end early in life.

It is the nature of the public library beast that books often meet a sad end. When a book crosses my desk with a worn cover, a barely visible barcode, a ripped spine, or with pages that are missing, falling out, or covered in tape, then it has been well loved, but it can’t take any more. This book has fulfilled its long and wonderful destiny.

Where do those small tears at the bottom of picture book pages come from? Tiny hands trying to turn the page at the spine of the book rather than the corner of the page. This book is now primed for an untimely end. Those tiny tears are begging to be ripped more. I often imagine youngsters looking at those little rips thinking, “Oh, someone started this job, let me help them finish.” And so that page is removed from the book. Once again, this is the nature of public libraries, and this book has likely met its fate.

Library staff members have an arsenal of special tape and magic glue that we use to mend damaged books as best we can, but sometimes books are beyond repair. Occasionally books come to us with poor bindings, and two cracks of the spine is all it takes for that book to crumble. When children come for library tours I caution them to tell a librarian immediately if a book is damaged. “We can fix lots of things,” I tell them, “but we can’t fix a book if no one tells us it’s broken.”

So what happens to those books that fulfill their destiny? Some do get recycled. More often than not, they go to the library book sale and find a new home. Those books that are savoured by a few friends, but aren’t used very frequently, embark on a new journey. Collingwood Public Library boxes up books that are still in good condition, but not used by our patrons, and donates them to Better World Books, an organization that sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. 

All is not lost, though. When possible, the library replaces well-loved books with fresh editions. We try to re-order books that have met their end too soon. And so the journey begins again.

--Ashley Kulchycki

Who's in charge?

You've probably seen this scene before, many times: A disgruntled customer walks up to a service counter and shouts, "I want to speak to the person in charge!"

But in a public library, who is in charge?

For all practical purposes, the library manager--the CEO--is in charge of the day-to-day operations, but the CEO also answers to a higher authority.

The key piece of legislation here is the Ontario Public Libraries Act.  The Act states that each municipality must provide its citizens with public library service. If is it a small municipality and feels it cannot afford to support a library of its own, it must contract with a neighbouring municipality, so that its constituents will have library access.  This used to be a fairly common practice in small rural communities, but since the round of municipal amalgamations in 2001, it has become less common and perhaps less necessary.

Library governance is vested in a group of library trustees. The trustees, who form the Library Board, are volunteers who are appointed by municipal council for a four-year term of office concurrent with the term of Council.  Trustees have to apply to be on the Board, just like any other job, and Council sifts through the resumes submitted and chooses the applicants they think will best serve the community in this capacity. Council also appoints one or more of its own members to sit on the Board, but the councillors cannot form a majority.

The Board is responsible for the big picture.  They decide on policy, create the budget, set operational goals, and plan for future library service.  They also hire and evaluate the performance of the library's CEO.  The Act requires that every library in Ontario have a CEO, though the title sounds a little pompous, and some libraries prefer to substitute the term "chief librarian" or "library director."  The CEO is responsible for taking the Library Board's big picture and translating this into practical day-to-day actions. For example, if the Board determines that its goal is to offer more services to senior citizens, then it is the CEO's responsibility to decide how that will be accomplished--what programs will be offered, what library materials purchased--and all within the confines of an agreed budget and current levels of staffing.

We are blessed with a very active and involved Library Board here in Collingwood.  They have very impressive credentials. If a community gets the volunteers it deserves, then we are a very fortunate community indeed.  You can find out more about our Board and our library policies on our website. The Board meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month, and Board meetings are open to the public. Minutes of past Board meetings are also public documents and can be found on our website. Our Board is starting to work on a four-year strategic plan for the library, so you will probably be hearing more from them in the coming months as they seek public input on the future of library service in Collingwood

So who is in charge? Ultimately, you are, since it was you who elected your Mayor and Council, and it was they who appointed your library board of trustees. If you are keenly interested in public libraries, consider putting your name forward as a trustee during the next municipal election.

Library Trends

In my last post I noted the financial difficulties libraries in the U.K. are having and singled out the Library of Birmingham as an example.  Birmingham was in the news again this week and Birmingham Council came under fire when it was announced that the library was asking for donations of recently published books, since, due to public saving cuts, they were no longer purchasing new books or newspapers.

Not all library trends are so dismal. Some changes are exciting and unexpected.  Recently, the American Library Association created a Center for the Future of Libraries to try and keep on top of what was trending in order to try and predict how these trends might affect library service.  The director of the new center, Miguel Figueroa, wrote in the March/April 2015 edition of American Libraries, "...it's nearly impossible to accurately predict the future. But we can identify trends, and they can be key to understanding what the future might bring. Identifying and organizing trends helps us think about the changes happening in the world and the potential effects they will have on our future. Awareness and understanding of trends can help us actively plan for our own work [as librarians] and for the work with the communities we serve...."  To that end, the Center for the Future of Libraries has created an online "trend library," which you can view here.

Some of the trends identified are fairly obvious--makerspaces, income inequalities, aging populations, digital natives (as opposed to digital immigrants)--but others are not so obvious--changes in American dining habits for example (fast casual), haptic technology, community resiliency in the face of disaster, and "the Internet of things."  It is an interesting website. Check it out to see what may (or may not) affect libraries in the future.

The Shape of Things to Come?

Last year I had the good fortune to travel to England, and, being a librarian, I, of course, visited a number of libraries.  What I discovered was discouraging.  Public Libraries in the U.K. are being gutted by funding cuts. A case in point is the Library of Birmingham. Opened in 2013 to great acclaim, it is the largest public library in the European Union--ten stories tall--with a large collection, public meeting spaces, and a Shakespeare Memorial Room at it apex that houses one of the most important collections of Shakespeariana in the world.



Then, one year later, Birmingham Council announced that it was slashing the library budget, forcing the library to lay off half its staff and reduce its opening hours from 74 to 40 per week. What happened in Birmingham is happening all across the U.K..  324 libraries have closed since 2011. 400 libraries are now run entirely by volunteers with varying levels of local support.  It's no wonder that a research study  conducted in 2014 showed that library visits across the U.K. had declined by 40 million visitors in 4 years.  It's the old vicious circle: cut the funding and the libraries can't offer the same levels of service they used to, so people stop coming. Then funding is pulled altogether because attendance is down. And of course the areas that are most affected are those with the poorest economies, where the libraries are really needed.

Fortunately, things have not reached this state in Canada.  Support for public libraries remains high. Even non-library users, when asked, tend to feel that a public library is an important public institution and worthy of public support. But it is important to keep the British example in mind, if only as a warning of how things might go, if we do not take care.

Where we do need to worry in Canada is at the national level, where numerous science libraries have been closed and funding cutbacks to the National Library and Archives of Canada have left the institution seriously compromised.

--Ken Haigh

Print vs Digital

There is nothing a librarian enjoys more than receiving a bundle of slick new publishers' catalogues.  It's like Christmas, seeing the new titles publishers are bringing out for the fall season--new titles by favorite authors or intriguing new books on interesting subjects. We go through the catalogues, highlighter in hand, noting the titles we think our patrons will enjoy reading.  Small town libraries are actually quite good at this.  We are close enough to our patrons to have learned their reading tastes.  However, we can't afford to buy everything we see, but we do the best we can on our limited budgets.

In recent years, this process has become complicated by the introduction of eBooks. We already purchase popular titles in multiple formats: hardcover, large print, audio book, and paperback. Now we are adding eBooks and downloadable audio books. Our budget isn't getting any bigger, so hard choices have to made.  The problem is exacerbated by the fact that not all eBook titles are available for public libraries to purchase (see earlier post).  

A recent Washington Post article noted that libraries are feeling the pressure: "Around the country, libraries are slashing their print collections in favor of e-books, prompting battles between library systems and print purists, including not only the pre-pixel generation but digital natives who represent a sizable portion of the 1.5 billion library visits a years and prefer print for serious reading." The most extreme example of this trend are libraries that only carry digital collections, such as the new library in San Antonio, Texas. 

My feeling is that we need to provide some eBooks, but that print is far from dead. EBook sales in Canada have leveled off at about 20% of the total book market, which would suggest that many people read in both formats, and most people still prefer print.  The challenge for libraries is striking a balance in a world of shrinking library budgets.

It is challenging to be working in a public library in the twenty-first century. There is no doubt about that. Libraries are being forced to constantly re-invent themselves, but we have to be careful not to fix what isn't broken.

--Ken Haigh

How Are We Funded?

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is: If I live in Blue Mountains (or Wasaga or Clearview), can I get a library card at the Collingwood Public Library?

The short answer is: Yes, of course. 

But there is a caveat; you will have to pay for it.

Why?  The reason goes back to how public libraries are funded.   In Ontario, most of the funding for public libraries comes directly from municipal property taxes.  In our case, about 92% of our operating funds come from the Town of Collingwood.  The “free” public library, therefore, isn’t really free.  We all pay for it out of our municipal tax dollars.  It seems reasonable then, under these circumstances, to ask people living outside of the municipality to pay a non-resident membership fee—in our case, $120.00 per year.  This seems like a lot of money until you consider how much a book, even an eBook, costs these days.  Then it seems like a steal.

So if 92% of our funding comes from the municipality, where does the rest of the money come from? It comes from a variety of sources, such as donations, federal and provincial grants, overdue fines, photocopying fees, and room rental fees.

Is it worth the money?  Of course.  The Collingwood Public Library is the busiest municipal building in the Town of Collingwood.  On average, 600 people pass through our doors every day.  Forty-three percent of Collingwood residents have library cards. The library is well-used. 

Do public libraries benefit the local economy? Recently, the Toronto Public Library commissioned an economic impact study to ask just that question.  They concluded that for every dollar invested in the Toronto Public Library, Torontonians received $5.63 in return. (You can read the full report here).  Does Collingwood receive a similar benefit from the presence of its library?  Without a doubt.  But I think that most people support public libraries for more intangible reasons.

eBook Pricing and Public Libraries

As eBooks become more popular with our library patrons, we are constantly being asked when we are going to add more titles to our online digital collection.  The truth is, we would love to add more titles, and we do add new titles every year, but we can only afford to add a small number.  The reason for this is that publishers charge libraries from 2 to 10 times more for eBook titles than they do to individual consumers. For example, you can buy the Kindle version of  Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch on Amazon.ca for $12.99, but the publisher sells it to the library for $114.00.  That's almost nine times more! To try and address this situation, the Collingwood Public Library has joined with other public libraries in Simcoe County to pool our resources.  Each year, we put some money in the kitty and share eBook titles through our PULSE website.  But this can only take us so far.

Fortunately, the Toronto Public Library and the Canadian Library Association have recently spearheaded a campaign to try and get publishers to change their pricing model.  The story has been picked up in the news.  Here is a recent CBC report: CBC: E-book prices marked up too high, libraries protest

If you would like to learn more about the issue, you can also check the information found at Canadian Public Libraries for Fair EBook Pricing.

Collingwood Writers' Collective

Writing is a tough and lonely business.  When I was first hired at the Collingwood Public Library in the summer of 2013, several local writers approached me, hoping that the library would organize some kind of writers' support group.  I called a meeting and twenty-four people showed up. I was flabbergasted. Over the past two years that group has shaken down to about ten or twelve stalwarts, but new people keep joining all of the time.  I had to give the group a name, so I chose The Collingwood Writers' Collective.

Twice a month, on the first and third Tuesdays, we meet in the FreeSchools Room and share what we have been working on.  Each person brings several poems or 1000-1500 words of prose and reads aloud to the group.  We try to provide constructive feedback--tell the writer what is working and perhaps what is not, and try to suggest ways to make it better.  We check our egos at the door.  It's not a writers' workshop, rather a writers' mutual support group.

Having said that, we have brought some instructors to the library. Susan Swan, Karen Hood-Caddy, and Brian Henry have run workshops at the library.  Becoming a published writer, which is the goal for most of us, is becoming easier with self-publishing and eBooks, but earning a living through your writing is becoming more difficult.  A recent survey published by the Writers' Union of Canada showed that the annual income of Canadian writers has decreased by 27% since 1998, and that the average Canadian writer earns $12,879.00 per year (and these are professional writers who belong to the Union).

Still, we have had some successes. Several of our members have published poems and stories in literary magazines, and one, Arlene F. Marks, published her sci-fi novel, The Accidental God, in 2014, and has found a publisher for a second novel, which will be published in 2016.

Arlene reading from her novel at our book launch

--Ken Haigh

A Good Friend Retires

Last week, Gwen Wheeler, a consultant with the Southern Ontario Library Service, retired.  For the past twenty-five years, Gwen has helped to guide us through the often bewildering changes happening in the world of public libraries.  SOLS is a provincially-funded body that provides advice and training for librarians, and several times each year we have gathered with librarians from across the Simcoe/Muskoka Region to share ideas and to participate in workshops under Gwen's leadership.

This past week we looked at examples of how libraries were changing their physical environment to become more relevant in a digital age.  Most librarians expressed discouragement because we are expected to do more, but without any extra funding to add that extra layer of service. We discussed the current trend to streamline collections to free up more floor space for tables and computers, and how some libraries are cutting their collections in half so that they can create room for maker spaces and recording studios.

In the fall, the library board of the Collingwood Public Library will be starting a strategic planning exercise, to consult our community and to see how they would like the library to evolve.  It should prove interesting, but we will miss Gwen's guidance.  Fortunately, we have an new and able consultant in Allyson Fox. Goodbye, Gwen.  We will miss you.

A Community Garden

We launched our community garden on Friday. Michael Burgess, of Vibrant Green Gardens, approached us with the idea of creating a vegetable garden in the downtown core to be shared by local residents. It was a great idea, but we lacked the land to get it started.  We were rescued by our good neighbours, Richard and Anke Lex, who offered us a strip of land across the street from the library beside the old Enterprise-Bulletin building.  Once we had the land, the rest came together remarkably quickly. Bill Brown’s Woodworking and Building Supplies offered us free lumber to make raised planters, Canadian Tire donated plants and seeds, and the Town of Collingwood’s Parks and Recreation Department delivered several loads of topsoil and mulch.  Michael did all of the hard labour, preparing the site, cutting down the shrubs, grubbing up the roots with a pick-axe, and building the garden boxes.  Some adult volunteers helped to fill the boxes with topsoil and rake out the mulch.  Then on Friday afternoon, a group of volunteers of all ages arrived to plant the beds. Jocelyn Knoester, our teen services librarian, and her teen gardening crew will provide the weekly weeding and watering.  In the fall, we hope to use the vegetables we’ve raised in our own Food at Four program (feeding disadvantaged teens), and the surplus will be donated to the Food Bank. Thanks again to all of the wonderful people who shared our vision of a community garden.