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