Speaking Up for the Toronto Public Library

Toronto’s libraries keep us connected in a wireless world. (Toronto Globe & Mail, 8/10/2011)

Excerpt: Why do Toronto libraries have such a loyal following in an era when books on paper seem to be going out of style? One reason is that today’s libraries provide much more than books. They have evolved into vital community hubs, offering everything from language training to employment services.

Walk into a Toronto Public Library branch and you might find a new immigrant typing up his résumé, a teenager researching a school project on a computer and a group of young mothers practising their English. Libraries offer courses that help newcomers prepare for the citizenship test. They help young adults achieve financial literacy. They offer tutoring for schoolchildren struggling to read.

Consider the St. James Town branch at Sherbourne and Wellesley, on the east side of downtown. It is named after the thicket of apartment towers nearby that house thousands of the city’s poorest residents, many of them recent immigrants. Along with shelves of books in English and French, it offers volumes in Chinese and Tamil, with smaller collections in Russian, Tagalog and Spanish (not to mention some DVDs in Hindi).

When I visited on a midweek afternoon, a little girl read a book on a ledge in the children’s section, a woman in a hijab typed on a computer as her daughters looked on, and a librarian taught an elderly woman how to use the Internet. In one corner of the pleasant, light-filled space, men pecked at their laptops on tables equipped with electrical plug-ins.

Related posts:
Toronto councillors not lining ujp to support mayor's call to close libraries.  (8/6/2011)
Library rallies its supporters.  (8/6/2011)
Toronto mayor Doug Ford goes hyperbolic. (7/29/2011)
Toronto councilor uses his position to bully Margaret Atwood  .(7/27/2011)