Celebrate Your Library
- Library Zest Team
- Oct 19, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2020
The month of October is Canadian Library Month and Ontario celebrates from the 18th to the 24th. Library staff across the province look forward to this week dedicated to the work we do. Ontario Public Library week got its start in 2006 with the Canadian Library Association launching the event. They wanted to provide "an opportunity for Canadians not familiar with their local library to come down and experience all the services available to them". The theme for 2020 is "one card, one million possibilities"!
Libraries have had to adapt to many changes over the years. Ever-changing technology, blips in funding, and public interest just to name a few, but 2020 brought on a completely new challenge: a global pandemic. Libraries across the province and the country were faced with closing their doors to their communities and adapting to working in a totally new way. Essa Public Library was not alone in this. Our staff had to rally in transitioning to working from home and to try and provide the same level of service and program quality on a digital platform. During that time it got me thinking about all the ways libraries matter to the communities they serve. Libraries foster early literacy for little ones and provide a space for new parents to join other new parents for some adult-time. They provide a space for students for quiet study and room to work on projects, write essays, prepare group assignments, or simply play a game. They are a regular weekly visit for our seniors who may feel isolated, especially during the colder months. They are a place to write and print a resume. They are also a place to use new technology like 3D printers or learn about using an iPad. And they are, of course, a place for avid readers, where they can connect with people who can give them book recommendations, track down a copy of something obscure, or place a hold on a newly released book.
"I don't have to look far to find treasures. I discover them every time I visit the library" -- Michael Embry
Libraries were created as places to hold information, to categorize ideas. Private libraries date back centuries; ministers and doctors had their own private collections of specialized material. Prior to that, libraries were also archives and were places where research could be carried out. How libraries have changed so much over the years! Wealthy families immigrating to Canada brought their own family libraries with them. And the first Canadian library of its kind began operating in Montreal in 1828; soon other major cities across Canada were quick to take up the idea and opened as well. These early libraries were subscription-based services that sadly were not open to the general public. The first true public libraries, as we know them today, were opened in Saint John, Guelph, and Toronto in 1883. What would become the largest public library system in Canada, the Toronto Public Library, started out as the library of the Mechanics Institute in 1830.
The library of the Mechanics Institute in 1884. That same year this collection was absorbed in the Toronto Public Library's collection.
As time has gone on, the number of libraries and the kinds Canada has seen have grown. About two out of every three Canadians have a library card; that's about the same number of people who have passports. And every year more people borrow books than buy them. Canada's libraries also house special and rare book collections like the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Library. There are libraries in elementary schools, secondary schools, and colleges and universities. We have research libraries and the fourth largest library in the entire world--The Library and Archives Canada. So do you love libraries? You will love these books below!
I Work at a Public Library by Gina Sheridan.
From a patron's missing wetsuit to the scent of crab cakes wafting through the stacks, I Work at a Public Library showcases the oddities that have come across Gina Sheridan's circulation desk. Throughout these pages, she catalogs her encounters with local eccentrics as well as the questions that plague her, such as, "What is the standard length of eyebrow hairs?" Whether she's helping someone scan his face onto an online dating site or explaining why the library doesn't have any dragon autobiographies, Sheridan's bizarre tales prove that she's truly seen it all. Sheridan's I Work at a Public Library celebrates librarians and the unforgettable patrons that roam the stacks every day.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean.
On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? The Library Book chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and follows Susan's attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer.
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: to preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door. Hammer writes about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world’s greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction. With bravery and patience, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. His heroic heist is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty of their culture. His story is one of a man who, through extreme circumstances, discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it.
The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson.
Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson has crisscrossed the country documenting hundreds of these endangered institutions. The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs— from the majestic reading room at the New York Public Library to Allensworth, California's one-room Tulare County Free Library built by former slaves. Accompanying Dawson's revealing photographs are essays, letters, and poetry by some of America's most celebrated writers. A foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett bookend this important survey of a treasured American institution.
So friends, join in with us at the Essa Public Library and celebrate Ontario Public Library Week. Enjoy your public library space, your collection, your online resources, your staff's knowledge, and recommendations, your online programs, and events but, most of all, enjoy your love of reading. You can also help us celebrate by sharing your favourite things about the library on social media. Use these hashtags: #endlesspossibilities and #oplw
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