Ottawa Public Library
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The Ottawa Public Library (OPL) is the library system of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The library was founded in 1906 with a donation from the Carnegie Foundation.
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Origin of the OPL
Prior to the twentieth century, Ottawa had a few reading rooms in hotel lobbies, and also some small fee-based libraries for working men, but no truly free place for anyone to read. The city's active Local Council of Women took up the cause of a free library for all. They announced, just before the election of 1896, that the mansion of George Perley, a local lumber baron, was donated in his will as a home for the library. However, the city voted down the motion to build a library, as well as another motion to build a firehall; the city just didn't have any money to spare for "luxuries".
Only in 1901, when letters were mailed to Andrew Carnegie, did they get anywhere. Carnegie replied that he would offer $100,000 to the city to build the library if they provided a site and a pledge of $7,500 a year to maintain it. They eventually agreed in January 1903, and within a few years the library was built and open to the public.
Current day
The main branch of the library is located in downtown Ottawa at the corner of Metcalfe and Laurier streets, at the same spot as the original Carnegie library, although nothing remains of the original building but some stained glass windows. The library now has thirty-three branches spread throughout Ottawa and the surrounding area.
Before 2000, the city had a number of different libraries, including the Nepean, North Gloucester, and Vanier public libraries. The Ottawa Public Library itself only had a few libraries, including Sunnyside, Rideau, and Rosemount. After the other municipalities were merged into the city of Ottawa the libraries were also merged and restructured. Larger, busy libraries such as Nepean Centrepointe, Carlingwood, Main, Orleans, and Ruth E. Dickinson branches have multiple stories and act as hubs for their region, whereas most branches are small neighborhood libraries like Sunnyside, Vernon, or Carp.
Patrons in smaller branches have greatly benefitted from the 2000 merger, as they can now easily order almost any book from another branch, and return books to anywhere in the city. The new system is very centralized, however, which has meant a loss of decision-making power in many ways, including the choice of books for purchase and the old, local ways of running the smaller libraries.
The current head of OPL is Barbara Clubb, who is also acting as the president of the Canadian Library Association for 2005. The library is governed by a board of part time members appointed by the city of Ottawa. The library is funded by the city through local tax revenues, and some income also comes from the traditional library sources of fees, fines, and fundraising.
The library system has 2.4 million items, 94% percent of which are books. The library also has a large audio-visual collection including DVDs, CDs, and VHS tapes. Since Ottawa is a bilingual city, a large portion of the collection is in French, with some branches such as Vanier working almost exclusively in French. Smaller collections are also held in a wide array of other languages, notably Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic. According to the latest Ontario library statistics, only the Toronto Public Library has larger holdings.
Image:Bookmobile.JPG Two bookmobiles, which operate out of the Sunnyside branch, stop at regularly scheduled places throughout the city, in an effort to reach neighborhoods without library branches. Many of these neighborhoods are poorer, more remote, or for some reason slightly too far from a library branch. During a funding crisis in 2004, the older bookmobile was nearly decommissioned, but instead it was kept in service with a second, new bookmobile added in 2005.
A large new branch is being built in the Greenboro area in the city's rapidly-growing South end, and is due to open in 2007. There have also been a number of proposals to build a new, much larger Main branch of the library somewhere downtown, including an offer from a developer for partership to build in the still-mostly-empty Lebreton Flats. Problems with building a new Main Branch include a lack of funding and vision and especially location, as Ottawa's downtown core is already very crowded, and Lebreton flats is not within close walking distance of any large neighborhood or commercial district.
Branches
Trivia
- The day after its official opening, in 1906, the original Carnegie library opened several hours later than expected, because the mass of people who had come to the opening day left the entire library in complete disarray, and had walked off with many items.
- The Rideau Branch of the OPL is thought to have been the first bilingual public library branch in North America when it opened in 1934.
- The books at the rural Fitzroy Harbour branch, the most Westerly branch of the OPL, were subjected to an entirely unfortunate skunk spraying in 1998.