Hamilton library trying to mitigate damage of Ford government cuts

Hamilton’s chief librarian, Paul Takala, says libraries in Ontario are trying to find ways to mitigate the negative effects of drastic provincial cuts to delivery services for library books.

Last week, the Ford government announced it was cutting funding for the Southern Ontario Library Services, to $1.5 million from $3.1 million.

And Friday the service was to terminate its operations, which transports books and other items between 153 libraries across the province.

The move comes after a temporary suspension of interlibrary loan requests.

“We are still not sure of the full ramifications,” said Takala “The cuts are not helpful for resource sharing between Ontario libraries.”

Last year in Hamilton, 4,242 requests were made from Hamilton library users for materials at other libraries and 7,230 requests were made by other libraries for items kept by the Hamilton library.

For the first three months of this year, the numbers have been 614 and 955, respectively.

Takala said the Hamilton library is “exploring with other libraries ways we can keep the interlibrary service in operation although some of the procedures and logistics will change.”

He said Canada Post offers libraries a “shipping tool,” which offers significant discounts on postal rates for library-related packages and that might provide a way to continue on with interlibrary loans.

“But the problem is, smaller library systems with very limited resources, would have difficulty covering even the low cost of the library shipping tool.”