Volume 39 Nº 2: July 2003

Our correspondent in Canada

Jenny Evans

After a month travelling across Canada, I have spent the last few months living in the capital city Ottawa. It is certainly a city of extremes: when I arrived the temperature got as cold as minus 43 degrees - not something I want to experience again in a hurry. The snow and ice stayed for a while longer before we finally got to the 'fall'. Now we have reached summer it has hit close to 40 degrees in the last week. I have some understanding now why discussion of the weather is such a national pastime here. It has been great not only to finally see the sun again, but to be able to go outside without three layers of clothing. Ottawa certainly seems to make the most of its summer months; we started off in May with the Tulip Festival, which appropriately enough this year had a theme of 'Tulips Down Under' linking up with tulip festivals in Australia. There is also Bluesfest, the Ottawa Jazz Festival and the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival all coming up in the next few months.

Canada has both English and French as its official languages. Ottawa, being the capital city, is therefore bilingual. Some areas are predominantly made up of people with an English background while other areas are made up of people with a French background. As such, the Ottawa Public Library provides services in both languages. The City of Ottawa resulted from the merging of the twelve municipalities in the Ottawa metropolitan area in 2001. It is therefore a huge local government area. The City of Ottawa's website currently quotes the population as being 774 072 people.

Providing services to a bilingual population means that the approach to programming needs to be flexible. One thing I found very interesting while talking to one of the librarians at the Ottawa Public library was that the French population do not have a great tradition of using public libraries. Traditionally French families read together at home, so would not go to a library to participate in a storytime. They also tend to buy books, rather than borrow them. This is apparently changing however, as new generations of babies from French families are starting to come to the library. It is a good reminder that when providing services in more than one language, you cannot assume that you can just translate your English program into another language but must consider how that cultural group views libraries and how they use them.

As I mentioned earlier, we have finally reached summer here, and as such the summer reading programs are running in full force across the country. As in Western Australia, they seem to be province-wide, for example one program running across Ontario, co-ordinated by a particular body but supported by many. In British Columbia the theme this summer is 'Set the stage - read' and is co-ordinated by the Public Library Services section of the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services. Significantly, there are a number of sponsors involved in supporting this program including the British Columbia Library Association and the Royal Bank Foundation. The Vancouver Public Library is also giving away baseball tickets to children registering in the program. In Nova Scotia, Imperial Oil sponsors the Halifax Regional Library summer reading program, to the tune of $10 000. In its third year the program won an ALA promotions award. This private partnership though is somewhat of a controversial issue. This year they have the theme of 'Summer Reading Quest' based on original fantasy characters who are trying to save the world while battling the forces of evil. Their program is also split in two for older and younger readers. In Ontario this year, the province I am living in, the theme is '20 000 reads under the sea' - I've noticed the poster for the program on billboards and bus shelters across the city of Ottawa. It is sponsored by the Toronto Dominion Bank. Sponsorship for this year and next year's summer reading program was offered as an option as part of the sponsorship program for The Fun of Reading: International Forum on Canadian Children's Literature held in Ottawa in June 2003. Of course, just as importantly, the municipal libraries in the various provinces support these programs in a variety of ways.

The issue of funding leads onto another concept very well developed in Canada that I mentioned in my last article, the Friends of the Library group. This amazing support directly benefits children's services too - in Richmond, British Columbia the library received around $10 000 for equipment such as puppets from their Friends of the Library group. I have had the chance to talk to one of the Board members of the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library while I have been here. It is important to keep in mind though that this is how one particular group operates - the others may work slightly differently.

The Friends of the Ottawa Public Library are set up as a 'charitable incorporated organisation.' This means that they can take donations and give a charitable receipt for tax purposes, therefore encouraging people to donate. You can join as a member at a number of different levels. They also raise funds by the running of a friends' bookshop at a number of the library branches, have regular book sales and sell merchandise such as calendars. It is also possible to bequeath part of your estate to the organization. How is the decision made as to where the funds raised will go? The library gives them a wish list once a year. Throughout the year, the group chooses items off the list. It is mainly collection-focused so that all library users have access to the results of the fundraising. The Friends group at Ottawa has been around for 16-18 years! There is even a 'Friends of Canadian Libraries' group that provides information and advice to groups across Canada.

Libraries that do not have active friends' groups do promote other related options. For example, on the website of the Greater Victoria Public Library on Vancouver Island, British Columbia there is information about 'Honour with Books'. In this program people can donate funds to the library for books and one of the books purchased with the money will have a bookplate placed in it, commemorating an individual or group. They also promote their 'Endowment Fund' reminding people that the library is regarded as non-profit and can give tax receipts. This money goes into an endowment fund with the Victoria Foundation. Finally, there is 'Planned Giving' which asks people to remember the library in their will and also the advantages of making a major financial donation to the library during their lifetime.

These friends' groups have had a huge impact on what is possible for public libraries to achieve in Canada.

As anywhere, schools are an important part of promoting the public library and what it can offer to both the school and the individual student. Larger library systems like the Vancouver Public Library have a computer lab set up and local class groups come in regularly for library skills classes. Many libraries present two focused talks at schools during the school year - a longer one in September or October which is the beginning of the school year here and a shorter one at the end of the school year promoting the summer reading program. For example, in Halifax, Nova Scotia they talk to every Grade four class in September and October.

At Richmond Public Library in British Columbia the reading buddies program I mentioned in my last article targets high school students to help younger children with reading. Reading buddies is a purely recreational reading program for fun. It links in to the fact that students have to do a certain number of hours volunteering in their community.

At the Ottawa Public Library there is a fairly structured program in place - schools are all invited to visit the library at the beginning of the school then a schedule is put together for the whole year with the aim of fitting in 5-7 visits per class, although realistically it is closer to 4-5 visits. This means class teachers know exactly when they will be visiting the library over the school year. Again, as happens in Perth it is much easier to get elementary school (primary school in Australia) classes to visit than high schools.

Meanwhile, I continue on working in Ottawa for the next few months with a few weekend trips planned to Montreal, Kingston and Toronto before I set out on the next part of my journey.

After 4-5 years working as a librarian in public libraries and at the State Library in Western Australia, Jenny Evans is now travelling, meeting lots of interesting people and discovering all that Canada has to offer.