Legal Research

Special Report: The Future of Greater Victoria Public Libraries

By admin

The Victoria (BC, Canada) Times Colonist newspaper does a thorough report on the challenges facing a growing municipality’s urban library system in 2011:

Special Report: The future of Greater Victoria Public libraries

“At the helm of the revolution is new chief executive officer Maureen Sawa, who, since arriving at her post in October, has met with dozens of community groups and organizations, looking for ways to partner with them and take the library to the community.

One of those alliances kicks off mid-February, when the GVPL and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria team up.

Free family passes to the Moss Street gallery will be available for checkout at the library.

Sawa sees libraries as places where content and community are king. To her, the library is about learning and sharing with others, whether that happens via a book, DVD, e-book reader, online question, public lecture, discussion or talking to a librarian.

She also thinks the library needs to come out of its shell.

“I think we’re doing a good job, but I don’t know that we’re doing a good job of letting people know that,” Sawa says. That can be as simple as putting up a banner -who can tell the region’s main library is off a courtyard on Broughton Street unless they know it’s there? -to being part of large community events.

Outgoing library board chairman Paul Gerrard -he has been on the board the maximum eight years and is handing the reins over to Karel Roessingh -agrees that the institution needs to stop being such a wallflower.”

It’s great to see libraries who focus on partnerships as core to their strategies!

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Special+Report+future+Greater+Victoria+Public+libraries/4192831/story.html#ixzz1ClMuJLu4

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 02, 2011 (boomark / email).