Reader upset with library cuts

OUR READERS WRITE

Dear Editor

This morning, I went onto the Caledon Public Library website to do a book search and was shocked to find a bright red banner at the top of the home page that reads:

“Due to significant provincial budget cuts, the Interlibrary Loan delivery service will cease to operate effective April 26, 2019.  As a result, Caledon Public Library is not currently able to accept or fill any requests for materials from libraries outside of Caledon.”

This service cut, which is fall-out from the Ford government slashing half the budget of the Southern Ontario Library Service, is one of the unkindest of cuts … all to save $1.5 million across the southern library service.  This trifling figure amounts to no more a rounding error in the 2019 provincial budget that totals $141 billion.

Our household has made use of the interlibrary loan service many times over the years to bring us books and movies from other public libraries across Ontario.  The service is particularly important for small, rural library systems such as Caledon's which can't possibly stock all the materials that residents want.  Ford is now running a “government for the urban people,” those in cities with large, well-stocked library systems with dozens of branches.

Caledon Public Library is a wonderful service in our community, offering books, movies, audiobooks and other materials and providing computer and internet access, recycling of batteries, return of used computer ink cartridges, payment of property taxes and so on.  To cut us off from the collections of other libraries across Ontario through Interlibrary loans is not just annoying, it is an affront to the promotion of reading and literacy in our community.

Paul Aird

Inglewood,