Library Tech Confidential

 It’s always interesting to see public libraries try lending novel, non-book, non-audiovisual materials. While seeking information about a recent extreme heat alert, I caught the following in a press release from the City of Toronto:

Toronto Public Health and the Toronto Public Library are teaming up with community partners to make pedometers available for loan at 18 library branches throughout the city. This initiative is part of a new Walk into Health program to encourage people to build physical activity into their daily lives. In 2007, over 2,000 pedometers were lent out at 12 branches. Those who borrowed last year stated that pedometers helped them continue walking for exercise.

Last year, SunLife Financial began sponsoring the Musem and Arts Pass, which allows patrons to ’sign out’ tickets good for admission to a number of large and small cultural attractions all over the city.

What other cool stuff do — or could — our public our libraries lend?

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I previously blogged about Wifi at the Toronto Reference Library, but neglected to note that the Toronto Public Library now offers free wireless internet access at 31 of its 99 branches. They’ve even got a Google map showing wifi-enabled branches.

That reminds me, now that TPL has its own decent Google map of branches, I should either comprehensively update or decommission mine. 

I was going to be spend my Saturday at the MaRS Centre attending participating in Metronauts’ Transit Camp un-conference, but unfortunately I didn’t feel well this morning. What’s an un-conference, you ask? Here’s how they describe it:

…participants create the content of the sessions throughout the day. The event structure is open and fueled by participation. Propose a session on a topic you’re passionate about and engage your fellow participants in conversation. Participation can also mean active listening, and recording of sessions, but there are no observers. Participants are asked to sign the Metronauts Pledge as a commitment to help create a positive environment for everyone.

While much of the pledge basically boils down to ‘play nice with others’, the following bit is truly fascinating:

3. You agree that all materials (text, photography, videos, etc.) and design artifacts posted to this website for which you own the rights shall be covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license.

I’ve warmed up to the idea of assigning ‘open’ licenses to certain kinds of IP after the fact - photos posted to Flickr, say - but had never encountered the idea of promising to do so beforehand. This makes perfect sense for a semi-public gathering of like-minded activist/enthusiasts, especially given that this conference is meant to generate useful ideas for Metrolinx, a public body charged with coordinating public transit across the GTA. It also strikes me as vastly preferable to increasingly common, massive, dense, super-legalese, sketchy click-through EULAs from various online services that insist users assign unlimited, irrevocable, worldwide commercial rights to all content uploaded to the service.

Update: If you’re curious, notes and other information from today’s event are available via Metronauts’ wiki. Spacing’s coverage is also worth checking out.

The Toronto Public Library has announced several useful improvements to its catalogue and website, most notably lists of ‘newest titles’ by audience (adult, teen, children) and type (fiction/nonfiction, graphic, large print).

Still no baked-in RSS feeds, unfortunately, and I’m not having much success producing one with Feedity or any of my other go-to scraping tools. Ah, well, I guess progress is progress.

Update: Still no luck on the ‘newest’ lists, but I have been able to come up with a feed for Toronto Public Library news scraped from this page. Hopefully some of you will find it useful (and if you do, let me know!)

Poking around the Royal Ontario Museum’s website in preparation for a visit to Darwin: The Evolution Revolution, I discovered the freely downloadable Director’s Choice Audio Tour. If you’re into that sort of thing, loading this onto your iPod or other MP3 player before a visit to the ROM will save you the $5.00 audio tour rental fee (check out their podcasts, too).

Soon, the City of Toronto will release a final report detailing its highly-anticipated and long overdue redevelopment of Union Station (our downtown subway, regional bus and regional/long-distance rail terminal).

Plans that the City has made available so far emphasize expanded retail space to complement the mostly food-centric vendors already onsite. Local transit whiz Steve Munro has a great overview of the station’s present and possible future.

You know what I think would be great? A storefront-style branch of the Toronto Public Library.

The idea(s):

• Beefy holds pick-up desk for commuters to pick up reading material for their trip home, an upcoming weekend at the cottage, or to help their kids with homework.
• Information desk, maps and a reference collection tailored for tourists and other travellers to augment the Travellers’ Aid booth that never seems to be open.
• With the ability to place holds well in advance online, it’s very convenient for patrons, and materials could be transferred in from other branches and checked out at the Union Station branch like any other.

The problem(s):

• By definition, commuters passing through Union aren’t from Toronto. This is a lot of effort to serve the clientele of other municipalities’ library systems.
• Optics (and ethics) of rolling out new services aimed at white-collar, middle-class adult commuters from the exurbs at the percieved expense of disadvantaged children in the City’s own priority neighbourhoods.
• Any bookstores that move into the new retail space will strenuously object, potentially demanding some kind of exclusivity arrangement with the City.
• Difficult delivery truck access to the branch for pickups and deliveries of materials coming in from other branches (though this doesn’t seem to stop the other storefront operations in the station).

Oh, well. It seemed like a good idea for about five minutes.

Photo credit: “Union Station, Toronto” by Flickr user StarbuckGuy
(Creative Commons)

Library behind bars gets forced into closet [Toronto Star] : “[A volunteer who] amassed more than 2,000 volumes, from thrillers to psychology texts [was told to] move the prison library into a glorified broom closet, perhaps 6 metres long and a mere 100 centimetres wide… Officials [say] they wanted to use the library room to store protective vests. Guards tried to intervene; they offered a variety of alternatives, and asked to be present when the issue was discussed in management meetings. They were ignored.”

This is happening in the Toronto neighbourhood where I live, perhaps a 15-minute walk from my apartment.

In fairness, Wikipedia’s entry for the Don Jail notes that, because it was only designed to hold prisoners briefly before and during trial, it lacks all kinds of facilities, including a proper laundry and sufficient telephones, exercise space and visiting rooms.

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Library cuts may have backfired, board says [Toronto Star] : “Library board officials said they were notified last week that the Toronto Civic Employees’ Union (CUPE Local 416) had won a grievance filed against the board over the Sunday closings.”

Ever since a planned crucial revenue-raising tax measure unexpectedly failed to pass earlier this year, various departments of the City of Toronto have tried to find ways to cut costs the TTC offered up a slew of ‘poor performing’ bus routes plus a fare increase, the police insisted it couldn’t spare a penny, and the library resigned itself to closing on Sundays.

Now TPL may have to pay it’s staff for Sundays either way — that is, whether their branches are closed or not — because their legal advisors apparently failed to acount for the effect of the collective agreement. The 11 branches located in ‘priority’ (read: disproportionately impoverished) neighbourhoods were to remain unaffected. With luck, if this development negates much of the hoped-for cost savings, perhaps the city will relent and revert to normal hours of operation.

UPDATE: Subsequent media coverage confirms the reversal on the Sunday closures.

• Library branches to reopen on Sundays [Globe and Mail]
• Ruling overturns library closings [Toronto Star]

Archivists embrace digital page - “In a darkened and anonymous corner of the 7th floor of the University of Toronto’s main library, the books of the future are being created 14 hours a day…The ’scribes’ here are a combination of people and custom-built machines that can each scan up to 500 book pages in an hour. Multiply that by 13 such set-ups and two seven-hour shifts every weekday and you can see how the scanning centre manages to copy more than 1,000 books a week.” [Toronto Star]

Oh my. TPLfinder, my Google map of Toronto Public Library branches, found its way onto nerd-web uber-blog BoingBoing today, via a roundup of other Toronto-oriented maps on BlogTO. I can’t wait to play around with all of them.

The BoingBoing post wasn’t just a quick mention, but a screen capture! Hopefully I won’t be choking on an absurd bandwidth bill before sunset…

From Spacing Wire:

Toronto Reference Library finally has Wifi. While this is one of Toronto’s most wonderful places, the lack of wireless internet has been the only drawback, as laptops get lonely when they can’t connect to anything, and sometimes books just aren’t enough…

Torontoist reports that most Toronto Public Library branches will be open earlier on weekdays as of today. Details are available from this post on TPL’s site.