Plan online

With the majority of library users being women, the city’s chief librarian says he hopes their new strategic plan brings in more diversity.

The city’s public libraries officially released its strategic plan online earlier this week. The plan outlines the goals of the library for the next few years. The strategy focused on five key goals including promoting diversity and social inclusion, encouraging lifelong learning and supporting the local economy.

The plan also showed the results of the community input survey. The results showed more than 75 per cent of people who use the library are women and most people that use the library are between the ages of 30 and 54.

Chief Librarian and CEO John Pateman said they want to challenge the traditional demographic that only older women use the library.

“We want to put in services that will attract younger people and guys as well,” he said. “We don’t want to pigeonhole people and say ‘if you’re young computers are for you and if you’re older books are for you’. We want to mix it up. We want young people using books and more senior people using the computers.”

Around 40 per cent of the community uses the library but Pateman said he wants to shoot for a high percentage.

“We want to boost to that 60 per cent, 80 per cent, 100 per cent,” he said. “Elsewhere in the world typical library usage is 80 per cent plus. I don’t know why we can’t achieve it here. It just means we have to change the way we do things. In terms of Canadian use, we’ve very high.”

He said the strategic plan was developed by a group of people within the community. Pateman said it’s important that the community guides the direction of the library and added that they hope to create a community action panel to achieve this goal.

The plan also highlighted the libraries strengths and weaknesses. Many residents surveyed by the library praised the staff for being well train, knowledgeable and helpful. Some of the weaknesses include long wait times for e-books and when the libraries were open.

Pateman added that the planning is all about meeting the community’s needs.