The great equalizer : Case for investing in the Toronto public library

The Great Equalizer 5 • More people visit the Toronto Public Library every year than the an- nual total for 10 culture, arts, and entertainment facilities in the To- ronto area including the Air Canada Centre (events, Leafs, and Rap- tors), the Rogers Centre (events, Blue Jays), the CN Tower, the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada’s Wonderland, the Toronto Zoo, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Ontario Sc [...] These predecessor libraries were the seeds of what became the Toronto Public Li- brary in 1884, after the passage of the Free Library referendum by a huge majority of Toronto voters the previous year.3 In the intervening 129 years, Toronto’s library system has grown incre- mentally branch by branch and added important programs to serve the community’s needs: access to resources for people with dis [...] In fact, more people visit the Toronto Public Library every year than the annual total for 10 culture, arts, and entertainment facilities in the Toron- to area, including the Air Canada Centre (events, Leafs, and Raptors), the The Great Equalizer 11 FIgure 3 Toronto Public Library vs. [...] At the same time, the library system continues to regu- The Great Equalizer 13 larly attract a significant percentage of the wealthiest people in the city. [...] The political initiative to bring seven library systems under one umbrella was done in the name of efficiency and cost-savings, but the result was simply a further reduction of the city’s public library budget.12 And yet, because of the deep recession of the early-1990s and the slow recovery, especially for socially and economically vulnerable populations, circulation and visits to the library inc