By Pepper Parr

May 14th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Part two of a two-part article on the Burlington Library CEO

 

“Our demographics.” There isn’t a lot of data, said Lita Barrie.

We don’t do a lot of gender-based analysis when we do our annual customer satisfaction survey. Typically, we weren’t asking people for demographic information, but this past year we did, and it definitely skews to women.

Who uses the library and how many people work there?

Number of staff FTE – 140

Number of books on shelves – BPL’s Collection totals 345,352 items – 305,662 physical items on the shelves

Number of videos on shelves – DVD’s comprise of 11% of BPL annual checkouts.

How many people hold a library card – 93,322 Active Library Card holders (i.e used within the last 2 years)

“Just be hazarding a guess to say how many, but it’s interesting, because definitely, for our author events, our book clubs, there tends to be a gender disparity between these and those just borrowing from the library.

“I think we’re seeing, even though we’re in sort of an information age where we’re surrounded with information, there’s more research happening now around attention span, because I think one of the things that people really struggle with is the long form of a book and being able to hold your attention to read for a longer period of time, but reading as a as a concept, whether as a social determinant of health, as a source of learning and growth, or even just for mental well being as a dream stressor. I think that’s the part you know.

For those of us who are readers, we know all this. We know all of the things that reading brings us. But for people who haven’t had that;  they haven’t discovered that, or they face challenges around that, convincing people of the value can be a bit of a hard sell.”

How do libraries work with educators?.  Do they influence each other?

“Definitely, within the library sector, and this could be one of the things that we’ve seen in Canada over the last number of years, is a decline in school libraries. So definitely, kids aren’t having as much of a presence of the library in their elementary and secondary school experience, and that’s particularly true in Ontario.

“We work with educators when we look to find partnerships. “Teachers have big jobs, particularly now with all the things happening in society; the types of partnerships that we used to have is less common now, just because the school boards and teachers just don’t have the time or capacity for those types of collaborative relationships, which I think is a detriment to our ability to really make an impact, but we try to recognize that and find ways that we can engage.  I used to have working relationships with educators at the start of my career.

“The biggest factor in whether a child is a reader is their parent. It’s not just being read to, it’s seeing literature at home, observing a parent.  Those are some of the biggest determinants of whether someone is a reader.”

Is there anything that your people can do to work on the disinformation side?

“Very timely question. Definitely, that’s an area of focus we’re looking at.  I was part of a podcast we worked on with the Privy Council on misinformation, disinformation, and trying to think about how we as librarians can play a more active role in that.

“We have found that the more confident we feel about our position on something, the more susceptible we are to misinformation.”

CBC’s radio program Ideas recorded one of their program at the Burlington Central Library; the program was broadcast a couple of weeks later. Lita was not part of the CBC program just to introduce people – she was an active participant along with Ira Wells and Nahlah Ayed (Host, CBC IDEAS).  Wells was speaking about an experience he had at his child’s school where they were reviewing the collection.  The idea was that there would be nothing in the library that was printed for a certain time period.

“I share his belief that this is such a loss, because we librarians are on the front lines of providing the public with not just books – but a wide wide range of tools that educate, inform and entertain people.

“The books coming in have expanded exponentially.

“The number and volume of reading material that is published on an annual basis, far exceeds our capacity from a budget standpoint, but I think our collection grows more as a partnership, because our team selects based on demand and what people are reading. We also try to balance that with making sure we have breadth and depth and scope, because we don’t want to be so driven by popular demand that you’re not walking into the library discovering something that you never imagined existed. It’s definitely a balance.

“We curate to a certain extent, that’s more of a business driven from our leaders. Our team works with a vendor. People also want the book the moment it’s printed. So we have partnerships with our vendors, we have something called an automatic release plan based on a profile of the type of collection that we have in the library.

“We get our copies of the book on the shelves quickly, that drives the bulk of our collection. Our team refines the selections that adds to the edges of what goes on our shelves; the process helps us build a very complete collection.

Is there anybody on staff able to say to somebody they’re talking to: there’s a book I think you should read?

“I have Pepper.  I would hope that  the majority of the people on our team would be able to do that, because that was one of the things that we’ve really focused because that can be a bit of a nerve-wracking figuring out what people might want. We’ve developed additional training for our team to ask questions: what does that look like, so that people can understand when they’re talking to someone about what they’ve read they can determine – is it the writing style, is it the content, is it the genre, and then being able to have a conversation with someone else.

“What part of that book did you really like, let them be able to point them in directions, and definitely, technology helps hugely for that, in terms of, you know, the way our catalogue is able to pull like the crazy word that you’ve never heard of.

Does Shakespeare matter we asked.  “Yes –  Shakespeare  – on a daily basis, no, but it’s part of that breadth and that history of English literature that is the core of what it written and what is read.

“One of the things we’re trying to encourage in people is to nurture themselves and nurture the lives of their children.  It’s giving ourselves that space and that time to just let ourselves be immersed in something because there’s such a different experience between that immersion and the flip, flip, flip of the you know, video shots of information that people are getting through social media.

“I think I’m okay with where I’m going and what I’m doing with the library; it’s as much about who you are and the institution you’re in and where you’re going to take that institution at this point.  When we celebrated our 150th a few years ago we recognized we are part of a profession that has such a legacy to it; there are people you will never know, who led the waves or created the opportunity for you to be here in that moment and then to hold that responsibility and think, okay, 150 years from now when BPL celebrates its 300th anniversary; what will we have we done in this moment to secure that future and make sure that the institution still has value and meaning.

Lita needed me to know that the Appleby Library at the Bateman Community Centre is going to give them an additional 10,000 square feet.  “I don’t think most people realize just how big an operation it is going to be.  We have dates for when the book shelves and those things will be moving in over the summer. Early fall is the date penciled in at this point.

We’ve spent so much time looking at the drawings. We’ve been working with the planning people going on five years for this project; it was a renovation of the school, which complicated things. It’s going to be really bright.  The library board decided not to call the branch the Bateman branch. Currently it’s called New Appleby and that name will be used when we open at the Bateman Center.

What’s next? “

“Well, I’m still having a lot of fun in Burlington, so I have no I have no plans beyond, the work we are currently doing.

“I have the ability to work with the board, to really guide where the library is going; it’s just such a phenomenal time.”

Links:

Part 1 of this 2-part article.