By Pepper Parr
May 11, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Part 1 of a 2-part article on the CEO of the Burlington Library
Lita Barrie has been the CEO of the seven-branch Burlington Library system since 2018.
She was the CEO of the Grimsby library from 2010 to 2012. It was a very small operation. She moved on to the Hamilton Public Library, where she climbed the ranks and became a Director and served from 2013 to 2018 when she was appointed the CEO of the Burlington Library.
Lita described Hamilton as a good five years and that it was time for a change.
Lita Barrie: CEO Burlington Public Library
With seven years at the helm in Burlington – one might ask: what’s next?
That wasn’t the way Lita Barrie wanted to tell her story. A lot has taken place since she started in 2018.
Libraries were where Lita started when she completed her studies at McGill University.
“My first library job was at the Hamilton based Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety.
“Part of what we do at the library is trying to be responsive to the community. It’s a combination of why I really love the work and the people I work with, which includes people from the community. We’ve been through such a time of huge societal change, that I think has given us the impetus, as an organization, to reach out to individuals and try to meet the changing times.
“That’s part of our perennial challenge as a library, you don’t always know what the stats are across country on how many go to public libraries over the course of the year compared to how many attend major sporting events.
“When you go to an NHL game, you are sitting in the arena with everyone else watching, you get a sense of the enormity of the game. Libraries have a very small scale. With some of the author events, the scale is a little bigger, but you don’t get that sense of witnessing everyone’s experience at a library.
“We’re averaging an excess of 10,000 visits a month; on an average fall – winter month, we’re in the five to eight thousand range. It’s just the fact that we’re open 72 hours a week and that people can access the services as they need.
“I think some of the unintended consequences from COVID we all became very isolated in our homes, and concurrent to that, we had these devices in our hands that let us quickly swipe past anything that made us uncomfortable.
We have to rebuild our ability to listen to someone fully and try and understand where they’re coming from.
“We see it in small ways in the library that is carried forward into the way we interact as human beings. If someone says something that makes us uncomfortable, within reason, I’m not talking about gratuitous hate speech and things that just shouldn’t be uttered. But even in that middle space, we have to rebuild our ability to listen to someone fully and try and understand where they’re coming from, and recognize at the end of the day someone might have a different perspective than you, and as long as that perspective is not causing you physical harm or potentially hurting someone that there’s nothing wrong with that.
“We are a lot less comfortable with that idea than I think we were in the past, and less able to negotiate it, because, I think in that uncertainty, people have now felt silenced like, oh, it’s better if I just don’t say anything.
“I don’t think librarians are in place to just give people what they want. That might mean just comic books. We are there to feed them, to groom them. “The magazine section is an example. There are easily 20 to 25 different magazines on display – a whole new world is within those magazine covers.
“We curate what we put on our displays. One of my favorite things in the library is just watching a child explore the bookshelf and just that sense of freedom, of being able to pull something off the shelf and look at it and say, I’m interested in this is; to me, is such it’s so magical to be able to build that independence.
We pointed out to Lita that we got the sense that this is very much her library. People respect her. She walks into a room asking people how they are doing. They don’t ignore her. Some of the people are special, they know her quite well. They get a great big hug. There is a lot of her personality in the place.
To get a sense of how she would advise the Board of Directors as to where she thought the library should go we asked Lita Barrie:
“If you had a magic wand and could do whatever you wanted – what would that be?” Her answer surprised me.
“I think particularly in this moment where there seems to be so much happening globally and we are fraught with so many challenges, I think my magic wand would bring about, in this moment, some kindness around the world, just for humanity to be able to take a collective breath and reset what it truly means to be a human being, and how we might be able to get back to or move forward to a different place.
“We haven’t found a way to positively impact that yet. Are we teaching people to stand up? One of the things that we’re talking a lot about at the library board is working on a new, short strategic plan to get us into a better place.
“And one of the pieces that were that we’re thinking about is a library that can support our community in revisiting what it means to have neighbours who might have a different perspective on things than you.”
Lita wanted to talk about the moving of the Appleby library into the soon-to-be-opened Bateman Community Centre. “The new Appleby will have a Media Studio where people can do some sound production for podcasting or video production. They will be able to do that in those spaces.”
The books and people were in place when Lita Barrie was appointed the CEO, the introduction of technology is what has marked the changes she brought to the library. Who is she as a person?
Her Mother immigrated to Canada as a child; the family settled in the Hamilton area which is where Lita was born. I”‘ve always had family that lived in Hamilton, but it was only after I finished my post-secondary degree at McGill University that I ended up settling in Hamilton.
“I am comfortable mixing with people; that comes from my one grandmother, she’s a very sort of social person, but not wildly social, sort of just within her circle. Any time there was a milestone to be celebrated, it was celebrated. There was no excuse for not celebrating a milestone.
“I have so many memories of her at these large events, and just watching the way that she would not actually work the room, but be a part of the space. If it were her birthday, you would never know it, because she was so busy making sure that everyone was seen and included and felt like they were part of the celebration.
Hobbies, we asked. What do you do for hobbies? “We’re very fortunate to have a family cottage, so a lot of my summer is spent at our cottage. I love to surprise, so I will tell you Pepper, I like to read: You probably couldn’t have seen that one coming. I bake and love the outdoors, so lots of hiking.
As the CEO of a seven-branch library service in Burlington, Lita Barrie is the spokesperson who does much of the media work.
“My favourite book is always the book I haven’t read yet; same with movies, I don’t think I have one that I go back to as a favourite, but I’m continually interested to see what’s new.
We asked Lita: “You’re flying to Calgary or Vancouver. You don’t want to do any work stuff – you go to the newsstand to pick out a magazine. What would that magazine be? “I’d probably grab the Economist, it captures global events and issues. I find it not only insightful, but accessible, because they always have that blend of the longer form articles as well a shorter pieces.
When you’re travelling on vacation, where do you go? “In a few weeks, we’re off to Portugal.
A 3d printer, one of the pieces of equipment in the Makers Space.
“The use of technology in libraries is relatively new. Burlington, much like the Hamilton Library, had a Makers Space. We do have some individuals who have prototyped different devices, with the 3d printer and with the laser cutter. These people have done some pretty innovative things, but they go in, they do their project, and have a sort of private experience. Getting that collective impact with the Maker Space is a challenge we are looking at. We are going to be expanding the Maker Space concept to a few more of our branches. Up at the Alton branch, the Maker Studio is going to focus on five tools to support the kind of crafting based on the community.
At Central there are a number of people who come in every day to read the newspaper. It’s their routine; starting their day with someone saying good morning and being able to enjoy that newspaper in a place that is full of life and activity.
Those little ways, I think, are how we kind of keep our society stitched together, keep people feeling connected and part of something bigger than themselves.
A couple of quick factual items I wanted to address:
We are very fortunate to have such an insightful librarian.
I would like to see them bring back the little coffee bar that was closed during Covid and never reopened.
I would also like to know how they count the number of library users and what people used it for.Little kids activity \students study/computer-Printer\reading \taking books out?