{"id":110,"date":"2007-11-26T16:19:34","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T20:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=110"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:42:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:42:24","slug":"what-makes-a-good-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/11\/26\/what-makes-a-good-library\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes a good library?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the city and province announced that they will team up to invest $37.5 million in Montreal’s libraries<\/a>, with plans to create five new ones, renovate others, hire more people and expand collections. There’s still no word on where the new libraries will be built, but this raises an important question: what makes a good library?<\/p>\n

I think the success of the Grande Biblioth\u00e8que<\/a> testifies to the need for good design and a good location. Only a handful of people use libraries because they absolutely must; most do so by choice, looking for a good place to spend time or to participate in some kind of community or cultural event. The best libraries unite a large cross-section of people through the effectiveness of their design and the quality of their services and collections. Bad libraries, by contrast, fail to become truly public spaces. Like Montreal’s old central library before it moved into the Grande Biblioth\u00e8que, they exist only on the periphery of the public’s consciousness.<\/p>\n

Unlike many other Canadian cities, Montreal has a lacklustre library heritage. In the early twentieth century, when other cities were building grand public libraries, often with the help of philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, Montreal’s Catholic orthodoxy discouraged reading<\/a> and frowned upon the establishment of places that facilitated it. Even Carnegie was rebuffed when he come to Montreal and offered to empty his pockets for a new library. Until recently, Montreal’s best libraries were privately-owned and operated, like Westmount’s Atwater Library or NDG’s Fraser-Hickson Library. Even when Quebec joined the Canada-wide move towards social democracy in the 1960s, going much farther than other provinces in the realms of health care and education, it failed to invest significantly in public libraries. <\/p>\n

That began to change in the 1980s, when Montreal opened some of its most interesting neighbourhood libraries. The C\u00f4te des Neiges Library, which won an architectural award after it opened in 1983, is ideally located in the most bustling part of the neighbourhood, right at the junction of the blue line metro and the busy 165 bus. Walk inside and it feels<\/i> like the heart of C\u00f4te des Neiges: energetic and multicultural, with a multilingual collection that weighs heavily on books in Spanish, Chinese and Russian. <\/p>\n

Contrast this with the Plateau library, a tiny, embarrassingly makeshift space for a neighbourhood that has such a rich literary heritage. (It is especially sad considering the pleasantness of the nearby Mile End Library, housed in nicely renovated Anglican church.) The Plateau borough mayor, Helen Fotopulos, has said that she hopes the Plateau will be one of the boroughs targeted for a new library. <\/p>\n

On a somewhat related note, the old St. Sulpice Library<\/a>, a gorgeous Beaux-Arts building that was vacated by the Biblioth\u00e8que nationale du Qu\u00e9bec when it moved into the Grande Biblioth\u00e8que in 2005, has been bought by a consortium of investors<\/a> that hope to turn it into a bookstore. It’s a bit of a shame it was kept in public hands, but I can’t think of a more appropriate commercial use for the space. <\/p>\n

Photo: Biblioth\u00e8que Saint-Sulpice, 1936. Ville de Montr\u00e9al<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, the city and province announced that they will team up to invest $37.5 million in Montreal’s libraries, with plans to create five new ones, renovate others, hire more people and expand collections. There’s still no word on where the new libraries will be built, but this raises an important question: what makesContinue reading “What makes a good library?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7841],"tags":[613,611,448,609,612,346,596,125,606,293,610,68,292,607,302,608],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-services","tag-andrew-carnegie","tag-anglican-church","tag-arts-building","tag-fraser-hickson-library","tag-helen-fotopulos","tag-mayor","tag-mile-end-library","tag-montreal","tag-neiges-library","tag-plateau","tag-plateau-library","tag-public-services","tag-quebec","tag-st-sulpice-library","tag-usd","tag-westmounts-atwater-library"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat makes a good library? - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/11\/26\/what-makes-a-good-library\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What makes a good library? - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this month, the city and province announced that they will team up to invest $37.5 million in Montreal’s libraries, with plans to create five new ones, renovate others, hire more people and expand collections. 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