{"id":4445,"date":"2011-01-18T00:05:39","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T05:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=4445"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:06:58","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:06:58","slug":"opinion-downtown-library-vital-to-entire-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/01\/18\/opinion-downtown-library-vital-to-entire-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: downtown library vital to entire region"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"\"
Who needs a downtown library when you've got the Greely branch?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last month the Ottawa Citizen ran an opinion piece by Mark Sutcliffe<\/a> about what he alleges is a lack of a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to justify the construction of a new main branch for the Ottawa Public Library.<\/p>\n

Mr. Sutcliffe makes an argument of particular interest to me:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026it\u2019s hard to imagine people coming in from Kanata and Orl\u00e9ans to use the downtown library when they have perfectly good libraries in their neighbourhoods.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I admit to living in Orl\u00e9ans. Further, I\u2019ve lived there for a quarter-century now, and cannot remember a time when I didn\u2019t visit the main branch on Laurier West at least once in any given month. The reasons are many and varied, but I still made those trips.<\/p>\n

In fact, several of my more recent contributions to Spacing Ottawa could not have been researched as quickly or as well without the help of\u00a0 Brian Silcoff and his colleagues from the Main Branch’s Ottawa Room; digging up those back-stories on several of the streets of the city was possible because of their help.<\/p>\n

Am I an exceptional case among the regular visitors to the OPL?\u00a0 My impression from chatting with my fellow researchers is that a survey of those using the Main Branch’s reference section would turn up a large number of \u201cexceptional cases\u201d, hailing from Orl\u00e9ans, Kanata, South Keys, even from Gatineau.<\/p>\n

Surely a “business case” for a new facility is self-evident to anyone who visits the current building, built in 1974.\u00a0 Back then its narrow “up-only” escalators were considered\u00a0 real progress for those used to trudging the stairways of the old library, and for a time — for a much smaller city and population area — they were. Now they feel like a cramped anachronism from another time, but it’s where the escalators take the visitor that the inadequacy of the building really shows.<\/p>\n

The stacks are so closely shoved together that usually people do not even start down them unless there are no other browsers in the passage; passing another patron between the shelves is something you only want to do if you are already on intimate terms with them, because if\u00a0 you aren’t, you soon will be. Some areas of the building are stifling hot, others are strangely cold; air quality feels very suspect.\u00a0 The washrooms are tiny and poorly ventilated, and the main entrance doors from the lobby allow for only one person to enter the building at a time.<\/p>\n

The physical limits of the location have been reached, stretched, and then reached again.<\/p>\n

I could wish that the idea of uniting the OPL Main Branch with the Archives as suggested by the developer who first proposed it in 2005<\/a> — minus the thirty-year “lease to own” arrangement that came with the original version of that proposal — might yet be doable, but with the new City archives building on Baseline Road<\/a> just south of Algonquin College’s main campus commencing operations, that’s looking unlikely for at least the next couple of decades.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, yes, I\u2019ll side with Randall Denley<\/a> on this one.\u00a0 And Moshe Safdie<\/a> as well: we are not done with libraries yet,\u00a0 for a number of good reasons — not all of which have anything to do with a “business case”.<\/p>\n

photo by Ottawa Public Library<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month the Ottawa Citizen ran an opinion piece by Mark Sutcliffe about what he alleges is a lack of a \u201cbusiness case\u201d to justify the construction of a new main branch for the Ottawa Public Library. 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