Ken Johnston
Small-town Rainy River is taking its voice to the table of libraries big and small!
Michael Dawber, Rainy River Public Library’s librarian and CEO, recently was appointed to the Ontario Public Library Guidelines Monitoring and Accreditation Council as the delegate for small Northern Ontario libraries.
“This is a big deal for a small library,” said library board vice-chair Jen Maxfield.
“The council sets out the standards expected of all Ontario libraries,” she noted.
Rainy River’s library is not accredited, as is the case with many small-town libraries serving populations under 2,500.
But new guidelines could make that mandatory if they want to receive their annual grants from the province.
Dawber said Ontario libraries currently receive $4.80 per household (for rural and northern communities) or $4.08 per household in urban areas.
For Rainy River, that amounts to about $8,000 in provincial operating grant monies from Rainy River ($2,300), as well as the townships of Morley ($1,040), Dawson ($1,640), and Lake of the Woods ($3,050).
This amount will account for about 11 percent of this year’s library budget.
At present, libraries do not have to be accredited to get their annual grant from the province.
Most aren’t, but libraries do have to send in a big survey of statistics every year.
If the survey isn’t sent in on time, libraries don’t get their grant.
But Dawber said it was suggested at a meeting of the OPLGMAC in December that all libraries become accredited.
“What we’re hearing now is that the big survey and the guidelines might be tied together,” he remarked.
“This could be a problem for smaller libraries with limited budgets, like Rainy River,” he warned.
“During accreditation, the work you do is compared to the guidelines,” Dawber explained.
“If you score high enough, you pass.”
This already has happened to a few small libraries in the north.
But Dawber is concerned the guidelines won’t work well for smaller libraries.
“If the guidelines are designed only for city libraries with millions of dollars, we’re not going to be able to cope,” he stressed.
Dawber is planning to bring the voice of northern and smaller libraries across the province to the table.
The OPLGMAC currently is working on the seventh edition of its standards.
And while it hasn’t been decided yet that all libraries will have to be accredited, Dawber wants to make sure that if they are, the standards will work for all sizes of them.
“My understanding is the suggestion to link the guidelines to the annual survey [and, by extension, to the operating grants] was raised by the council last December,” said Dawber, which was before he was appointed.
“At this point, this is more a case of ‘should we?’ as opposed to ‘we should,’” he noted.
“Again, my understanding is, a final decision would rest with the government.”
“Michael will be bringing a message from the northwest that the standards need to meet the needs of all libraries, large and small,” said Maxfield.
“Personally, I fully support libraries being accredited, and I am committed to achieving that for RRPL,” she added.
“I’m only concerned about what that accreditation asks for.”
Maxfield noted about 40 percent of all the library boards in Ontario, including the RRPL, serve fewer than 2,500 people.
“The accreditation standards must take that into account,” she stressed.
In this region, only the libraries in Dryden and Kenora have been accredited to date.
