grande-bibliotheque-1

Meredith Dellandrea: Good afternoon and welcome to Cinq � Six. I�m Meredith Dellandrea. Today we�re broadcasting from the second floor of La grande biblioth�que, the brand-new, much-anticipated central library in downtown Montreal. La grande biblioth�que du Qu�bec. So welcome to everybody here. It�s a great crowd assembled before us. It�s open-house day. It�s the first day the public has been able to check out the inside of this new space, and people are streaming round us here to listen to us as well.

Today on Cinq � Six, our focus is libraries. How they function and the roles they play in the twenty-first century. It wasn�t really long ago that the Internet started to take over our homes and our offices. People were predicting the end of the library. We have virtual libraries. We�ll be able to download books into our computers. We wouldn�t need bricks and mortar any more. But in the past ten years, something very interesting has been happening. While the Internet has flourished, we�ve had major cities building major libraries: Vancouver, Paris, Denver and now right here in Montreal.

Joining me today for the discussion of libraries in the twenty-first century, I�m going to introduce everyone at the table:

� Christine Jacobs. She is the chair of Information and Library Technologies at John Abbott College.
� Monika Kin Gagnon, associate professor of communications at Concordia University.
� Peter McNally, professor at McGill University�s Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.
� James Turner, professor at L��cole de bibliotechonomie et des sciences de l�information at l�universit� de Montr�al.
� Lise Bissonette, president and general director of La biblioth�que nationale du Qu�bec, and the person that we have to thank for making La grande biblioth�que a reality.

Welcome to everybody today.

Meredith Dellandrea: Madame Bissonette, I�d like to start with you, and we�ve had at least seven thousand people in the building today. We�ve passed that mark. So it would be at least that many. People have been outside, lined up on the street with their umbrellas. How are you feeling on this opening day?

Lise Bissonette: Well, it�s euphoria. There�s no word to say how thankful I am to all these people who came because we didn�t know until this morning, I wasn�t absolutely sure, that people would be there. It�s sort of a rendez-vous, and this morning at eight I had a meeting because I have other people from other libraries who are here, other countries. We had a meeting at eight up on St. Denis, and I was walking down, and hoping to see the people at the back of the library and there they were. So it was an incredible moment. I met the first person who was coming from Lachine. He was an anglophone, by the way, not speaking French, and it was very interesting because he had left his home at four o�clock in the morning and taken the bus and was here at seven thirty, and he told me that, when the project was announced years ago, he decided he would be the first one to get into that library. So I thought this was an incredible moment to walk the large hall with this man who was expecting this library. And all day it�s been like that.

Meredith Dellandrea: I�ve heard of people lining up for concert tickets, and now they�re lining up for the public library. That�s a great thing. You have called this library the new cultural institution for the twenty first century. I wonder if you could explain what you mean by that.

Lise Bissonette: What I mean, and we have got librarians here from all, maybe explain more than I do, but at the beginning you were saying all sorts of people saying that libraries would disappear. I�ve never understood why so many people want libraries to disappear. It seems to be a sort of clich� among some intellectuals, and especially those who are interested in technologies. They just want to predict that we�re going to die. I don�t know why. But they don�t understand what a library is today. The book is still the centre of this culture, knowledge, whatever, the CD, the Internet, whatever, we�ve got everything. We say four million documents, one million books. That�s a lot of documents that are not in books. What they don�t understand is the role of the library in the city today. How do people live? Where do they go? Where do they go for their own education, knowledge? You�ve got schools, colleges, universities that have a very specific target now. They are not there to teach you whatever you would like to learn. They�re there to teach you how you get to the workplace. Some will teach philosophy, some will teach. It�s not a real environment for learning, not any more at least. It used to be a bit different. And it�s irreversible. So where do people go who want to pursue their own interests? Where do they go? Well, they can go on the Internet, for sure. But who will tell them where to go? How will they know where things are? So in a way libraries are beside the people, helping them with knowledge and culture. It�s a self-teaching place. It�s a place for the freedom to learn. Freedom to learn what you don�t know and might learn. So that�s one thing. And another thing these libraries are built in large cities, and there is a purpose to that. Where do you go today? I mean half of the population is living alone. It�s not sad. I mean it�s the way we live. Even if you have two kids at home, you�re still alone. It�s a very atomized life style. And maybe you can say we should construct the familes and all that, but it won�t happen, not actually in large cities. And cities have become a bit of a jungle. It�s difficult. People would like to go somewhere that�s not commercial. And where they can sit and read and meet other people, a writer, or enter into a debate, or they want to read, but not at home, and see people. You can be all alone, you can be with other people. So why is it that these big buildings are so full. I mean I�m expecting a lot of people even after the open doors. The reality is that these big libraries around the world, they�re full. And it means that there�s a need. We�re not all foolish people. L�Actualit� published a little article by a British expert. I don�t know why he would be so good because he�s British, who said that ten years from now there won�t be any libraries left. Just last year. I mean who is he to say something like that? They don�t know. They don�t know. I mean we�re supposed to be all crazy to create these libraries. All the people who come in are so crazy? So I think it�s a building, an institution for today�s lifestyle, for today�s needs, what people want, and the book is at the centre of that. It�s very interesting. It�s very interesting because it�s very different from a theatre. A library is very large. You choose your own book. You choose what�s interesting for you. It�s not only an institution that gives you something to see, something to watch. It also says you can go where you want. I always say it�s a place for freedom.

Meredith Dellandrea: You�ve brought up a great many of the things we�re going to get to in detail in this hour. The library as a cultural, social space, not just a place for books, but also the impact that technology has had on libraries. I want to begin the conversation by asking why people use libraries. Why do they come to libraries? When I was a child, I went to the public library for the first time. I went to the library. I grew up in a small town in northern Ontario. It was there that I made amazing discoveries, like where babies come from in a book that was on the shelf. I was very fascinated. I was six years old, and I think that by the time I graduated from grade 5 I had read every book on the young readers� bookshelf. It wasn�t all fun at the public library. There were piano recitals in the basement, where you had to get over being very nervous for playing and also for piano exams, and then later in university the library became the place for serious research. I came here to McGill�s library, but it was also a place where I�m sure if we went there today, to the little corner of the undergraduate library, there are comfortable chairs in the corner, you will see twenty students sitting in those chairs with books as blankets over their bellies, curled up having a nice little nap, so it was a nice place to just get a bit of peace and rest in between classes.

For Cinq � Six, we went out and asked library users why they go to the public libraries and a little bit about their memories of public libraries.

George Ascroft: Hello, my name is George Ascroft. I�m a volunteer here at Atwater Library. The first library I was ever in was when I started high school. I came from a poor district just outside of Toronto. There was no library. When I went to public school, our library was in effect a small cabinet, maybe about eight feet high by three feet wide. All the books in the whole place were in that one little cabinet, but when I went into the high school library there was a whole room full of books. It was most exciting. Well, the fact that there were so many books. WOW! That�s about all I could say. I was really terribly, terribly impressed. It was wonderful.

Ciao Yu: My name is Ciao Yu. I am a graduate student at McGill University now in the experimental medicine department. Right now in the library I�m filling out my tax return form. I find it�s a good place. It�s quiet. I can concentrate because now I�m working in the lab and there�s no space to do this kind of work, so I came here.

Anna: Hi, my name is Anna. I love to read. I�m raising two children. I search for books that can help me on that, how to raise teenagers. And I�m an Elvis Presley freak. So I look into that a lot, too.

Meredith Dellandrea: So everything from books to Elvis Presley research, that�s why people go to libraries. Christine Jacobs, when did you first discover public libraries?

Christine Jacobs: I grew up in a small town in rural Qu�bec. There were no libraries. We had no library in our elementary school. We had a shelf, we didn�t even have a closet, as this gentlemen had. And by the time I finished elementary school they were building a small room, which was nice for the library. And then when I went to high school, there was a library. I mean the first public library I saw was when I visited my grandmother in Montreal. She invited me to go to the Westmount Library with her. I was absolutely enthralled because there was information there that I had no idea people collected. I think many librarians are at heart generalists. They just like to know stuff, and I can remember this book at the Westmount Library about fungi. I was fascinated by it. I mean I�m not a botanist or anything, but I was just fascinated. And that fed my belief that we should have access to information no matter what we wanted.

Meredith Dellandrea: James Turner, when did you first encounter libraries?

James Turner: I think I was quite small. It was in Victoria, BC. That�s where I�m from originally, a long time ago now. It was after school, going to the public library. It was one of the Carnegie Libraries. I remember what I liked so much about it was so much random information about all kinds of subjects. You could just walk around to shelves and see all these books and if you saw something you could just take it down and have a look at it. And so I did a lot of that. I adopted it as a place to go and do homework after school. I come from a big family and it was really noisy, and it was really hard to get anything done.

Meredith Dellandrea: Monika Kin Gagnon?

Monika Kin Gagnon: Well, I think everybody�s memory is better than mine. I can�t remember the first time that I encountered a library. But I can say that I rediscovered public libraries when my daughter, who is now fifteen, was born. I can say that as a mother it gave me a kind of public space, a communal space, where I could go and read books and hang out with other mothers with small children. And so I�d say I engaged with it less at the level of books or knowledge or specialized archives, even though I�m a scholar now, but rather as a social space, a communal space, that I could share with other parents and children.

Meredith Dellandrea: Peter McNally?

Peter McNally: Well, I grew up in a small, rural community in southwestern Ontario with five thousand people, but it had a small Carnegie Library. And it looked exactly the way it was supposed to look with porticoes and columns at the front of it. It wasn�t very large. It had a part-time librarian, but by golly it became a home away from home. The books, the periodicals, the magazines. It was just a wonderful place. There was a small children�s collection with it. And I began reading there at a very early age. My parents have told me that certainly I was reading before I went to school. Then I went to university and I went to a much larger city that had a very good library, but coming to Montreal, I came to McGill. One of the disappointments when I came here was the public libraries. I came in 1964 and it has taken forty one years, and today I feel that, yes, we have made the great breakthrough. This is something which I have been waiting for for forty one years: the opening of this library today.

Meredith Dellandrea: Peter McNally. What makes a good library?

Peter McNally: A good public library really depends on a number of things. But the basic thing is that it has to have the support of its community. It has to be something that is grounded in the community, that people think is an essential part of their identity. It�s a place they can go to for recreation, where they know they can read, they can get novels, they can get good magazines and things that are of interest today, but at the same time they know that if something serious comes up, if they want to get themselves educated, if they want to learn, they can. This definition of the public library as the university of the common man, I think, is absoutely central. It�s a place where people can go and they can teach themselves. You hear so many stories of people coming to our country from other countries, they�ve come to a public library and they�ve read through an encyclopedia. This is how they�ve taught themselves. Then this has to be manifested in a number of ways. There has to be the political will, the political strength - I think that to Madame Bissonette we owe an enormous debt of thanks. She has provided this political strength to carry this whole thing through to fruition. The next element is money. There has to be money. There has to be the financial support. There has to be this commitment that we will have public libraries as a financial priority because it is a social necessity, a social good.

Meredith Dellandrea: We�re going to hear a library volunteer who is going to tell us about people, he sees using a library as more than a place where people use books, the people and why they come in to use it as a social space.

Bruce Peterson: My name is Bruce Peterson. I am a volunteer at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre. I�ve been a volunteer here for about three years now. I work with the refugees who come from the YMCA around the corner to prove their cases, help them write up their CVs and such things. For the refugees many of the people who come here don�t read English or French, so they can�t use the books, but they do use the computers, the Internet, because they�re far from home, to send email home. They�ve very often been through hell and very often their families are not aware of their whereabouts. They�ve had to flee without telling their families or friends goodbye, and they may never see those people, so using the Internet is extremely important for those people. Moreover, becoming a refugee is not an easy process. They must be able to prove to the judge, who decides their fate, that their lives will be seriously at risk. Libraries are sources of inspiration, sources of encouragement, sources of research. They provide a community with contact with other human beings. We have, for instance, in this particular library, there are people who come here, who are literally, I think, just this close to being homeless people on the street. They really can not go off to a caf� because they can�t really spend the money for a coffee, but they will come here and read our newspapers for free, sometimes they put their heads on the tables and take a quick nap, and this wouldn�t be permitted in a normal business. If you try to sit in most cafes or most public places in Montreal, even in those areas that people think are free, you will have security guards come along and push you out the door, threaten you with all kinds of miseries, if you don�t spend, spend, spend. Whereas you can go to a library and it is the cheapest afternoon you can have. We have people who come in here who are almost homeless. And then we have people who come in here who are sponsors of programs that cost millions of dollars. It�s a crossroads of very interesting segments of society.

Meredith Dellandrea: It does portray the library as a true public space for everyone and the opposite of a commercial space. Monica, you spoke to me earlier as the library as an alternative space, than going out into the material world.

Monika Kin Gagnon: The discussion around a library as being solely focused on books, I think that why we�re seeing so much discussion about libraries now is because libraries have taken the occasion to seeing themselves as being beyond books because if it was just about books then would have been more of a closing down or a shutting of the borders of the library as opposed to realizing that in order to make itself socially relevant then it would have to take into account what a community was going to need. And I was interested in looking at the kind of list for usage of library materials for the library. If I�m remembering correctly, I think that the first item that was listed is that you could take five comic books out, two films or videos, computer materials and then ten other documents. To me just reading that list just demonstrated the range of uses you would find by people coming to the library.

Meredith Dellandrea: Lise Bissonette, when you were planning this library, what were your priorities beyond the book?

Lise Bissonette: You mean the other collections? Well, you have to remember that this is a public library but it is also a national library, so a very important priority was that the national library of Quebec, which is a very good national library, which has been in existence since 1967, and the books were not accessible and the periodicals were in another building. You had to ask a librarian if you wanted something, and so to give back to the people of Quebec all of their heritage in terms of publications, kinds of books since 1765, because you know that the first book published in Quebec was a catechism published in Quebec City by American publishers. Just the idea of to give that back you have to think very much about how you�re going to arrange that and what kind of space are you going to have for that, and we asked the architects, it was an international competition of architects, we asked the architects to really think about that, that we were about to give to the people of this province all of their heritage in terms of what has been published on any support in any language. So that�s one part. In the public collection, the lending collection, the one that you can bring home if you want, we wanted again to have large collections and there it�s a bit � I�ve studied all kinds of libraries, I�ve been everywhere, not everywhere, but I�ve seen quite a lot, and we were trying to struggle against the tendency of some libraries to be just libraries, that is, to have just shelves and places where you study and read, but just that. We were thinking of creating �the romantic library�. I listened to all these stories � I love to listen to library stories � the first time�, I also went to a Carnegie Library in Ottawa when I was eighteen. And that�s where I discovered that books were not just about religion, or stupid things, because I was an avid reader, you remember these things because it is a place that is so romantic, and so you have � that�s what they created, these architects, it�s a place where people walk around and half believe this is their place. So we had to fight against this tendency of some libraries to be information. Your school of librarians are called information. I�ve been into information before, and it�s not exactly the same thing. They�re becoming a bit dry, in my view. There�s this tendency of giving services, of giving information. It�s all very nice. You have to do that, but you have to call people into some kind of ambiance, which is a trip through somewhere they don�t know. So if they get into this library and they have a backache and they are looking for a book about that, let�s hope we will draw them somewhere else and they can listen to some music, or find some other book that might be more interesting.

Meredith Dellandrea: Or find a job!

Lise Bissonette: Yes, the space has to be appealing. Somebody told me just as I spoke to so many people today. And one woman told me who lives close to the Jean Talon Metro Station. I don�t take the Metro too often because she doesn�t work downtown and she said I was coming here as if I was meeting a lover, and I was counting the stations from Jean Talon to Berri-UQAM, saying, �I�m getting near � five, four, three, two.� I thought this was incredible. You have to have this relationship with a library. It�s a home. It�s a home. You don�t stay there. You don�t sleep there at night, but that�s about it.

Meredith Dellandrea: I wanted to talk about technology and the impact that it�s having on libraries in the twenty-first century. It certainly can�t be underestimated. Technology has certainly changed the way libraries are designed and what services they do provide. First, we�re going to hear what some Montreal library users said about their technology and their libraries.

Ciao Yu: Actually, I seldom use the books in the library. Nowdays we get this kind of information we need mainly from web sites. We can find papers we need now in the research field. But sometimes we still need a library because there are some older papers that we couldn�t find online. We need to go to the library. In the library they have the books. You can find papers.

Aydin Turgay: I think it�s going to be natural. We got our first computer when I was four years old. So there a lot of people my age who just grew up with computers so it�s become much more logical for us to search on a computer program than through a card catalog. So I think it�s just going to be a natural evolution as the older generation gets older and the younger generation grows up. It�s just going to be a part of the implementation and the administration of the library. I hope we�re not going to change what we have now. I think it�s important to take advantage of what we have now.

George Ascroft: I don�t see the Internet ever replacing fiction books. You can�t curl up with the computer very well, and even with lap tops it�s not quite the same as sitting in a chair or lying down on the beach, or whatever and reading a book. So I think we�re going to be staying with printed books for a long time, mainly in the fiction field.

Meredith Dellandrea: That�s what some library users think. James Turner, how is digital changing libraries?

James Turner: It�s making information quite a bit more accessible to people, I would say. But I think that the idea that it will replace libraries is false. We�ve seen this technological change over the last century. When cinema came along at the end of the nineteenth century, people thought it was going to replace theatre. And then when television came along, they thought it was going to replace the movies. And when radio came along they thought that was going to replace sound recordings. So I guess it�s kind of human and natural for people to say that the Internet is going to replace libraries. I date the beginning of the Web to November 1994, when Netscape was published and that was what kind of made the Net available to people like you and me. So it�s only been around ten years or so, so we don�t have enough perspective yet. The point is that with the movies, TV, and radio, each technology is still around. It has taken its place and that�s what I think is going to happen to the Internet. It�s very, very handy to have access to information so easily, but the idea that it could replace libraries � I think we�ll find that a little silly when we look back on it in ten or twenty years. It will be there, but libraries will still be there because we use them for a lot of things that we want to keep using them for.

Meredith Dellandrea: Christine Jacobs, how is technology changing the way we train librarians? It must be affecting how they are learning their job.

Christine Jacobs: Yes, certainly. I think they�re having to learn to be flexible, to use technology effectively, but underneath it all they�re learning the same principles they were learning fifty years ago about providing information about finding information, understanding it, analyzing it � that�s all technology independent. In many ways we�re using technology as only a tool. It�s only a tool. You can get a journal that�s on the Internet, you can get a journal that�s printed, but the fact of the matter is that very often, even if it�s on the Internet, people print it out because it�s easier to handle like that. And so when we�re training librarians or library technicians, we�re really looking at preparing them to understand how technology is used, but not to focus on technology for technology�s sake, because that�s misleading. In some ways that�s the role of the librarian technician to work as an interface for users, for people who are trying to find information who may not understand the technology completely, or may think the technology will answer their problems or questions. It�s not the technology that answers their questions. It�s the information and the services and the other things that are in the library.

Meredith Dellandrea: Peter McNally, what are the challenges that technology brings to the librarian, for the libraries? We know about the good things � access to the Internet � but it also must be an expense as well.

Peter McNally: Well, there�s no doubt about that. The technology is expensive. It�s not cheap. But at the same time we live in a world where there�s no alternative to it. We do need the technology, but we also have to have the trained staff, the people who understand the interaction between the technology, the information and people. People don�t come to the library just thinking, �Oh, great, a bunch of data banks.� They want them to be there, but they also want the people who can assist them. This information is not self-evidently clear on how to use it. You have to have people who will assist in making it available to people. And I think that that�s one of our big jobs. The other thing is to make people aware of the fact that the idea of a book is going to change enormously. We have paper-based books, but we don�t know what the physical manifestation of the book will be, but we know that the intellectual concept of the book will always be with us because people will always need this sort of material. The other aspect is that for a library particularly like this or for the great research academic libraries such as the Universit� de Montr�al or McGill have these remarkable historical collections with the book as artifact. We have books at McGill that date back to the Middle Ages. We have papyrus going back to the ancient world. We have ancient Babylonian seals, and this is part of our great heritage. And we must also preserve them and make them available to people to show what the whole history of our cultural artifacts is. Their bindings is one part of it; the data base is another part of it. It�s not one. It�s not the other. It�s both.

Meredith Dellandrea: Monika Kin Gagnon, what about your students? How has digital technology affected the way they do their writing and their research?

Monika Kin Gagnon: Well, I would say that with the advent of the Internet, it�s a space that�s much more democratic in terms of being able to publish. I think there are a lot of questions that have come up around the accuracy you find on the Internet. What we�re finding as teachers is that our students who have grown up with the Internet and have a different type of relationship with the information to actual books we have to instruct them in where they are getting their sources of information and be clear on what constitutes reliable, scholarly references and factual references that are accurate as opposed to information that could be a little bit less reliable that they might find on the Internet. While there�s a kind of more democratic publishing that could happen on the Internet, it has also raised questions for us that are in pedagogical or educational fields that are having to be very specific with our students because they could be engaging in plagiarism without realizing that they�re doing that. The physical act of reading something in a book and copying it on a piece of paper, or of typing it onto a piece of paper with an old typewriter is different from cutting and pasting it off an Internet site and plopping it right into the centre of your research paper without actually quoting it.

Meredith Dellandrea: Do you find that they are as familiar with libraries, that they know how to use them, do they need to be trained in how to use them as a place of research?

Monika Kin Gagnon: Well, at the university level, with our bachelor students who come in for the first year, we have them go to the specialized librarian in communication studies at Concordia Library and spend time at the library talking about how to undertake research, how to use data bases, how to engage in archival types of research as well, and journals that might be available, and journals that might be available in paper form as opposed to in electronic form. We tend to do that anyway, but I think what you�re suggesting is perhaps that there is more of a need to underline the differences between what might constitute Internet-based research as opposed to library-based research. Certainly we are having to take much more care in that instruction.

Meredith Dellandrea: I think that�s something that James had spoken about. Sometimes you have to tell students that they can do research back beyond 1980. Beyond what you can get on Google, there are actual texts that they can use in their research. Lise Bissonette?

Lise Bissonette: I think it�s a wonderful tool. In the physical library where we are we have all the Internet access. But that�s not what is important in my view. Libraries are becoming, especially national libraries, heritage libraries, are becoming more proactive in terms of creating the virtual library. For me it�s fascinating. I love it. It�s very, very important in terms of access to culture. When we started this in 1999, I went all over the province. I met people in 9 cities. People working in the culture fields, in education, in libraries, I asked them what we could do for them. They said, �You�re very nice, Mrs. Bissonette, but we�re going to pay for this library in Montreal and there�s nothing you can do for us. But we like you nevertheless.� And in a way they were right. This is a hundred million dollars that we have put into a library in Montreal. I come from Rouyn-Noranda, and I know what they meant. Nevertheless, if you want to do something, it could be this; it could be that. Six years after that, we did almost what they asked, and even more because of the technologies. At the time we could dream about that, but we couldn�t do it. Now we can, so we can lend data bases. So for example, if you go on the Internet and you have to pay for this data base, you buy the rights and we give you access to the data base free. We have organized with other libraries to give access to large encyclopedias. If you subscribe to that, you will go broke after some time. We organize to do that. We are creating the virtual library in a sense. It�s only the National Library that can digitize its own heritage. And we were discussing that this morning with other national libraries including the one in Canada, which is called Library and Archives in English, and La biblioth�que de France, we were discussing whether it is possible to digitize all of our heritage. It�s difficult in France because it�s very large. In Canada it would be possible. In Qu�bec it would be possible. Think if you were living in the Gasp�, go to our portal, which is a large thing, you could access almost everything that has been published in Qu�bec, and you could read it or listen to it. This is really something that is so important because not everybody lives in Montreal. And you want to read this. I don�t agree that someday somebody won�t curl up with their computer. Young teenagers in Japan read a novel on their phone. They love it, they like it. They have a different cognitive process. One day, yes, they�ll read on the beach with this thing. Right now if you have a little too much water on your palm pilot, it dies. But maybe five years from you will find it interesting to do that. It will be possible because we, the libraries, did that work: created the virtual library, not wait for some other business to do it.

Meredith Dellandrea: It serves the regions we are concerned about. It also raises the question about the relationship between a central library and our neighborhood libraries. When this building was in the planning, a lot of people were worried about this library draining the resources away from the neighborhood libraries to the point where they would have to shut down. Is it possible for them to co-exist: a strong central library with strong neighborhood libraries? Christine?

Christine Jacobs: I think it�s certainly possible, and I hope that�s what�s going to happen. I know there has been a lot of fear among the library community that neighborhood libraries will suffer because the money is going to the large institution. But I think there�s a real leadership role here for La grande biblioth�que to stimulate usership, to act as a liaison to the branches. You now have a section here that specializes in children�s material. It�s wonderful. What will be the impact of that on school libraries in Quebec. They are abysmal. They are really bad. So if the central library can take a leadership role, stimulate libraries in the schools, push the government to put better funding into the schools for the school libraries, better funding into the children�s libraries in the branches, it will be great. I think there�s a really strong role for it to take in that respect. I just hope it will happen. I realize it�s a matter of personnel and of money, but I think there�s a great opportunity.

Meredith Dellandrea: We have more from people in Montreal about the central library and their neighborhood library.

Susan McGuire: Hi, my name is Susan McGuire. I�m the executive director at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre. This library is in a very difficult financial situation. We�re trying our best to continue. It�s a hundred and seventy seven years old. It�s the oldest lending library in Canada. We think it serves a wonderful purpose in this community and we hope it continues.

Aydin Turgay: I like the idea that I can have a library that�s close to my home. A central library can serve a really purpose. For example, if the reference section is very strong; for other things as far as getting books for just personal reading, I think the idea of a branch library is a better idea.

George Ascroft: I think they have different purposes. I don�t think it should have a serious deleterious effect on the Atwater Library. The people who belong to this library live mostly in this area. La grande biblioth�que is wonderful, but for example I live out in Montreal-West, too far out for me.

Susan McGuire: It will be interesting to see exactly how much the community actually uses La grande biblioth�que. Here there is a sense of history. There there is a sense of efficiency and effectiveness. I think people will use it for different purposes. They will have enormous resources for research that we don�t have here, with the latest equipment. Ours is quite a different feeling and for quite a different purpose. It�s supposed to be for the surrounding community; it�s a warm cozy place where volunteers can come and work, so I think it�s a completely different kind of organization, and I think that probably the community needs both kinds.

Meredith Dellandrea: So it seems to be how to get people to begin using the library. James Turner, how do we do that? How do we attract new users to libraries whether a central library or a community library, people who may have come from places where there is no history of a public library system?

James Turner: There are quite a few ways to do that. One of the ways I find interesting is exhibitions. They�re wonderful. They�re real gold mines of marvelous resources. The people who curate them and put the exhibitions together dig around and find interesting things to put on display. It�s all set out there for you. You can come and have a look. That�s the kind of thing that gives people the idea of how rich the resources are in a library, so that�s one thing to do. There�s a wonderful auditorium here: colloquia, talks. There can be all kinds of things that can attract people and make them come. Just a place to get out of the rain. I�m really looking forward to spending a lot of afternoons here. Looking around, looking at movies, and whatnot. It�s a marvelous new cultural space that people can use. I think it will attract all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons and they will continue to come back.

Meredith Dellandrea: We�ve talked a bit about the future of libraries in Quebec. This has made a big difference. Having this library will make a big difference, and hopefully there will be a momentum that will build up from it. It�s not all good in Quebec. We don�t have a long history. It has taken us a long time to get to this point. Public funding is low. What is the future of libraries in Qu�bec? Can we look in our crystal ball?

Peter McNally: As a matter of fact, there has just been published a major study of public libraries in Montreal and their future. It�s a diagnostic study, and a major undertaking. And what it points out is that we do have serious problems with our library development. La grande biblioth�que where we are now. This is a marvelous start. But as a matter of fact, when you look at the norms, the number of libraries, the circulation of books, the number of books, we do not come anywhere close to meeting a Canadian norm. In fact in some areas we do worse than the province of Newfoundland, and we tie with them. Surely we can always do better than Newfoundland. Not that I have anything against Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders, but what we really need is two hundred million dollars. That needs to be spent over the next twenty five years. I should add that thirty years ago, in 1975, Professor Laurent Denis did a similar report, and at that time he said that a hundred million dollars would be needed to be spent between 1975 and 2000. Now that extra hundred million dollars was not spent then. The question is will the money be spent now. Where it needs to be spent is at the local level. It needs to be spent for the neighborhood libraries and what we need to have is a computer hook-up so these libraries will be able to work together in conjunction with one another. Somebody borrowing a book here at La grande biblioth�que should be able to return it to the public library in Pointe-Claire and know that it will come here automatically. There also have to be expanded hours. In the city of Montreal proper most libraries are open a maximum of 43 hours a week. That�s inadequate. In the west island it�s 65 hours. That�s what the whole island needs. Madame Bissonette, I think your library is wonderful, but really it should be open on Mondays.

Lise Bissonette: One part of the library is going to be open on Mondays. But you have to think that we are open from 10 to 10. We really wanted to be open at nights and on weekends. That�s why we decided to close on Mondays.

Peter McNally: But La grande biblioth�que is one thing. But in the city of Montreal proper and in its boroughs, for example, the Maisons de la culture, there are such limitations: hours, days, collections, services. It�s a shame. And this is what the future must be. Either at that level, we bring them up to the par or it�s all, unfortunately, going to be a disappointment.

Meredith Dellandrea: Let�s hope we�re going to move forward. I want to thank all of you for being here. We could go on for another hour on the same topic: Monika Kin Gagnon, Associate Professor of Communications at Concordia University; James Turner, professor at l��cole sciences de l�information at l�Universit� de Montr�al; Christine Jacobs, chair of Information and Library Technologies at John Abbot College; McNally, professor at McGill�s graduate school of library and information studies; and Lise Bissonette, director general of la biblioth�que nationale du Qu�bec, and the person at the helm of La grande biblioth�que. I�m Meredith Dellandrea and I hope you will join me at Cinq � Six every Saturday at 5 on CB Radio 1. Thanks to our technicians today, my production staff, Carolyn Warren, my executive producer Laurel Baker. Thanks very much to La grande biblioth�que for welcoming us here today and for letting us have a peek and share all these ideas with you.

Transcribed by Bruce Peterson
La grande biblioth�que de Montr�al
A live broadcast presented on April 30, 2005
on the program Cinq � Six on CBC Radio 1 (88.5 FM)

Please note that those interviews done at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre have been put in as green text .