Rob Ford’s budget committee voted on Monday to hold Toronto Public Library to a 10 per cent budget cut. Assuming city council gives final approval at its meeting next week, this means TPL will almost certainly need to cut hours at branches, citywide, in order to reduce staffing costs. The system’s collections budget would also [...]

In some families, it is traditional to open a Christmas present on Christmas Eve. Staff at the Toronto Reference Library must appreciate that practice—they unveiled a gift for their patrons on December 24. Specifically, it was a present for all those who have endured ongoing revitalization work at the Reference Library since 2010: opening the [...]

The Toronto Public Library board voted Monday night to forgo a bunch of very severe program cuts (up to and including the complete elimination of bookmobile service), and they even reaffirmed an earlier decision not to reduce hours at any branches. But if last year’s library budget process is any indication, library users still aren’t [...]

Last month, the Toronto Public Library board rejected, in principle, the idea of reducing hours at branches in order to meet a 10 per cent budget-reduction target. And yet the same amount of money that would have been saved by that move—about $5.4 million—may still have to be cut before budget season is over. The [...]

“They are an excellent resource tool for people to acclimatize themselves to the city of Toronto…to learn English as a second language, for example. It goes a long way to helping them integrate into our city.” —Library chair Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East) in response to budget chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt), [...]

Until late last week, the Toronto Public Library board was chaired by Eman Ahmed, project manager at a nonprofit that advocates for Muslim-Canadian women. It was vice-chaired by Adam Chaleff-Fruedenthaler, a left-leaning activist who was recently directly responsible for forcing Rob Ford to defend, in court, his methods of financing his mayoral bid. The board [...]

Wednesday saw the first concrete casualty of Rob Ford’s efforts to reduce city spending: the Urban Affairs Library, a small Toronto Public Library branch at Metro Hall, shut its doors for the last time. While misty-eyed staffers worked a final day in the space—it’s a room off to one side of the first floor of [...]

Toronto Public Library’s Perth/Dupont branch. Photo by Harry Choi/Torontoist. Talk of austerity and cutbacks in Toronto has been constant lately, but residents of the area in and around the Junction Triangle are trying something different. Tuesday night, they met to discuss the possibility of expanding their local library. The Junction Triangle’s local branch is Perth/Dupont, [...]

Frances Nunziata sounded the death knell of any potential major cuts to the Toronto Public Library today when she told Inside Toronto that she will not be supporting branch closures, period. Not in her ward, not in other parts of the city.

On page 152 of KPMG's core service review report—which identifies City services that could be cut or reduced for cost savings—is a column marked "Key Opportunities" that contains a single bullet point. "Some library branches could be closed," it says.

Report for: Executive Committee [PDF]. This grouping includes major entities such as the Toronto Police Service, the TTC, the Toronto Library Board, and the Toronto Zoo Board.