No endorsement of this book should be inferred, but we hear it’s pretty good. The red outline has been added.

Search for a book using Toronto Public Library’s online catalogue and you’ll notice something new beneath all the bibliographic information: a little box that instructs you to “buy your own copy and support the Toronto Public Library.”

The deal is more or less what you’d expect. TPL’s administration has entered into a “retail affiliate” relationship with Indigo. The library gets five per cent of the cost of every purchase made through its catalogue. The program was approved by TPL’s board last June [PDF], but it only launched last week.

This is part of a broader push to open TPL up to new revenue sources. Beginning later this month or early next, the library will begin printing advertisements on the backs of its due-date slips, for a six-month trial period. The library is also investigating the possibility of running ads through its public wi-fi service. A spokesperson tells us those would debut, at earliest, near the end of 2013. The library board would still need to give them final approval at some point before then.

In all likelihood, none of this is going to be obtrusive enough to bother the average library user, but the returns, accordingly, aren’t expected to be that great. The due-date slips are expected to bring in about $20,000, which is minuscule relative to TPL’s operating budget. There’s no reason to expect that the Indigo partnership will bring in a lot of money, either. Library staff studied other jurisdictions with similar programs and found that the proceeds were “modest.”

Hat-tip to Quill & Quire.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaeko/3561096154/"}kaeko{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Toronto’s budget chief, Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt), has been fairly clear in the directions he’s provided to all City agencies, boards, commissions, and departments: in 2013, plan on a zero per cent budget increase.

As we saw last year, not all departments are content to accept direction, and sometimes council will make exceptions: though everyone had been asked to cut their budget by 10 per cent last year, for instance, the police budget request actually went up, and was passed by City Hall.

And as we expect to learn more about this year, a zero per cent budget increase is actually a budget cut—if you want to provide the same services, that is. Inflation and negotiated labour agreements mean that it will cost more in 2013 to provide the same services you provided in 2012, all other things being equal. A flatlined budget, in other words, means you need to find ways to do things more efficiently, or cut service, or both.

What is the library’s plan for 2013, and how is it approaching next year?

The library board passed a draft budget earlier this week that calls for a 0.4 per cent budget increase, which equals $680,000. The library is actually facing budget pressure due to inflation that amounts to a 1.7 per cent increase, and is offsetting that, according to information it provided today, “through additional revenues, efficiencies and other savings” that make up 1.4 per cent. The 0.4 per cent increase it is asking for consists primarily (0.3 per cent) of that remaining inflationary pressure. The last 0.1 per cent (or $250,000) is to pay for an increase in opening hours at eight branches, including the Toronto Reference Library.

This is a tiny amount of money in the scheme of things; the City’s overall operating budget is $9.4 billion. But as Rob Ford likes to point out, in the quest to do better at managing the public purse, even small sums are worth discussing. Certainly he has had no qualms about going hard after small amounts that support his gravy-laced narrative, if not the quest to alter fundamentally the economics of the municipal government.

Last year’s budget debate was a fractious battle of wills as councillors decided to overturn many of Ford’s proposed cuts. It is just 0.4 per cent, but whether Ford and Del Grande are willing to go to the mat over this library request may be a sign of how this year’s negotiations will shape up.

P-Dale Ep. 2: The Next Day is the Hardest Day of All! hits the stage tonight. Photo courtesy of Jonah Bettio.

COSTUME SWAP: Unless you never grew out of playing “dress up” on the regular, you likely have a bunch of Halloween costumes taking up space in your closet. And with Halloween parties galore looming on the horizon, you’re gonna have to go out and accumulate some more. Will the madness ever end? Yes! Uniiverse has come up with a solution: the Halloween Costume Swap. Bring in your unwanted costumes and trade them with others. Everyone wins! IndustREALarts Room (688 Richmond Street West), 6–9 p.m., FREE.

PUBLISHING: Tonight, the Toronto Public Library hosts Going it Alone: Adventures in Self-Publishing as part of their Writer in Residence series. Join experienced self-publishers Cory Silverberg, Bill Freeman, Christine Cowley, and Vivek Shraya for a discussion about Kickstarter, how to decide if self-publishing is for you, and where they think the industry is headed. Lillian H. Smith Library (239 College Street), 6:30–8:30 p.m., FREE.

MAGAZINE LAUNCH: Descant Magazine celebrates its fall issue launch tonight with a night of readings and free food. Descant 158: Renovations features fiction, poetry, art, and essays, all on the theme of “renovations.” Contributors Catherine Graham, Cora Siré, Jessica Parkinson, David Ker Thomson, and Anya Moryoussef will all read excerpts of their work. The Rochester (423 College Street), 7–10 p.m., FREE.

THEATRE: Get reacquainted with the colourful characters of pre-gentrification Parkdale in P-Dale Ep. 2: The Next Day is the Hardest Day of All!. It’s the second installment in Luis Fernandes’ original play series, presented by the Unit 102 Theatre Actors Company. Aiming to expand beyond the confines of regular theatre, Episode 2 incorporates video, original music, an in-house DJ, and even more characters that you’ll love to hate. Unit 102 Theatre (376 Dufferin Street), 8 p.m., $15.

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Learn sweet makeup tricks like these, just in time for the Zombie Walk and Halloween. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcronin/6270625206/sizes/z/in/photostream/"}Dan Cronin^{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}

HISTORY: As part of the Toronto Public Library’s Thought Exchange program, a panel of historians will gather tonight to discuss changes in Canada’s way, as a country, of thinking about citizenship. Featuring Assistant Professors Heidi Bohaker and Sean Mills (University of Toronto), Professor Pam Sugiman (Ryerson), Assistant Professor Sean Kheraj (York University), and adjunct lecturer Steven Maynard (Queen’s University). Toronto Public Library, Palmerston Branch (560 Palmerston Avenue), 6:30—8 p.m., FREE.

ZOMBIE MAKEUP: ‘Tis the season for bloody, torn flesh and oozing wounds—at least, the fake kinds. Just in time for the Toronto Zombie Walk, the Complections Zombie and Monster Makeup Workshop is teaching horror makeup techniques for people of all skill levels. Sign up to strike fear into the hearts of the living, and envy into the hollow chest cavities of your fellow undead. Complections College of Makeup Art & Design (110 Lombard Street), 6:30—9:30 p.m., $80 for workshop, $75 plus HST for kit (optional).

THEATRE: If you enjoy character-driven theatre, or if you’re an actor looking to broaden your portfolio, Character Assassination is for you. Tonight, 10 characters will take the stage with monologues to vie for audience votes. The top five characters will return for next month’s competition, and the rest will be assassinated. It’s a mutually beneficial event: performers are given immediate feedback on their act, and attendees get to be bloodthirsty critics. Clinton’s Tavern (693 Bloor Street West), 11 p.m., $5.

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.

Stephen Dulmage was appointed to Toronto Public Library’s board of directors last September, along with a slate of new citizen members brought in by Mayor Rob Ford’s administration to replace the previous, more left-leaning group.

Dulmage, a businessman and chartered accountant, quickly distinguished himself as the library board’s resident arch-conservative, sometimes outdoing even Ford’s executive committee members—three of whom are on the board—in his enthusiasm for budget cuts. (Once, during a cost-saving exercise, he publicly suggested closing 38 library branches.) He also had a tendency to behave oddly during meetings. In at least one instance, he spent the better part of a high-profile debate with his swivel chair spun around so that his back was facing the conference table. He appeared to be studying a map of Toronto that is mounted to the wall of the board room at the Toronto Reference Library.

At the beginning of May, he tendered his resignation from the board. The letter of explanation he sent to board chair Councillor Paul Ainsile (Ward 43, Scarborough East) is, well… everything you’d expect from a man who once wore a fake bullet wound to thwart an assassination plot of which he was the target. It is bizarre.

The letter just surfaced as part of a Civic Appointments Committee agenda. (It is a public document though the City Clerk’s office hasn’t put it online.) We have an annotated copy of it for you after the jump.

From: Steve Dulmage
To: Paul Ainslie
Date: 5/2/2012 8:05 am
Subject: TPL

Hi Paul

I resign as a Director. ^[1]

After 6 months as a Director, I see that the Board has no will for needed change. TPL is a $165,000,000 annual burden ^[2] for City Taxpayers ^[3] which could easily be done for $100,000,000, stuck with a bricks and mortar model when people now go online to search for books ^[4]. 2 consultant reports have told us we have too many branches ^[5] and in fact there are 3 times as many branches south of St Clair as compared to north of St Clair ^[6]!

The Branches have been turned into Community Centres offering programmes and services duplicating other Government Agencies ^[7]… Toronto already has 200 Community Centres ^[8] !!

I could go on with a long list of other problems and misdirections ^[9] …but won’t as you know of them.

steve

keep moving forward !!

Stephen Dulmage BA, CA ^[10]
2603-2181 Yonge St
Toronto M4S 3H7
416 485 9082

¹ – So far, so good.

² – Well, the amount, at any rate, is pretty much correct.

³ – Dulmage respects taxpayers by capitalizing them inappropriately.

⁴ – Toronto Public Library has seen circulation rise almost every year since amalgamation. E-books are the fastest-growing borrowing category, but they still only make up about 1.6 per cent of all items checked out.

⁵ – Consultant reports from KPMG and DPRA Canada, both commissioned by the City in 2011, said that TPL could close or consolidate branches for savings, sure. But consider this: even if TPL were to go ahead and consolidate 14 to 15 branches, the savings in 2013, according to DPRA, would be something like $3.7 million. That’s real money, but it’s not the $65,000,000 in savings Dulmage thinks “could easily be done.”

⁶ – So, now we’re arguing for more branches?

⁷ – The shift key is Not a Toy.

⁸ – What Did I Just Say?

⁹ – Yes, there were some misdirections in this letter.

¹⁰ – He’s a certified accountant, which might explain why Ford’s civic appointments committee took a liking to him in the first place.

Toronto Reference Library. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/halfkitkat/2758114510/"}HalfK{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

The Toronto Public Library just released its annual report on usage statistics, and surprise, surprise: by almost every meaningful metric, the system was busier in 2011 than it has ever been before. This happened in the very same year that political pressure forced the TPL to agree to shed the equivalent of 107 full-time jobs.

Those jobs were cut as part of the library’s 2012 budget. Some of them were management positions and others were back-end gigs, but about a third of them were made vacant by accelerating the roll-out of RFID-based self-checkout technology. And so branches with that capability will have fewer front-line staff.

Next year, the TPL could potentially shed more jobs.

Eatonville branch. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/imuttoo/2863504823/"}Ian Muttoo{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

A new agreement with the library’s unionized workers, reached after a short strike, loosens some of the layoff protections previously enjoyed by employees. For the four-year duration of the contract, it will be much easier for TPL management to get rid of staff, if they feel the need.

Below are some highlights from the TPL’s 2011 usage-statistics report. The question—though there is, for the time being, no ready answer—is whether these types of gains are sustainable in a political environment where libraries are increasingly making do with less money and fewer staff.

• Wi-Fi Use Is Way Up: The Toronto Public Library offers wireless internet in all its branches, and Torontonians are evidently taking advantage. In 2011, TPL recorded 2,526,757 wireless sessions in its branches, up 126.5 per cent from 2010. By a wide margin, that’s the biggest usage jump in any service category. Library staff attribute the increase partly to the prevalence of new mobile devices, which sometimes connect to wireless networks without their owners realizing.
• Workstation Use, Also Up: Library computers had more users than the TPL’s wireless service, with 6,380,037 sessions in 2011, for a 6.5 per cent increase over 2010. Workstation usage numbers have been trending upward since at least 2007.
• Circulation Has Been Climbing Steadily for Five Years: Circulation (that is, the number of materials that were borrowed) at the TPL was 33,252,235 this year, up 2.9 per cent from 2010. And that’s no fluke: every year for at least the past five, circulation has increased by a comparable amount. The biggest growth category was e-books, e-audio, and e-video—though the report says these formats still make up only about 1.6 per cent of all items borrowed.
• Program Attendance, Too: 865,495 people attended library programs in 2011, which is a 9.4 per cent increase over 2010. Interestingly, the number of programs offered increased by 10.8 per cent over 2010: there were more events, and there were more attendees. We can only assume the two things are related.

Read the full report here: [PDF]

A performance by the Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare Collective was one of 85 Culture Day activities that took place in Toronto's libraries last year. Photo by Christian Badanjak.

If the kids who filled the Malvern branch of the Toronto Public Library on October 1, 2011, were younger than Gita Kolanad had anticipated, they were not, she recalls, lacking in enthusiasm.

“There were a lot of little, little kids, like five years old and six years old, and we were hoping for more like 10 [-year-olds],” remembers Kolanad, a martial arts instructor. “They were hilarious, and they had a lot of fun.”

The kids had come for a workshop in the ancient Indian arts of kalaripayattu (kalari, for short) and banethi, given by six of Kolanad’s students. First, the kids watched a long series of attack and defence movements featuring some of kalari’s animal forms: the elephant position, with a stable base and a low centre of gravity; the lion position, good for swift multidirectional movement; and the horse position, from which to quickly gain ground against an opponent. Then the kids got on their feet and learned a few moves themselves.

The workshop was a part of last year’s Culture Days: a weekend’s worth of free cross-country public activities and performances, inspired by a similar annual Quebec weekend and first held in 2010.

“It’s really open to anybody,” says Culture Days’ Aubrey Reeves. “There are activities that are presented by really big, established organizations…but there are also activities presented by individual artists, community groups, volunteer-run cultural organizations, libraries, municipalities themselves, and everything, really, in between.”

Last year, the Toronto Public Library became involved, offering up 48 different branches as free venues for activities ranging from a Serbian choir rehearsal to a fashion show of traditional Tibetan dress to sprawling Shakespeare performances. In all, more than a third of Toronto’s 2011 Culture Day activities were held in libraries.

Forty-one branches are signed on again for this year, and applications from those who hope to fill those spaces are now being taken jointly by Culture Days, the library, and the Neighbourhood Arts Network.

Kolanad—who teaches through an organization called Impact that she co-founded in 2006—is hoping to return to Malvern this year, where there is plenty of space to perform kalari’s less stationary forms.

“[Malvern] has a really nice, big community room to hold the event,” Kolanad says. “When you get up and you move your body, you’re going to have a better time than if you just sit and watch.”

And getting up and moving your body in unfamiliar ways is, to some degree, what Culture Days is about.

“There are really only three requirements for a Culture Days activity,” Reeves explains. “They have to take place on the weekend of Culture Days, they have to be free and open to the public, and they’re supposed to be participatory or interactive in some way.”

Culture Days will run from Friday, September 28, to Sunday, September 30. Applications for use of a library space are due by April 30; selections are made based on practical considerations, not artistic merit.

Margaret Atwood and your grandma (I don’t know, it’s early) and also you will be pleased to hear that Toronto Public Library branches resume service at 10:30 a.m. today. Library workers are going back to work after approving a new deal with the board, and voting yesterday to end the 11-day strike. The union has attained lay-off protection for employees with 11 or more years of seniority—a significant feat, considering Mayor Rob Ford’s administration’s typical stance on granting total security to full-time, unionized city employees with less than 15 years of work on them. Apparently, the popularity of the Library helped give it some sway; it’s kind of the alpha kid of city unions right now. Workers will see a wage freeze this year, followed by a bit of a raise, and CUPE local 4948 said benefits and full-time jobs won’t be reduced; still, the union has expressed some concern over insufficient job security for part-timers.

Remember when Councillor Doug Ford thought a monorail would solve all the city’s problems? Or, y’know, make the Toronto waterfront better? That was cute. But really, the result of Ford trying to wrest control of the Port Lands from Waterfront Toronto is in the headlines today: his proposals, though mostly shot down, triggered a review of the agency’s years-in-the-making, $634-million plan to do things like naturalizing the Don River. The review is, apparently, a sort of compromise, and is looking into the prospect of more development opportunities for the waterfront area. (Read: less space for nature-y stuff). This possible shift in plans has right pissed off architect and urban designer Ken Greenberg, who says his team was not consulted by the city or Waterfront Toronto in considering changes to their design for a riverside park at the mouth of the Don River.

Yesterday’s news reported the purchase of Regent Park condos by former Toronto Community Housing Corporation executives was okayed by the City’s former integrity commissioner. Today, the Globe and Mail reports that Daniels Corporation, the company that redeveloped the inner-city neighbourhood, is defending some of its executives’ purchases of condominiums in Regent Park. Rather than trying to push out poor people, as has been suggested, Daniels’ Vice President Martin Blake said executives were simply trying to demonstrate their confidence in an area typically associated with social stigma. Who doesn’t love a scandal, right? But it looks like this one may be averted.

And, if you were worried about city councillors never having any fun (just kidding, that’d be a weird thing to concern yourself with), take heart in the knowledge that yesterday morning saw councillors and city staff getting a professional pole dance show, courtesy of a dancer who went by “Viviana.” Y’know, ’cause how else would they be able to understand a review of adult entertainment regulations? But also, probably, because politicians couldn’t be properly hypocritical without getting off on something and then publicly disparaging it. Sorry, too bitter?

SPOTTED BY: Torontoist Flickr Pool contributor Alejandro Santiago

WHERE: High Park Library, 228 Roncesvalles Avenue

WHEN: The evening of March 22

WHAT: As Toronto Public Library workers continue their strike small, visible signs of the disruption are starting to emerge. (The larger signs are much less visible—literacy levels being a hard thing to point at, and all.) The library has asked patrons to hang on to any materials they have checked out for the duration of the strike and return them when libraries are open again—book drop boxes have been locked for now. The strike began on March 18, after contract talks broke down with the City; the role of part-time workers is the biggest sticking point in negotiations.

Spotted features interesting things our readers discover in their journeys across Toronto. If you spot something interesting, send a photo and pertinent details to tips@torontoist.com.

Author Ted Barris addresses the crowd in front of the Toronto Reference Library. Photo by Chris Dart.

“Cheerful rage” may be an oxymoron, but that’s probably the best way of describing the mood at the “read-in” and rally—organized by the striking librarians’ union, CUPE Local 4948—that took place in front of the Toronto Reference Library on Sunday afternoon.

The crowd of more than 100 people included library workers, supportive members of the public and, most notably, a sizable contingent from the Writers’ Union of Canada, who showed up to voice their support for their fellow word lovers during the labour disruption.

While the writers were vocally upset by what they perceive as the Toronto Public Library Board’s refusal to give a fair deal to the members of Local 4948, they opted to keep things as light as possible. Instead of aggressively criticizing management, they talked about the value of libraries and did things like recite Dennis Lee’s poem “Alligator Pie” while subbing out the words “alligator pie” for “collective bargaining rights.”

Members of the public were encouraged to read their favourite books to the crowd, or simply to take the mic and explain the ways in which libraries were important to them. It was this audience-participation part of the rally that got the biggest response, particularly when a rather adorable little boy took the mic to ask, if libraries were to close, “Where will the learning happen?”

Striking library workers and their supporters raise their favourite titles at Sunday's protest. Photo by Chris Dart.

According to CUPE communications officer Michael Smith, response to the read-in was far better than expected.

“We were expecting good attendance for the rally, because we’ve been getting that, but we’d planned for about four speakers, and we had to adjust our plans on the fly, because we had about 20,” he said.

One of the speakers from the Writers’ Union, non-fiction writer Ted Barris, said that he thinks it’s important for writers and librarians to support each other. Libraries, he said, are essential to authors, not only as a source of revenue (they buy books), but also as a source of material and as a way to connect with readers. The fact that so many members of the Writers’ Union had come to the rally, he said, was proof that, even in the age of e-books, authors and libraries still need each other.

“[Libraries] get us in touch with living sources, as well as written ones,” he said. “The library’s not just an electronic connection to the world; it’s also people.

“There were probably 40 or 50 published authors at this corner for the last half hour,” he added, later. “And to know that they decided to come down here on a Sunday afternoon and throw some support behind the library workers is quite an important statement.”

Photos by Chris Dart/Torontoist.

It couldn’t have been part of their strategy, but CUPE Local 4948, the union that represents Toronto Public Library (TPL)’s 2,300 workers, picked a great day to stage the first rally of the first strike in their history as an organization. The union—which formed in 2009 when members voted to separate from the city’s outdoor workers’ union, CUPE Local 416—was fortunate enough to have negotiations with the TPL board break down on the eve of an uncharacteristically balmy March morning. Call it beginner’s luck.

As a few hundred union members marched and chanted in Nathan Phillips Square, some turned their eyes from the sun to reflect on troubles ahead.

“I definitely think the union has the back of the part-timers,” said Melissa Kitazaki, who works in customer service at TPL. “I think it’s ridiculous that in August I will have been at Toronto Public Library for 10 years, and I still can’t get a full-time job. That’s how few full-time jobs there actually are in the system.”

Kitazaki is the personification of one of the most contentious issues in the union’s negotiations with the TPL board. The union thinks TPL has too many part-time workers, and that those workers don’t have the same opportunities for advancement they may have had in better-funded days.

Maureen O’Reilly, the president of Local 4948, summarized her concerns for reporters when she arrived at Nathan Phillips Square around noon.

“We just want really, quite frankly, a decent living standard for our part-time workers,” she said. She added that since TPL shed the equivalent of 107 full-time positions last budget season (many of them belonging to workers made redundant by the rollout of new automated checkout systems), there are now more part-timers than full-timers working at Toronto’s libraries. A TPL spokesperson said that excluding part-time pages, many of whom are students, the current split is 30 per cent part-timers to 70 per cent full-timers.

The union also sees the board coming after job security, which was an issue in the City’s negotiations with CUPE Local 416 earlier this year.

“Quite frankly,” O’Reilly added (it’s an expression she employs frequently, and, to be fair, she is often quite frank), “they’re looking to open up the job security to lay off 1,300 library workers.”

She later clarified that 1,300 is the number of positions she believes TPL’s negotiators are trying to make vulnerable to layoffs—not necessarily the number of employees that would be lost.

But she fears that that regardless of the mathematics of the situation, the TPL board’s real objective in negotiations is to give the City the flexibility it would need to close library branches in future years.

“They weren’t able to close library branches in 2012,” she said. “They’re going to close them in 2013. And the way to do that is to open up our contracts so library workers can be laid off.”

There are a number of forces, both financial and technological, that have brought TPL and its workers to this impasse, but it was clear whom the most vocal members of the crowd in front of City Hall blamed for the mess. After some morale-boosting speeches from labour leaders—including O’Reilly and John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council—a few voices could be heard crying: “Rob Ford sucks.”