Ottawa Public Library

supporting the community through the pandemic

The Ottawa Public Library’s (OPL) many services and its importance to the local community has never been higher since the onset of the coronavirus last year. The OPL has continued to adapt and serve families and other clients during the pandemic by reaching out to them using a combination of adapted traditional services and innovative new ones. While eBooks and audiobooks are an important part of this, OPL has used creative and outside-the-box thinking to ensure as many citizens as possible can access their services.

The OPL has become an important lifeline in the national capital for tens of thousands of people who have used their books and other online products and offerings to cope as they navigate their way through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impact of the OPL in the community can be measured in multiple ways. On January 12th, they announced that they had reached a record-breaking 1.8 million digital book checkouts in 2020. In a year with building closures, storefront shutdowns and lockdowns and limited recreational activities in public spaces due to COVID-19, OPL services including those related to eBooks and audiobooks have skyrocketed in popularity.

E-Books and audiobooks have been available at OPL for several years through online portals like Overdrive and its companion reading app, Libby, which provide 24/7 virtual access to the library’s collection.

“The Ottawa Public Library is pleased to be part of the Million Checkout Club as it shows how active our customers are in using digital formats for reading – and how if anything, customers have valued access to library services more during the COVID pandemic,” said Danielle McDonald, CEO of Ottawa Public Library. “It's been a challenging year, but we have been able to provide the most sought-after titles for anyone in Ottawa to download and enjoy.”

This record-breaking growth is not limited to Ottawa. OPL is one of 102 public library systems worldwide that surpassed one million checkouts. OPL’s digital circulation places it in the top 40 public library systems worldwide. E-books and audiobooks are not the only way OPL has supported the community through the pandemic. New databases and online content on topics from genealogy to used cars to knitting instructional videos, among many others, have been added for library members to use free of charge. Instructional videos following the Ontario public school curriculum are also available for students studying at home.

OPL programming that previously took place in person has pivoted to virtual programming. Attendance has increased 3x compared to in-person programs, and recordings of the sessions posted to YouTube or Facebook afterwards have gained another 50,000 views.

Such programming is vital during a pandemic, Catherine Seaman, OPL’s

Division Manager of Customer

Experience, said. “We’re able to offer programming for people who can’t, or don’t want to, leave their homes.” Virtual programming for older adults at higher risk for

COVID-19 has been particularly popular.

After the pandemic, according to Seaman, the library will shift to a hybrid model that combines virtual programming with in-person programming. Though there are major benefits to real-world programs as an opportunity for people to get together, the “audience we can reach is so much wider by offering virtual programming.”

In-person programs are also important

$20 million that could have gone toward mental health needs in the city. Instead, it went to a bloated, unaccountable, cancerous OPS.

In the 2017 a report of the Independent Police Oversight Review by Justice Michael Tulloch made several important recommendations that have been completely ignored by the Ford government. One of them was that an independent office for adjudicating and prosecuting police should be established in the province to ensure that police charged with crimes would be prosecuted without favour or bias.

The system in place now is riddled with collegiality and the case of the women who were assaulted by Constable Post is a classic example of why the present system does not work. In his report Tulloch recommended establishing a separate office for prosecuting and adjudicating police cases in the province. This has not happened. Even the internal system of discipline used by police operates in secret and is chaired by a former police officer. The whole process remains a tragic farce when it comes to holding police accountable. The real losers are their victims.

Chief Peter Sloly has been on the job for 18 months. He was passed over for the top job previously in both Ottawa and Toronto and left policing after losing the top spot in Toronto in 2015. He returned as OPS Chief in 2019. He was brought in from Toronto and tends to view everything through a race lens, which is understandable given that he spent his entire police career in Toronto which has serious racial injustice issues. However, his arrogance and temperament problems became apparent early on in Ottawa.

Within months of arriving, he launched an internal investigation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars because he was upset about an offensive racist meme apparently directed at him that was sent out by an OPS employee. Each person on the meme was a person of colour who had been involved in police criminal misconduct. The investigation later determined that the person who sent it was an Indigenous OPS officer of Algonquin heritage.

However, when a gay man with aids was improperly and wrongly arrested by an OPS officer who then redacted and doctored evidence and changed witness statement breaking numerous rules of evidence under the Police Services Act, Sloly indicated to Ottawa Life Magazine that he could care less about it. Worse, after public outcry about that case, Sloly handed in a factually wrong and false report to the OPSB that cleared his officers in the incident.

The victim in the case, Rodney Mockler is now in the process of taking the OPS to court in a civil suit. Sadly, Chief Sloly’s preponderance for bending the truth and his temperament issues are now affecting his credibility in the community.

Despite the rapes and the sexual assaults and the misogyny the killing of Adbi Abdirahman, Ottawa City Councilors and OPSB members Diane Deans, Carol Anne Meehan and Rawlson King and their counterparts continue to do nothing but make excuses for the OPS. They are in some ways as bad as the police who commit these crimes because they can do something about it, and they remain timid and cowardly in words and deeds. In some cases, they just project stupidity.

In January, city councillor and OPSB Carol Anne Meehan got her foghorn out and demanded action because she wanted residents of Ottawa charged for not wearing masks on city ice rinks or for playing shinny outdoors during the COVID-19 lockdown. Yet we hear not a peep from her or Deans or Rawlson when their own city employees are being raped or assaulted by the very police they oversee. That alone speaks volumes about their twisted value system and priorities and why the problem of police misconduct in Ottawa is not going away anytime soon n

OPL programming that previously took place in person has pivoted to virtual programming. Attendance has increased 3x compared to in-person programs.

because there are accessibility barriers to accessing online content that do not exist in person: not everyone has the smartphone or computer required to attend. This technology barrier emerged early in the pandemic, in library programming and in many other important arenas. OPL has been working to help people solve these problems.

“We recognized that was a potentially huge need in a community” Seaman said. When virtual presence became a necessity, not only for library services, but attend school, apply for jobs, and even appear in court, access to technology became a major problem for vulnerable communities.

To help people facing this struggle, OPL partnered with organizations that worked closely with vulnerable populations in Ottawa and provided Chromebooks and internet hotspots to members of a community that otherwise would not have access to it. OPL also eliminated late fees as of January first in a bid to make library services as accessible as possible. “It’s a huge move to making our library services equitable to everyone in the community,” Seaman said, and the best move the library could make, especially during a pandemic, in order “to be as socially equitable as we could.” n