Approx 17.5 million people head to one or more of the 99 branches. In 2009, the TPL had more than 31 million books, DVD's and other items borrowed. More 2009 numbers and other Toronto Public Library facts here.
Alone among the city’s large indoor hangouts, the Toronto Reference Library (TRL) has the distinction of being publicly-owned, and publicly-minded. In accordance with the building's mandate, it has a friendly public face: a tremendous central atrium and soothing ground-floor fountains give its study areas a characteristically relaxed, uncluttered appearance, and a $34 million renovation, already in progress, promises to make things even more inviting.
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Though the TRL keeps some of its more-than-1,600,000 items on open shelves for the public to browse, about two-thirds of its holdings are in closed stacks. These stacks are located in locked areas on the southeast and northwest ends of the building, which visitors seldom see.
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The rooms in which the closed stacks are housed are cramped and have very low ceilings, for good reason. Starting on the second floor of the TRL, there are two floors of closed stacks for every single public floor: one level with the floor itself, and the other a "mezzanine level," positioned between two floors. This arrangement makes it possible for the TRL, a five-storey building, to have nine storeys of closed stacks—and all without violating any laws of space-time.
"Do you know how many of our staff get lost?" asks [Lia] Shi [an operations supervisor], rhetorically. New hires are under instructions to call for help over the phone if they lose themselves in any of the TRL's interstices.
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The closed stacks are in no immediate danger, but the encroachment of constantly improving digital alternatives to print has many librarian contemplating the enormity of the vacuum their physical collections would leave behind, if one day users no longer valued books. "I think it'll sort of turn around," says [Dale] Page [a reference librarian]. "Print will always be very important."
"You can't just cut off the connection with books," says Shi.
Toronto Public Library does, in fact, still value its print materials—and, what’s more, some of them have intrinsic, monetary value. When these materials are damaged, either through mishandling or neglect, they eventually find their way to a room in the TRL, and into the hands of Johanna Wellheiser [a manager of the Preservation and Digitization Services Department],and her staff.
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