- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor

Tim Nicholls Harrison, CEO of the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library, expressed his concerns today over the announcement of provincial cuts that will affect local services and costs.

The Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS ), which provides training and infrastructure for Southern Ontario Libraries, has had its budget cut by just over 50 percent. SOLS has been the system by which  smaller and rural libraries have shared materials through interlibrary loans to provide their communities with resources far beyond their own collections. It has also saved those libraries money with co-ordinated buying power, such as the ebooks available through overdrive.

“This could make it very hard for small and medium sized libraries in Ontario to be able to continue to offer the same services to the public. It will definitely cost us all more to try to deliver the services without SOLS helping,” said Nicholls Harrison, who will be discussing this with the library board members when he updates them at their meeting at the end of this month.

Board members and librarians of the Hanover, West Grey and Meaford Public Libraries also said this has been an unexpected blow which will have to absorbed in the current fiscal year. Decisions on service changes or re-organizing budget priorities will be made over the next few months.

The inter-library loan service will end next week.  Here is the announcement from SOLS' Chief Executive Officer, Barbara Franchetto, BA, MLS:

“It is with great sadness that I have to inform public libraries in southern Ontario that the Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS ) interlibrary loan delivery service will permanently cease to operate, effective April 26th, 2019.

I know this is very sad and disappointing news but given the enormity of the cut to our operating budget, there is no alternative. Even under our previous budget allocation, it was becoming difficult to sustain the service because of ever increasing operating costs.

If you have books from other libraries that need to be returned after April 26th, you must mail them. Libraries should be prepared to absorb the cost of postage. You will not receive any new lending requests, or be able to issue any new borrowing requests.

The end of the SOLS delivery service means that 24 drivers (full time, part time and occasional) will lose their jobs. Last year, they drove almost 1 million kilometers to deliver over 710,000 packages to 153 main library branches across southern Ontario. They brought new purchased material from jobbers to over 100 libraries at cost effective rates.

Truly the end of an era in provincial resource sharing.”