It might be a while before library patrons can order material from outside of Guelph and Wellington County.
According to notices on the Guelph Public Library (GPL) and Wellington County Library's (WCL) websites, all branches have had to pause their inter-library loan programs until the Canada Post strike has finished since it is their "carrier of choice" for incoming and outgoing deliveries.
GPL community engagement supervisor Meg Forestell said this means library patrons are currently unable to order print material, audiobooks or compact disks from libraries across Ontario and Canada.
GPL also can't currently order microfilms from the Archives of Ontario or loan materials to other libraries.
"Nothing's coming in or going out, and that's on par with most of our neighbouring libraries who we loan with," said Forestell. "It's a complete shutdown."
Forestell said GPL tends to lend a lot of materials out to other libraries and it's "especially important" for rural libraries with smaller collections and budgets.
"It's not just impacting us, it's impacting those smaller libraries even more, because we can't get our materials out to them," said Forestell. "So they're really limited in what they can offer right now."
In Guelph, Forestell said they have over 200 books at the main branch that need to be returned to other libraries and 600-700 of their own books that need to be returned to their collection, in addition to microfilm loans to universities and the Archives of Ontario for research projects, specifically genealogy.
Storage has also become an issue and Forestell said the library has extended the loan periods of some of the books if customers still wanted to have them for a little bit longer to save room.
"We're really restricted on space (at the main branch). There are literally book trucks surrounding the staff person's desk, " said Forestell. "We just don't have a huge storage capacity ... people might as well be utilizing these books while we are in a state of limbo."
In Wellington County, chief librarian Rebecca Hine said the strike is "greatly affecting" inter-library loans as they are unable to ship or receive any material and they've removed the form from their website so that requests aren't sitting in limbo.
Last November, they loaned 343 items to other library systems in Ontario; this November they've loaned 55.
Outside of inter-library loans, Hine said they aren't able to mail out billing notices for items that have not been returned which is impacting the collection. They're also not receiving new magazines which Hine said is having a bigger impact on circulation than inter-library loans.
"Digital magazine circulation is up this month presumably because of this," said Hine.
Even when the strike ends, Forestell said it's going to take a while to process the "huge wait-list of books and requests" and the library's inter-library loan coordinator is "dreading the backlog when Canada Post returns to work."
In the meantime, library patrons are asked to hold off on making any new inter-library loan requests until the strike has finished and follow any due dates provided on all paperwork.
"When it does come back on, we'll reassign some of our staff to support her to make sure that this isn't a prolonged experience for our customers and we'll try to do it as quickly as we can," said Forestell. "But yeah, it's unfortunate, and it's too bad that our books are out there and we can't get them back."
Any questions about Guelph inter-library loans should be directed to 519-824-6220 or [email protected].
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
