The Lloydminster Public Library continues efforts to become a municipal library.
The City of Lloydminster has approved the transition of the Lloydminster Public Library into a municipal library under the Saskatchewan Public Libraries Act.
The move follows the Government of Saskatchewan’s approval of a Minister’s Order, which officially removes the City’s Saskatchewan-side boundary from the Lakeland Library Region.
Council approved actions to advance the transition at the Jan. 20 regular council meeting, which included amendments to the Lloydminster Charter.
More information on specifics was also made available at the meeting.
Coun. Justin Vance asked how this change would affect the other municipalities in the region.
“Ultimately, it’ll probably have limited effect on their day-to-day operations of their libraries, what it’ll change is the priorities of the Lakeland Library Region and how they support the libraries still within that region. There would be a financial change to the region while our levy is no longer going into the region they’re no longer spending resources on Lloydminster. I’m not really sure how that would affect them long term,” said executive manager of community development services Tracy Simpson.
Some things changed when the library became part of the municipality, including technological changes.
“Before the end of last year, we removed all of the computers that were owned by Lakeland Library Region,” said Simpson. “They also had some Wi-Fi equipment in the space.”
With the support of the City of Lloydminster’s IT department, Wi-Fi and computers have been provided by the city.
The ability to borrow has not been affected as the Lloydminster Library is now a part of SILS, the Saskatchewan Information Library Service Consortium.
“The major portion I forgot to mention was the books, any books that were purchased over the last couple of years that were owned by the Lakeland Library are required to be returned to them as per the mandate of the minister. So there will be some cost incurred to start replacing and backfilling that. It won’t be like for like, every book for every book be returned. The library and their staff will determine what was good use of our money to replace,” said Simpson.
Replacing the books will come at a lower cost according to Simpson.
“It will come at a lower cost because we aren’t buying brand-new books at a brand-new cost, it’s three-year-old books at a reduced cost,” she said.
Administration will now prepare a bylaw to establish a municipal library under the Saskatchewan Public Libraries Act.
Read more: Library governance may turn the page