[LINK] "Unseen City: The Toronto Reference Library"

[rfmcdonald]

The latest installment in Torontoist's Unseen City series is Steve Kupferman's post describing the Toronto Reference Library, behind the scene.

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. The TRL is an enormous free Wi-Fi hotspot, a popular event space, and the administrative hub of one of the world’s largest public library systems. Aside from all that, it’s also a repository for a massive collection of printed material. You wouldn't know it, though, unless you'd paid a visit to the floors between the floors.

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.

We meet Liya Shi and Dale Page at the TRL's front security desk. Liya is an operations supervisor who has been with the Toronto Public Library for over twenty years. Dale is a librarian with almost twenty-five years at Toronto Public Library, though not all of those were spent at the Reference Library. We're joined by Edward Karek, a Toronto Public Library public relations officer.

We're led past the familiar rows of internet terminals on the ground floor, which people line up to use throughout the day, through a nondescript door with an electronic lock. Suddenly, we're in a hallway that doesn't look like it belongs in the same building as the TRL's cushy, magenta-carpeted sitting area. The walls are plain white brick, and the lighting is harsh. We cram into a steel elevator and Karek jabs a button. And then, moments later, we enter the closed stacks.

It gets more exciting from there. Go, read.