[URBAN NOTE] "Vaughan’s new glass and metal marvel is not your grandmother’s library"

[rfmcdonald]

Marcus Gee's article in The Globe and Mail makes me want to go see Vaughan. (Did I say that? Yes.)

Margie Singleton started working in libraries when she was 15. Her first, in Kingston, was a solid, traditional affair with hushed rooms, watchful librarians and long drawers filled with cards cataloging the books by title, subject and author.

Forty-four years later, she is about to preside over the opening of a new library that would have startled her younger self. The Vaughan Civic Centre Resource Library on Major Mackenzie Drive is the latest in library technology and design. Designed by Toronto’s ZAS Architects, it is all glass and metal on the outside, all light and space on the inside. Like the new Fort York and Scarborough Civic Centre branches of the Toronto Public Library, this one throws open the doors and lets the sun shine in.

Ms. Singleton, who is chief executive of the library system in Vaughan, the sprawling suburban municipality north of Toronto, beams at the idea of introducing the $15-million marvel to the public at the official opening on Saturday. It has been open to visitors since May, but she says many people still drive by and say, “What is that? No one would think it’s a library.”

The library’s sweeping, curving walls were inspired by the roller coasters at the nearby Canada’s Wonderland theme park. At its centre is an open-air courtyard with a spreading maple tree.

The open, airy spaces inside are designed to be casual and flexible. Librarians don’t stand guard behind circulation or reference desks any more. They roam around, ready to help, with lanyards around their necks to identify them. Books are displayed in the front lobby the way they would be at a big-box bookstore, a “merchandising” approach designed to draw people in. A staffer even visited a local Chapters to take measurements of the book-display racks so the library could copy them. Ms. Singleton isn’t afraid to borrow.