Residents who would normally utilize a book loaning service through the Chatham-Kent Public Library are asked to be patient as employees work through the backlog of a reinstated program.
The provincial government announced cuts to the Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS) earlier this spring, which resulted in the suspension of the inter-library loan service. However, following an outcry of displeasure, the government announced that the inter-library loan program would be reinstated effective June 3.
Tania Sharpe, the chief librarian at the Chatham-Kent Public Library, said it's excellent news but there are still some unanswered questions regarding the program's reinstatement.
"[The program] is coming back in a different form. The SOLS will not be reinstating the courier service," said Sharpe. "We as library systems will use Canada Post, they have a shipping tool that public libraries can use, which provides us with a reduced rate to mail materials back and forth."
Sharpe said the CKPL will pay for the Canada Post service up-front and funding provided by the provincial government to SOLS will be used to reimburse the postage cost. However, it's unclear whether or not it will be a full reimbursement.
"I don't know yet whether that will be enough to cover all the costs," she said. "We're going to proceed as before for 2019, then we'll reevaluate whether we're getting all of our costs covered again or whether we're getting enough that we can cover the leftover."
In the meantime, Sharpe said they are going to go through the backlog to get some of the items that had been requested over the past few weeks.
"We had a lot of requests come in [during] the [approximately] six weeks that we were down and it'll take a little while for us to catch up with the backlog," she said. "It may take a little longer than usual to get requests submitted, processed, and received."
Sharpe said the loan service is something that is used by several residents, whether it's for research or personal use. In just one year, the CKPL had borrowed about 1,300 items through the loan service. News of the program being reinstated didn't come as a surprise, as Sharpe said there was a lot of push-back from people across the province.
"I think there was enough of an outcry from library patrons as well as library administrators that the provincial government realized that to cut the funding completely was not a good idea," she said.
Sharpe said they will reevaluate the postage cost and reimbursement in late 2019 or early 2020 and will decide how to proceed from there, in regards to keeping the service available in future years.
