By Cheryl Jahn

Library’s future bright

Feb 1, 2024 | 3:09 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The Prince George Public Library has been up and running since 1955, moving to its current location in 1981. Currently, the library had just under 180,000 people walk through their doors in 2023, loaning out more than half a million items over that year. For that reason, the library is looking at adding hours of operation.

“Want to extend our service hours to back to Sunday openings and you know, at a weekday evening at the Nechako branch,” explains Paul Burry, Library Director. “So those are plans we’re working on now and making sure that we can support, you know, the rate at which people want to use the library and the community. And so that’s that’s a good news thing.”

There is also talk about the possibility of expanding library services to have another satellite branch, and College Heights is one of the neighbourhoods where it is believed an expansion would be well received.

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“That’s an area of town where we’ve seen a lot of growth and where it would be nice to have library services available for people in that neighborhood. So yeah, that’s an encouraging sign that the Council’s supportive of that and we know that the city is working on their official community plan right now and that’s something that we want to put on the radar.”

The Nechako Branch, which is well-loved and used by the Hart community, has experienced a fair number of facility challenges lately. City Council and Administration are aware of the facility issues at the Hart Mall branch which have impacted library services and are working to implement lasting solutions to those challenges.

“We’ve got to replicate the success we have,” says Garth Frizzell, Council’s representative on the Library Board. “So it’s a central location. It’s one everybody knows. You don’t want to surprise people, but we also want to have a location that’s relatively less expensive and is going to require a little less upkeep. So, you know, it’s a constant thing with any nonprofit or with any organization. You want to find the best place to locate.”

The Library recently received funding from the Province in the form of an Enhancement Grant, which has very few strings attached. And Burry says there’s one program he’d like attention on.

“A long-running and much-loved program in our community is the Homework Help free tutoring program, and that’s a program that we’ve traditionally funded through grants or fundraising and applying for grants. That’s something we would like to incorporate into our operations spending as a regular feature and not have to rely on grant funding for something like that because it’s so such an important program in our community.”

He adds there are other projects on the library’s wish list that the three-year provincial funding will take care of some of them.