"I certainly never write a review about a book I don't think worth reviewing, a flat-out bad book, unless it's an enormously fashionable bad book." --
says, John Gardner in Conversations with John Gardner
Quoted from 'Dictionary of Library and Information Science Quotations'     Edited by Mohamed Taher & L S Ramaiah. ISBN: 8185689423 (New Delhi , Aditya, 1994) p.150. Available @ Amazon.com

Monday, December 05, 2011

Budget Chief Questions Toronto Public Library Collections: Are we an international library?

In Toronto Star and http://libraryworkersunion.blogspot.com/
"The second mention was for something more substantial: councillor Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East) demanded an apology from budget chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) for his remarks in the Star this morning about the Toronto Public Library:
“Should the city library become a Blockbuster?” Del Grande said. “Is that what we should be doing? Is that our core program or is that program creep?”
In calling for a debate on library programming, the budget chair said he questions the library’s decision to stock non-English items.
“Are we an international library? What proportion of our budget should go for non-English movies and books, etc.? The argument would be made this is what makes the city great, but I would dare say our common language is English.”
Del Grande also suggested (in the Toronto Sun) that "every single library" has 100 copies of Pirates of the Caribbean 4. (Based on the TPL's web directory, I assume Del Grande means that the entire library system has 112 copies, almost all of which are currently out on loan.)
On the same shelf: