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Toronto's Public Library system.

Old City Hall would be the most ideal location for an iconic Main Branch of Toronto Public Library. Unlike the NYPL Main Branch (despite it being built on a former reservoir), the TPL Main Branch would not be purpose-built though, which means that it would require much renovations to convert the space.

The city could accept donations and sell naming rights for various reading rooms to raise funds. Yes, it would replace the small branch at the current City Hall.

Donations and the sale of naming rights has almost never been able to fund cultural facilities in this city before (usually only covering a portion of the costs), so I strongly doubt it would cover most of the bills here. The annual operating costs would not even begin to be offset by the closure of the existing tiny City Hall branch. Absent bags of cash falling down on us from heaven (or, more practically, a municipal government taking a grown-up approach to taxation and infrastructure and public facilities - maybe the bags of cash from heaven are more realistic?), I don't see this happening unless we start to gut our neighbourhood based branch network. The network that is the key to TPL's success. And for what? Is having an "iconic" branch worth it? What would be achieving that we are not already? Would we get better results? How would we be achieving more with this main library than we would by continuing to build our branch system?

Everyone is taken by the romanticism of a flagship library in Old City Hall, including myself, but nobody seems to want to tackle these questions.

A regular branch in Old City Hall, perhaps larger than usual to reflect its central location, might be another matter. Maybe.
 
Having a "City Hall" branch at the Old City Hall would be good. But in addition, a Toronto museum and a branch of the Toronto Archives should be added to it as well.

The Toronto Archives is currently at 255 Spadina Road, north of the Dupont Subway station. See link.Having a branch at the Old City Hall would allow the archives to show off much more.

Having all three (library, museum, and archives) at one location, would give the Old City Hall building a much better historical function than just being a court house.
 
Having a "City Hall" branch at the Old City Hall would be good. But in addition, a Toronto museum and a branch of the Toronto Archives should be added to it as well.

The Toronto Archives is currently at 255 Spadina Road, north of the Dupont Subway station. See link.Having a branch at the Old City Hall would allow the archives to show off much more.

Having all three (library, museum, and archives) at one location, would give the Old City Hall building a much better historical function than just being a court house.

I like this idea of having all three at the same spot.

Worth saying, however, is that the near-core will get a new 'district class' branch in the form of the replacement for the St. Lawrence Branch, when it shifts to the corner
of Front and Parliament in the next few years.

I've been hearing this for years, but is it really happening? Didn't the building the branch was supposed to move to get leased by a third party again?

My local library, Parliament and Gerrard seems to be frequented by vagrants and the insane, both seemingly looking for a place to mutter to themselves or defecate. I usually drive my kids to the Leaside branch where they can view books without the crazies. The Coxwell and Gerrard branch is nice too, and we've walked over there many times.

I go to the St. Lawrence Branch and even though it got renovated in the past coupla years, the air circulation is still abysmal. It smells, gets too hot, etc. Not as many mutterers though. Overall it seems like a great community branch with a children's section, and various meet up (book club, mystery club?, etc.).
 
Having a "City Hall" branch at the Old City Hall would be good. But in addition, a Toronto museum and a branch of the Toronto Archives should be added to it as well.

The Toronto Archives is currently at 255 Spadina Road, north of the Dupont Subway station. See link.Having a branch at the Old City Hall would allow the archives to show off much more.

Having all three (library, museum, and archives) at one location, would give the Old City Hall building a much better historical function than just being a court house.
That is much better than what I have proposed. The library and the archives can be free, while the Toronto Museum could be "pay-as-much-as-you-want" like the Met in NYC.
 
I know that, which is why I said earlier, excluding the Reference Library.
But why exclude our own iconic and large library?

What's next, someone poses a suggestion that Toronto needs an extremely tall tower for ratio transmission and tourism? We don't have one, excluding the one we have, so let's recommend the best place for one. And then when someone says, um, y'know, we already have one, the poser says yes, that's why I excluded the one we have, because we don't want to consider that one.

Seems rather ridiculous to me.
 
I go to the St. Lawrence Branch and even though it got renovated in the past coupla years, the air circulation is still abysmal. It smells, gets too hot, etc. Not as many mutterers though. Overall it seems like a great community branch with a children's section, and various meet up (book club, mystery club?, etc.).

St. Lawrence will be moved to the First Parliament site at some point in the future.

AoD
 
What do you think of our library system? Do you or did you use it very often?

I remember pretty fondly spending time as a kid and also as a teen at the library and having learned so much in the pre-internet days from all the books I read there. I sometimes even get nostalgic walking by and re-visiting some of the particular neighbourhood libraries I spent time in during the past couple of decades..

I remember reading claims that the Toronto Public Library is in terms of per-capita circulation and number of people using it, one of most highly used library systems of any major city, which would be pretty impressive if true.
I use it regularly, both for physical books and for ebooks. I know a number of people who like to go and sit at our local branch because it's so pleasant -- they read the newspapers or just hang out. Our branch is always busy, lots going on -- courses, students using equipment, the meeting room is always booked, moms and kids, it's a community hub.
 
My local library, Parliament and Gerrard seems to be frequented by vagrants and the insane, both seemingly looking for a place to mutter to themselves or defecate.
 
My local library, Parliament and Gerrard seems to be frequented by vagrants and the insane, both seemingly looking for a place to mutter to themselves or defecate.
Some libraries have "airlock rooms" in the entrance. Classical music could be played there, while keeping the rest of the library quiet. Classical music is known to deter loiterers effectively.
 
Some libraries have "airlock rooms" in the entrance. Classical music could be played there, while keeping the rest of the library quiet. Classical music is known to deter loiterers effectively.

I like classical music like "The William Tell Overture", "The 1812 Overture", "Ride of the Valkyries", "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", etc. But I don't think they'll be playing those pieces.
 
I sometimes go to the Sanderson Library at Bathurst and Dundas to relax and read e.g. local history. Fortunately, there are no vagrants and the insane defecating on to the books.
 

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