2015 Libraries and Literacy Grant Report - Coquitlam Public Library
Introduction:
The Coquitlam Public Library serves the more than 141,000 residents (1) of Coquitlam and many others who live in the Tri-Cities area (Port Moody and Port Coquitlam). The fifth fastest growing city in BC, Coquitlam is attracting many newcomers. In a 2015 Citizen Satisfaction survey, “the majority of citizens say Coquitlam provides a good quality of life and believe they receive good value for their municipal tax dollars”. (2)
The City offers many economic advantages and opportunities to business and is working with the community to ensure that transportation, housing and services meet the expectations of its citizens. The rapid transit system – the Evergreen Line – opening in Spring 2017, will increase our connection to the Metro Vancouver area. The City has a large percentage of small businesses (a total of 6,200 licensed businesses in the City), including retail and professional services (32% of Coquitlam’s economic sector) the general service sector (42%), which includes School District 43, Douglas College and several health care facilities. Manufacturing accounts for 9% of the economic sector in Coquitlam, followed by public sector, technology, transportation and construction. (3)
Coquitlam is a family oriented community with higher than average income and higher than average education levels, as compared to the rest of British Columbia. In 2011, more than 54% of residents claimed English as their mother tongue. We have a historical French speaking community, focussed in the area of Maillardville, but the French speaking population is declining. We are seeing a rise in the percentage of non-official languages spoken; this was 15% higher than in other areas of the province. 43% of Coquitlam residents were born outside of Canada, and many of these speak Chinese, Korean or Farsi. (4) The City of Coquitlam has been active in promoting itself as a Welcoming Community and the immigrant population has grown markedly, including many refugees.
The average age of Coquitlam residents is 38, which is younger than most BC communities. The City is developing strategies for seniors, as that cohort is expected to rise in the next 10 – 15 years. School enrollment in SD43, which includes Coquitlam, has increased slightly but the birth rate in the area is projected to remain relatively stable. SD 43 does run a successful program for overseas students. Coquitlam has a very high school completion rate. (5)
Our Strategic Plan:
Coquitlam Public Library’s Strategic Plan 2010 – 2015 includes core values of providing high quality services to the community, inspiring trust and respect and protecting open access to library materials. The six main strategic goals are:
· Strengthen communities, neighbourhoods and families
· Build community prosperity
· Build individual success
· Increase active participation in library services
· Sustainability of services and infrastructure
· Achieve excellent in the workplace
We have accomplished a sizeable number of our goals including expanding ESL services in partnership with community groups; engaging with parents in providing programs to encourage pre-literacy skills; providing outreach in the community via our services to seniors; services to new housing areas of the City and to the disadvantaged with our new Library Link mobile library; hosting and supporting book clubs, including a book club for new immigrants, Library Champions and our Summer Reading Club for adults; increasing hours of public opening for the library and a complete upgrade to our computer systems - these are just some of the goals we achieved and continue to work on – there are a number of others that we are working on, including actively seeking to employ multilingual staff. Recognizing the need for additional staff development, the training budget has been increase in each of the past two years and in creating a new 3 year Strategic Plan that will take us to 2018.
Library as Community Hub:
If ever one needed evidence that a library can be a community hub, you need not look further than the Coquitlam Public Library. Our meeting rooms are being used on a continuous basis and our study rooms are constantly booked – in fact, during exam periods, we need to open special rooms just to accommodate students. We serve as a trusted partner in the community for classes, information sessions and studies, including SHARE’s English Practice Groups, who use our facility because people want to come to the library to learn, and for SUCCESS, which held assistance sessions for new immigrants. Our Reading Buddies and Homework Help programs, which assigns a young student with reading or school issues with a teen volunteer, is fully subscribed. Our STEM and coding programs were fully subscribed during the summer. Our program for mentally challenged people has grown at our Poirier Branch.
We also have created “the HUB” – a technical and business facility at our City Centre Branch location. The library signed a formal partnership agreement with the Tricelerate Incubator Group to develop services to the innovation and business community. Working with Trielerate, they hold information and assistance sessions for people looking for business expertise. The HUB also offers computer hardware and software, 2 3-D printers and a 3D scanner for the public to use, staffed by Coquitlam Public Library.
Challenges facing the library:
CPL faces challenges in light of increased costs, updating technology in the face of constant change and re-inventing ourselves to meet the growing needs of our changing community. For example, we are constantly working to provide additional wi-fi access for the huge increase in demand in our new facility. We are aware of increased resources needed to assist our public in learning, which are often very expensive – this year we added Lynda.com as a resource for our community. We continue to examine our operations to ensure that we are receiving maximum output from our staffing and budgeting, while making sure we are providing excellent customer service to our growing, multilingual and multicultural community. Recognizing the need for additional staff development, the training budget has been increased in each of the past two years and in 2015, we offered customer service and mental health training to all staff.
BC GOVERNMENT PROVINCIAL PRIORITIES
(1) Focus on Equitable Access
CPL Strategic Plan: Build intellectual and educational engagement centres throughout the City - Provide outreach community service with the mobile library
Library Link (Book Bus) Program – In 2015, the Coquitlam Public Library continued its service to the Cottonwood and Burke Mountain areas of the City, after our Book Bus was destroyed in a fire in 2014. The Board of the Library, after much public support and corporate donation of funds, decided to continue this important work and authorized the purchase of another vehicle. Cottonwood is home to many new immigrants, including refugees and many low income families. Many of these people are new to the idea of libraries and have, in many cases, no way of getting to our closest facility. The Library comes to them on Saturday mornings, delivering a wide range of materials that are both popular and useful to local users (ESL materials and now Arabic English books), many of whom are children.
The Library Link also provides services to the Burke Mountain area of Coquitlam. This fairly new and expanding planned neighbourhood has very few City services to date. The Library has become a regular neighbour, stopping at the Tri-City Family Place, on Thursdays, and providing families with reading materials and friendly staff to assist them.
We also use our Library Link at special events, connecting schools, parks and the shopping mall to the Library. In 2015, our Board approved a report to expand the services of the Library Link in 2016.
Key Partnership – we partnered with the Tri-City Family Place and the City of Coquitlam Parks and Recreation in providing us with access to parking, which is essential for this program. In replacing the Library Link vehicle, we received donations from local businesses (Wesbuild, Friends of the Public Library, Rotary of Coquitlam, Industrial Alliance) and private members in the community.
Outcomes
The new Library Link, which started again in October, has seen a 10% increase in registered card holders and the last 3 months of 2015 saw an increase of 50% in visitors from the previous year. Comments from book bus users note how valuable the service is to the area, increased interest in reading for children and specific comments on the friendly helpful staff being out in the community. Examples of comments:
“… we can always rely on the Library Bus to be in our neighbourhood on Thursdays. We enjoy visiting with people in the neighbourhood (and librarians) while choosing fabulous books to read at home. My grandson is learning to sit and listen while we enjoy the books together. He loves to pass on the knowledge he is absorbing and recently “read” out loud to his dad. Thank you for this wonderful bus library service”
“my family looks forward to seeing Sal on Thursdays at Victoria Hall, to see what book he recommends my boys to rent for that week. Thank you again for all the hard work. “books on the Wheel” and Sal’s hard work has made my boys interested in books and reading.”
(2) Supports for Education and Transformation
CPL Strategic Plan: Enhance Literacy Programs – Ensure that children have the literacy skills they need
STEM programming and Girls in Science
The library provided several summer programs in 2015 in the areas of STEM programming (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), as this has been demonstrated to being of growing importance for the education of students. In the summer of 2015, the Library worked with several groups, including Simon Fraser University’s Science Alive! Project, ROBOKIDS, and a local teacher to provide coding, video game design, graphics and robotics programs.
Outcomes
The programs were fully subscribed and there were waiting lists, which required further sessions. Parents noted that their children enjoyed the sessions and children also enjoyed the sessions and noted that they learned about things they did not necessarily have an interest in when they started the program. Some of the sessions were specifically geared to girls, providing them with a comfortable place to learn about science in a way that was specifically suited to their learning. As part of the outcome assessment for girls coding, for example, 21 of 24 students learned things they did not know before and 22 of 24 children wanted to learn more about computer coding. Another outcome was that children were communicating with their parents about what they learned – 18 of 24 children agreed or strongly agreed that they liked to show or talk about what they learned.
Comments included:
“Thank for your organizing this course – my daughter really enjoyed and benefitted from it”
“Excellent program, would love to see more w/ progressive levels. Thank you”
(3) Support for the BC Jobs Plan by improving outcomes for job seekers in BC
CPL Strategic Plan: Build Community Prosperity
Working with AVIA Employment Services and other service agencies in the Community, the library hosts a number of programs that assist residents in the employment process. AVIA is the local WorkBC initiative provider, and we assist them with program space, marketing and staffing to make for successful programs in the library. As previously stated, the Library now offers resident card holders free access to Lynda.com, one of the largest online learning tools in North America. Lynda offers free tutorials to learn new business, creative and technical skills that can be viewed at any time from the library or at home.
Key Partnership: AVIA Employment Services, as the provider of the BC government’s WorkBC intiative, which assists job seekers with information and education.
Outcomes:
From Gillian Kirk, Industry and Community Relationships Liaison, AVIA Employment Services:
“The Coquitlam Library has been an extremely valuable partner with Avia Employment Services ever since the WorkBC program launched in 2012. We have worked with the library to offer workshops for job seekers to provide tips on job search essentials and to provide information on how they can access employment services in our community. Library staff members have come to our offices to let our staff know about the library’s Lynda.com program, which is a fabulous resource for job seekers who need training and education in their field. The library has also provided us with excellent meeting space for our community service provider roundtable sessions, which help us to connect with the other organizations in our community that serve people with disabilities, people with multiple barriers to employment, immigrants and the unemployed”
Re Lynda.com outcomes, we have increased usage of the learning tool, starting at 275 logins in the first quarter to almost 1700 in the 3rd quarter of use. It is difficult to gauge the outcomes of an online tool, but this comment is notable:
“I would just like to express my gratitude to whoever is responsible for making Lynda.com accessible to people who have registered in the library. It greatly helps me learn new skills that I can use at work. I am happy knowing that my tax works for me. I hope the library's agreement or contract with Lynda.com is not just for one year but for a longer term. I support any initiative that will make online learning available for public library users.” Kristian Santos