Prince Rupert Library

2014 Provincial Grants Report

February 12, 2015

Introduction

The Prince Rupert Library is grateful for the financial support it receives from the Province of British Columbia through Libraries and Literacy. These grants of over $83000 represent almost 12% of our revenue and allow us to strengthen our collections and services, increase our outreach capacities and improve our relations with community partners.

The Public Library is an important community hub for the residents of Prince Rupert and surrounding area. People of all ages gather here to access information for varied purposes such as employment, continuing education, and recreation. Public internet access, printing and fax services, children's programming, author readings and our public meeting area are all well-used.

Our importance derives from the demographics of our community. We are a diverse community made up of long-time settler families, Canadians from other provinces, recent new immigrants and a significant portion of First Nations individuals (Stats Canada estimates over 34% of our population self-identifies as First Nations). We have a considerable population of people who have economic barriers and often have no other access than the Library to information and skills development. As other government agencies close their public offices, the library increasingly provides the necessary online access for purchasing commercial fishing licences, pension applications and the like.

Long-established unemployment, domestic violence and dysfunctional families are at higher than average provincial levels in Prince Rupert. We have a wide array of families living in our community from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. We have many First Nations families, as well as several Asian communities that continue to grow with the arrival of new immigrant families. They are among the many groups that will benefit from literacy-based programming for their children, and our specialized ESL collection.

The latest statistics (2013) using the Early Development Instrument through the University of British Columbia's Human Early Learning Partnership shows that 47% of Prince Rupert's kindergarten children in 2013 were deemed 'vulnerable' in at least one aspect of their development, and are therefore at an increased risk of difficulties in their school years and beyond (down from 51.5% in 2008/2009) ( is the third highest percentage in the province. It is alarming that nearly half of our children are entering school without the basic skills they need to succeed! While the decrease from 51.5% to 47% is encouraging, the children in the 2013 group are now in Grade Two and need all the support we can give them. Prince Rupert had the highest percentage of children who are considered vulnerable in their language and cognitive skills (27%), three times the provincial rate ( We also ranked third in vulnerability when it came to the children's communication skills.) They are in need of as much help in the areas of literacy, language and communication as we can offer.

Northwest BC is hopeful about future LNG development. While development is still in the preliminary stages and there have been no commitments from the proponents, there is a sense that this activity will make significant changes to our area. The library is in regular communication with City Administration about how to prepare the community for these changes. We are also in touch with the proponents and making them aware of the needs of the Library.

We use our mission statement to guide us, our services and our collections.

  • Assemble, preserve and administer, in organized collections, books and related educational and recreational material, in order to promote, through guidance and stimulation in the communication of ideas, an enlightened citizenship and enriched personal lives.
  • Serve the community as a centre of reliable information
  • Support the educational, civic, and cultural activities of community groups
  • Provide opportunity and enrichment for children, young people, men and women to educate themselves continuously.
  • Seek continually to identify community needs, to provide programs of service and access to meet such needs, and to cooperate with other organizations, agencies and institutions which can provide programs and services to meet community needs

Government Priorities, Goals, Programs and Services, Partnerships

Equitable Access

This is an important goal for us. We have a significant population of poor people who have no other affordable access to information or entertainment than the Library. Our goal of Seeking to provide opportunities for all people to educate themselves continuously supports this provincial priority. The following items, services and programs are funded in whole or in part by the Provincial grant we receive.

  • Our Userful stations (also known as our public internet computer stations) have allowed our residents almost 11,000 sessions in 2014. We also provide free WI-FI for our patrons.
  • We had a program which allowed Home-Schoolers to access our computers (as well as the other resources) during the day.
  • Two years we partnered with a local Ferry company to provide books for children on the ferry which was used to transport children to schools in Prince Rupert from nearby First Nations villages. As well we increased our library tours to include early primary grades from nearby villages.
  • Our annual Family Literacy Day celebration in January was very successful and brought in many children whose families have economic barriers.
  • A vital part of our Library is our Sitka Evergreen ILS. This allows us to provide our core services of circulation, cataloguing and item discovery.

Supports for Education Transformation

This provincial priority is supported by our goal to servethe community as a centre of reliable information

  • providing space in the library for volunteer and paid tutors to give one-on-one instruction
  • Part of the Provincial Grant was used for staffing and for supplies. We have 2 regular pre-school programs – Tales for Twos and Story Hour, wherein children are introduced to books, reading and and the Library. We purchased a white board/flannel board used in story-telling here as well as spending funds on the Children's collection.
  • We provided a Summer Reading Club for the community through support from Literacy and Libraries as well as Federal grant from Young Canada Works, through Heritage Canada.
  • As well we had a summer teen reading program in the library in July and August. We had a reasonable turnout of teen readers over 7 weeks (~7 readers each time).
  • We also support the Books for Babies program by assembling Book/CD/brochures Packages (which we paid for in part) with Provincial Funds which are then distributed at the Prince Rupert Health Unit.
  • We held programs for pre-schoolers outside of our Library, for example at the Friendship House (an inclusive organization that exists to provide programs and services to the community at large; doing this with an emphasis on the needs of the First Nations People in the areas of education, culture, health and recreation) on International Children's day.

Community engagement and collaboration

Our goal that underpins this priority is that we support the educational, civic, and cultural activities of community groups. This year we did the following activities both as an end in themselves and as a means of increasing awareness of library services and programs. :

  • Applied for grant (Imagine- HEAL) for upgrade of our medical resources with Northern Health Authority (NHA) grant and this required several meetings between Library staff and Prince Rupert Health Unit, Mental Health as well as Healthy Heart, Diabetes and Nutrition programmers from NHA.
  • English Coffee Club meetings with Settlement Services to demonstrate Library collections and digital resources for newcomers to Canada.
  • We hosted (our largest audience – over 100 people) a CBC community forum on LNG opportunities/risks at the library
  • Different public meetings held in the Library to support local First Nations activities: Haida Nation community meetings, Kitkatla Canoe project, First Nations authors such as Roy Henry Vickers, Cedar Road Aboriginal Head Start tours
  • We partnered with our Literacy partners Decoda and the North Coast Literacy Network in a Literacy Fair at our local mall.
  • We partnered with our local Canadian Legion Prince Rupert #27 and the local Sea Cadets (RCSCC #7 Captain Cook) to promote the “Mood for Peace” tour in northwest BC.
  • Grant application to Success by Six Council of Partners resulted the purchase of furniture for the children's area
  • We support many of the activities of our library federation- the NCLF or North Coast Library Federation, which consists of seven public libraries from Prince Rupert to Houston BC.
  • Our Library Assistant responsible for children's programming, who has been on the Success by Six Council of Partners has become more involved in the planning activities of the organization. This allows us to make more Library connections (as well as gifts of books) to our local First Nations communities.

I hope I've given you a helpful summary of what our Library did with the grants we gratefully received during 2014. This money allowed us to better serve our patrons. Our collections, infrastructure service (i.e. ILS, Public Access computing network and support) and staffing have been well-supported by these grants as well our 2014 focus on increasing awareness of the Library's role in Prince Rupert. Reaching out to those who don't know the value of the library is significant and rewarding, both for Library staff and, more importantly, for our new patrons.

Thank you on behalf of the staff and trustees of the Prince Rupert Public Library.

Joe Zelwietro

Chief Librarian

Prince Rupert Library

1