Where other library system boundaries have a larger urban area within their borders the NLLS doesn’t and because the Library Act stipulates there must be one degreed librarian for every 25,000 people, it is putting a financial strain on NLLS.
“The Library Act hasn't actually been opened up in a long time,” Smith said. “So, in the broad sense that's what we're looking into, because there's some stuff going on with the Public Library Services Branch that they don't really want as much leeway.”
Smith added that means they need to hire seven more people in the regional office to meet the requirements of the act.
“For other regions, it's easy because they have a larger urban centre, and that's the requirement. They have so many people living in the city they have (in their borders),” Smith explained. “So, it puts a financial strain on our region. We're all rural, so we don't have full time hours for a majority of our libraries. We don't have 5,000 people coming in a day, we have 20 or 30.”
Smith said the difference is hundreds of thousands of dollars for the NLLS to hire the required people.
"We're stretching where we can, and we're just not getting support and this would be about $200,000 or $300,000 that the region wouldn't have to come up with from municipalities and library boards that we can actually put into things,” Smith said. "It puts our region at a huge disadvantage and then our region is by far the largest region.”
Because of the large area NLLS has three vans and is the process of getting a fourth to move the books between the libraries from Elk Point, Wandering River and other libraries in the system.
Smith is seconding a motion to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) that is a complement to one Athabasca County Coun. Warren Griffin presented and was passed to the Rural Municipalities Association (RMA).
“That gives the AUMA the go ahead to start lobbying on our behalf,” Smith explained. “They actually get the foot in the door to have the discussions with the government.”
RMA and AUMA would work collectively to lobby the government to open the act up, possibly forming a joint committee to study the need.
"They would possibly form a subcommittee to get as much information as possible before going in and meeting and they'd be the ones that would be instigating the push for the government to open up (the act),” Smith said.
Smith added that Boyle's library, like every other library across the province, is working on opening back up to the public by installing Plexiglass and hand sanitizer stations, but the rest of the details are still being worked out.
"It’s not only safety for patrons, but we want our staff to be safe too,” she said. “So, we're doing that and looking into whether or not we need to do it between computers. Do we get rid of toys? There are so many things that we have no idea that we have to do, but this is a good wake up call.”
