Head Tale

A few years back, I did a post where I researched the closing times for various Canadian libraries on Christmas Eve day.

Of course Christmas Eve is not an “official” stat holiday but it’s still a day that many workplaces (not just libraries) recognize as a slow time and/or a good time to close early so that staff, who are often traveling to be with families or who simply want to maximize time with families on a special day, have their work-life balance recognized and respected.

Now that it’s Thanksgiving, I thought it might be interesting to do a similar survey to see how many Canadian libraries are moving towards a more “retail” approach to the service they offer by staying open on the stat holiday.

I figured I might as well start with the list of cities I used last time which is a mix of places by geography and population…

Barrie Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Brampton Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Brantford Public Library – Appears to be Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Burlington Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Calgary Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Edmonton Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Halifax Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
London Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Milton Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Ottawa Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Regina Public Library – Closed Sunday, Mixture of branches being open full, part or closed on Thanksgiving Monday (RPL is conducting a public survey on opening on the holiday Monday if you’re interested in sharing your opinion)
Richmond Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday (and interestingly, they appear to have reduced hours on the Tuesday after the closed day as well)
Saskatoon Public Library –  [I honestly couldn’t find their holiday open hours on their web site!]
Surrey Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Toronto Public Library – All Branches Closed Sunday and Monday
Victoria Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Whistler Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday
Whitby Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Windsor Public Library – Closed Sunday and Monday
Winnipeg Public Library – Open Sunday, Closed Monday

So my main takeaway is that RPL appears to be the only library in Canada experimenting with opening on a stat holiday (or at least this particular stat holiday.)

I was also a bit surprised that even bigger centres like Toronto close all ~99 or however many branches they have) especially since Toronto is Canada’s most diverse city so some might want to keep the library open for the many citizens who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Otherwise, the libraries I surveyed seem pretty evenly split between opening on Sunday and closing on Monday which eleven libraries on my list do or closing on both days which nine cities on my list do (which has also been RPL’s approach prior to this year’s experiment.)