Toronto Public Library provides broadly accessible opportunities for learning beyond formal education, throughout all stages and phases of a person's life, in all subjects from business and technology, to history, science, literacy and art. User-education classes continue to be very popular and we have expanded access to technology training through partnerships, addressing the needs learners including children in the middle years, older adults, job seekers and students. Digital literacy skills are in high demand and the library has implemented both online and in-person learning tools for self-directed learning and skills development. We offer easy access to the world's knowledge through our collections in spaces across the city.
Key Achievements:
- We established key partnerships to support employment with agencies such as ACCES Employment Centre Engineering Connections, Chartered Professional Accountants, Employment Ontario, the Rotman School of Management and Toronto Employment & Social Services. Working with our partners, we offered business programs and seminars in branches.
- The Book a Librarian program offered one-on-one reference support to job seekers, students and researchers of all ages.
- The Entrepreneur in Residence program brought a business leader into the library to deliver programs on a range of small business topics, and to meet one-on-one with entrepreneurs for professional advice.
- Toronto Business Development Centre worked with the library to offer Business Inc., an eight-week business program for entrepreneurs.
- The library's Digital Innovation Hub at the Toronto Reference Library partnered with The Hand Eye Society to host Game Curious? , an exploration of the untapped art of video games. Each week, guests tried out a series of games, followed by an informal discussion around the game mechanics and creation process.
- Curators at Toronto Reference Library's TD Gallery brought to life amazing exhibits all year long, allowing visitors to relive Toronto's music scene from the 1960s, view interpretations of the Arctic, examine the city's relationship with the waterfront and experience of the Great War through the voices of four Toronto families.
- In concert with the Four Families exhibition, Toronto Public Library participated in The World Remembers, a global commemoration of the more than nine million who lost their lives in WWI, displaying their names around the world - in schools, on the Internet and on public buildings. Toronto Public Library was one of many locations in Toronto that projected names of those killed in 1914 - from dusk until dawn, 292,000 names were projected on the screen inside the entrance Cube of the Toronto Reference Library over the course of about 20 days.
- Toronto Star donated a century of photos to the library - a photo archive that is believed to be the only complete archive of Canadian news photographs spanning the entire 20th century. This donation gives Toronto residents access to a century of their city's photographic history, as well as a chronicle of world events from a Canadian perspective.