January 23rd, 2025

BookStop brings a little of the library to city’s northside


By Lethbridge Herald on January 22, 2025.

Lethbridge Public Library CEO Terra Plato and Jennie Sudo, partnership strategist with Recreation and Culture at the City of Lethbridge, have helped to bring a pop-up library to the Labor Club Ice Centre. Herald photo by Ian Martens

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The Lethbridge Public Library has partnered up with the City of Lethbridge to create a temporary pop-up library to serve residents on the northside of the city as a pilot project to potentially expand their services to what they found to be an underserved community. 

The pop-up library referred to as the BookStop is located inside the Labor Club Ice Centre and will operate from now until mid-April. 

Terra Plato, CEO of the Lethbridge Public Library says the BookStop is meant to be an easy to access location to get library books, to browse the library collections and you can also get holds picked up there. 

“The reason that we’re doing this is that we’re exploring ways that we can expand access to the community. As the community grows, we want to ensure that we’re providing library services close to where people live and work,” says Plato. 

She says this is a pilot project to test out how else they can provide services in the community in a way that makes it easier for residents to access library resources. 

“Currently we are focusing on the northside because the northside was identified in the Libraries Facilities Master plan as an underserved area in the city,” says Plato.

She says because of that, their priority is to see how they can better serve northside residents and they may consider trying out other locations later on, but for now they are focusing on the northside. 

“This is meant to be a self-service, limited-service library branch. It’s a small space that has library collections, which means you can come in and check out a book on your library card. You can also pick up a hold here and you can search the library collections,” says Plato. 

She says it is important for people to understand that unlike Little Free Libraries, which they are also involved with, the books that are part of the BookStop belong to the library and have to be checked out with a library card. 

“Library cards are super easy to get. You can get them online, you can phone the library, or you can obviously drop by a library branch or the bookmobile and pick up your library card there,” says Plato. 

When talking about the location, Plato explains that the Lethbridge Public Library partnered with the City of Lethbridge Recreation and Culture as they wanted to find a location that residents were already visiting.

“We really wanted to explore co-location opportunities because our goal is to provide access, so we started speaking with City Rec and Culture and we found this great opportunity to partner in one of their facilities, ” says Plato. 

She says they hope to catch people that are already attending the facility, but also bring more people to the facility as well through the BookStop. 

With Literacy Day coming up, Plato says it is important to them to provide access to library resources to residents on the northside, as they were identified as underserved through their extensive community needs assessment. 

“The northside does have lower literacy rates than other parts of the city and we know that public libraries are an important community resource to help get children ready for school, help maintain literacy rates,” says Plato.

She adds that they also know that people access services that are close and convenient to them and therefore, ideally, they want to see public library services accessible in all parts of the city. 

“You may know there used to be a northside branch in the 50s. So we want to try out and see if there’s a need for it, if people are accessing it and if they find value in it,” says Plato.

Jennie Sudo, partnership strategist with Recreation and Culture at the City of Lethbridge says the City is thrilled to be partnering up with the Lethbridge Public Library to offer services in one of their facilities. 

“What a great way to introduce the book services to the patrons of the Labor Club Ice Arena and local residents,” says Sudo.

She explains that the space now being used for the BookStop was previously used as a cashier station, and the City of Lethbridge was able to find some revenue streams to be able to provide free public programming at the Labor Club while the BookStop is there.

“Public programming would be anything like a free public skate or family skate. Previously we would have to pay admission fees for those but they’re all free at the Labor Club centre now,” says Sudo.

– with files from Ian Martens

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