Do you have a novel or screenplay in you that's just waiting for a little encouragement? Gale Courses to the rescue! This online learning resource, available through Toronto Public Library, offers a series of instructor-led online creative writing classes, for free. Classes are six weeks long, and are led by published authors. Topics include: Advanced […]
This fall, Toronto Public Library is getting excited about all things audio – especially podcasts. With over half a million podcasts in the world as of June 2018, it can be hard to know where to dive in – and any introductory guide is going to be flawed, limited and incomplete. With that in mind, I […]
Valerie has every book-lover's dream job: she coordinates the selection of print books for adults at Toronto Public Library. In other words, she's a nonstop reader who, with her team of selectors, investigates nearly every book that we order. So when we want to know what new books to get excited about, we know who […]
On July 31, 2018, Toronto Public Library became the first library in the world to lend over twenty million ebooks. "We've always said Toronto was a city of readers," says Maria Cipriano, the library's Senior Collections Specialist responsible for ebooks. "This proves it." In 2007, Toronto Public Library started its first digital collection. There […]
Photo by Janne Räkköläinen. Licensed under Creative Commons. At the library, we want you to have access to all the news, all the time, when and where you want it. That's why we provide online access to: PressReader – 7, 000+ international newspapers and magazines including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Washington […]
The bad news: we'll no longer have access to 350 online streaming Criterion videos after this Friday. (Please read this post for all the details we've got.) The good news: a) You'll still have access to 50 of the most popular Criterion films through our (seriously excellent) Kanopy streaming service. (Don't worry, we still have […]
It makes us as sad as it makes you to announce that the Criterion Collection will no longer offer video streaming services to libraries, starting June 29, 2018. We know how much you loved being able to watch their huge selection of cinema classics; but the vendor has chosen not to renew their license with […]
Author Tom Wolfe participates in the White House Salute to American Authors hosted by Laura Bush, Monday, March 22, 2004. White House Photo by Susan Sterner. Tom Wolfe, author of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", "The Right Stuff" and "Bonfire of the Vanities", has died, aged 87. Wolfe's 1973 anthology, "The New Journalism", defined an […]
Valerie has every book-lover's dream job: she coordinates the selection of print books for adults at Toronto Public Library. In other words, she's a nonstop reader who, with her team of selectors, investigates nearly every book that we order. So when we want to know what new books to get excited about, we know who […]
It's Freedom to Read Week! The last week of each February, libraries everywhere celebrate their defence of people's right to read whatever they want. And in honour of the occasion, we've gathered some quotes from books that have been challenged, at Toronto Public Library (TPL) and elsewhere. (A "challenge" is when a […]