Local membership on the rebound at CSL's Eleanor London Public Library

BY MARTIN C. BARRY

A three-year plan to boost local resident membership by several thousand at the Eleanor London Côte St. Luc Public Library has reached the half-way mark well ahead of schedule.

Reporting on the increase to city council last week, Councillor Steven Erdelyi said membership at the library now stands at a total of 12,584 members. Ninety-three per cent — 11,753 members — are Côte St. Luc residents. "We're up by over 2,600 members in only a year," said Erdelyi, who chairs the library committee on council. "That's an increase of 26 per cent and I'm happy to say we're on track.

According to Erdelyi, originally the target set by the library's director, Tanya Abramovitch, was to increase membership by about 5,000. "We're about halfway there, so I'm happy about that," he added.

Erdelyi said the goal still remains to bring the library's total membership up to 15,000. He acknowledged that Côte St. Luc is trying to correct an imbalance in the membership roll, which took hold when its public library became part of the City of Montreal's municipal library system. During that time, membership reached as high as 30,000. "During the merger years, the library was quite full and some residents complained, you know, that it took longer to get books," he said. "From my point of view, I guess I feel like the library was a bit strained. I mean, obviously they were still able to do an excellent job, but not to everyone's satisfaction. But obviously now it's much easier. Now we're below capacity, so we still have a bit more room to take in quite a few new members."

Although Côte St. Luc came to agreements with the demerged municipalities of Hampstead and Montreal West to provide library services to some of their residents, Erdelyi said attempts to have similar arrangements with the Borough of Côte des Neiges-NDG failed in the end. "Because of that, of course, non-residents from that borough and the rest of the island have to pay the non-resident fee, which is relatively high," he said. "But, of course, it's at the same time roughly equivalent to what an average Côte St. Lucer is paying for the library in their taxes." The non-resident fee is $100 for senior citizens and students, and $175 for others.

Mayor Anthony Housefather said Côte St. Luc had made it a priority following demerger to bring local membership at its public library back to pre-merger levels. "One of the goals for us was that Côte St. Lucers would want to join the library that we prize so much," he said. "We're getting there and we're also increasing the number of books and the number of videos being turned around."