Brampton Library

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Carnegie Building serving as the Brampton Public Library, 1909. Postcard from the Richard L. Frost collection.

Funded by the City, the Brampton Library is a system of public libraries in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.

As early as 1858, a library was founded in the Mechanic's Institute, serving the mere 50 people in what was then classified as Brampton. These 360 volumes, plus a federal grant of $160, were the starting blocks for the first actual public library in Brampton, founded in 1887 in the Golding Building on Queen Street. As printing presses were still relatively expensive to operate, and thus book prices high, the village-owned facility had full written contracts with patrons to check out books. Only the librarian and the library board were able to take books off the closely watched shelves.

In 1907, the library successfully received a grant from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to build a new library. Carnegie was a self-made millionaire with "very little formal education", and a well known drive to bring "learning to the masses". Records show donations to 1700 libraries, and the hundreds of facilities across the continent still bearing his name are living proof.

Despite being a supporter of culture in general, Carnegie was opposed to the multipurpose facility the village intended to build, as it exceeded his default start-up donation of $10,000. A meeting with the Brampton Board of Trade's R.J. Copeland, and a promise from Brampton itself to up its funding from $1000 to $1250 a year, Carnegie provided another $12,500 for the town's long-time showpiece facility.

In 1946, the Brampton library took on a relatively novel concept for the era, in letting residents under the age of 16 sign out books from the collection.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the system expanded to fit the needs of a growing population. The expansion included the Northwood Park Branch (Flowertown and McLaughlin), South Branch (at Brampton Mall on Main Street), and Heart Lake Branch. The Heart Lake branch would later become known as "Cyril Clark", after a Chinguacousy reeve.

Chinguacousy Branch, the cornerstone of Brampton's Library system.

In 1972, Bramalea Corporation created their Civic Centre facility. Along with corporations, this facility included a large space for a central library branch. When Brampton and Bramalea merged in 1974, their library systems became one. Bramalea's Chinguacousy Branch joined Brampton's Main Branch (which had replaced the Carnegie library with a larger building next door, and which was later renamed to "Four Corners Branch" due to its location near downtown Brampton's Four Corners) and others, becoming the system's resource library. As the reference branch, Chinguacousy is host to an extensive collection of microfilm, local history materials, and genealogy resources.

The Neighbourhood Branch was eventually created in a mall at Ray Lawson Blvd. and Hurontario St., and renamed the County Court Branch when it was moved to an office building nearby (later renamed again to Fletcher's Creek Branch). When the South Fletchers Sportsplex was built, Fletcher's Creek moved from private to public property, renaming itself the South Fletchers Branch.

In the 2003 Ontario Public Library Week (October 20 to 26), the library was rebranded with a new logo, and a change in name. The system changed from the Brampton Public Library to the simpler and more direct Brampton Library. The shorter name has had mixed reception, with many patrons still referring to it by its old name, out of habit and the lack of need to refer to it differently.

There are currently two interim sites, the Northeast and Northwest Interim Sites, located to relieve the pressure temporarily on the library system created by rapid residential development in the northeast and northwest of Brampton.

Recently the library added a service called Chapter-A-Day to its offerings. The service allows library patrons to receive a chapter from their favourite genre of book, each weekday.

Adele Kostiak is the Chief Executive Officer of the Brampton Library, a position that replaces that of Executive Director.