ON MAY 1, protestors in more than 20 Ontario cities took to the streets for a general strike precipitated by the provincial government’s recent swath of budget cuts. Among the list of social, environmental, and educational services affected by those cuts are two organizations that support Ontario’s municipal library systems.
Both the regional Southern Ontario Library Service and the Ontario Library Service -North had their budgets axed by 50 per cent. It’s too early to pre-dict exactly what this means for the long-term sustainability of those or-ganizations, but their funding for interlibrary loans -a service that is essential in supplementing materials at the province’s smaller libraries -has already been eliminated.