Challenge
Solution
Result
Watercolor sunsets, fluttering sailboats and hulking ships, and a festive yet relaxed atmosphere are the broad strokes of St. Catharines, the largest city in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada. Look a little closer and it’s easy to see why residents and vacationers luxuriate in this sparkling locale, famous for its seafaring ways blended with the best amenities of current times. With its instantly recognizable, octagonal, teal-capped white lighthouse, the city abuts Lake Ontario with northward views of Toronto across the water.
Photo credit: City of St. Catharines Economic Development & Tourism Services
Whether by auto, air, boat, or train, it’s easy to travel to St. Catharines for a brief sojourn or for a lifetime. Those who build their lives in this city of approximately 144,000 people know the particular enjoyments that come from living in an area steeped in history yet constantly embracing the future. While only a half-hour drive from Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, affectionately known as the Garden City, offers plentiful attractions and rewards of its own, making it a must-see on the agenda.
St. Catharines includes three distinct beaches: Lakeside Park Beach, Sunset Beach, and Jones Beach, offering all of the water pastimes one could want from a day at the beach. Windsurfing, swimming, volleyball, boating, kayaking, rowing, and fishing abound, as does cycling, skating, and walking the abundant green spaces speckled with public art. Happy Rolph’s Animal Farm is a stone’s throw away, delighting all ages with its farm animals and enormous playground, along with fields, ponds, and abundant rhododendrons making a perfect backdrop for picnics and photographs.
Keeping things moving is the Lakeside Park Carousel, relocated from New York to St. Catharines in 1921. Designed by late-19th century foremost master builder Charles I. D. Looff, creator of hand-carved carousels, roller coasters, and Ferris wheels, the Lakeside Park Carousel features sixty-eight gorgeously restored wooden animals always ready for a twirl.
Photo credit: The Tourism Partnership of Niagara
Whether seeking a leisurely stroll on the Port Dalhousie Pier or a day hiking the Bruce Trail, St. Catharines has the bases covered, and a night out includes cultural powerhouse venues including the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre and the Meridian Centre. Wine enthusiasts will find an array of flavors in this world-renowned Niagara wine country, including its award-winning icewines. The annual Niagara Grape & Wine Festival in St. Catharines’ Montebello Park bursts with tailgate parties, brunch battles, and two parades.
After working up an appetite exploring the area and doing some local boutique shopping, St. Catharines is full of mouth-watering dining, from burritos to egg rolls, tapas to tikki chaat, antipasti to pierogies, schnitzels to seafood paella, and creamy gelato, vegan doughnuts, and baklava for dessert, to name a few.
The community also has a big appetite for access, as St. Catharines Public Library knows and supports very well. This forward-thinking library system, with four locations throughout the city, found the perfect solution to meet huge demand for its collection and services in a tiny branch. Already using Bibliotheca security gates, selfChecks, and RFID, the library sought a way to ensure access to a most unique building, their Port Dalhousie Branch.
St. Catharines Port Dalhousie Branch opening 1961
“Port Dalhousie was its own village in our area for a very long time,” says Grace Howes, Communications Specialist for St. Catharines Public Library. “In 1961, the Village of Port Dalhousie was incorporated as part of St. Catharines, and the former townhall building was converted into the Port Dalhousie Branch.”
“When we talk about this branch, we just call it Port,” Howes explains. “We don’t say the Port Dalhousie Branch, and our community has also come to know it just as Port. The building is very old and has been a lot of different things to the community over the decades. We’ve had it for some time now and, at 1,205 square feet, it’s quite cozy and the community is in love with it.”
Indeed, the structure and façade of the building has been carefully preserved and maintained over the years, and its aesthetic charm is indicative of the neighborhood as a whole. The building may be small, but its collection of books and multimedia is mighty, and the library even managed to incorporate a children’s area in the limited space.
“One of the challenges we had with Port was, because it’s so small, we couldn’t dedicate a lot of staff to it, space-wise, so we had fewer days when the branch was open,” Howes shares. “If it was open for four days, that meant that three days of the week it was closed and sitting unused. The community didn’t like that and we didn’t like that, not only because this is a very beloved branch, but also because it’s in an extremely high tourist zone, since it’s right on the water and there are lots of fun shops and restaurants and things to do.”
Beyond the space constraints of the building itself, the library did not have the budget to add significantly more staffed open hours to the Port Dalhousie Branch, but the community clamored for significantly more access.
“We put out a survey to the community,” Howes says, “asking questions such as, ‘How do you feel about our service hours? What would you like us to do?’ And the response from the community was: ‘We want more access, more time in the library, more opportunities to browse.’ Some responded with, ‘I want 24-hour access to the library, like some university libraries have.’”
Upon considering the survey results, library administration determined that open+ was “…a great solution to create an extended access service without having to break the bank.”
The library cleverly calls it “Port Plus,” and the extended access it provides means that the hours of the Port Dalhousie Branch now effectively align with the hours of the other St. Catharines branches. If anyone at the Port Dalhousie Branch during its unstaffed hours has questions, they can use a Help Phone to be connected with staff at another branch, to assist them in real time. The library describes “Port Plus” at the Port Dalhousie Branch in the following manner:
This location is also home to our extended hours model titled Port Plus. Port Plus allows registered Members to use their library card to access to the collections, public computers, WiFi and space in the Port Dalhousie Branch during hours staff aren’t on site. You can sign up to become a registered member of Port Plus in person at an SCPL Branch during regular service hours.
St. Catharines Staff and Board Members at Port Plus Open House
Howes says that in the very early stages of implementing Port Plus, staff voiced concerns about whether the technology would threaten their jobs. “It’s the same as what was heard in libraries when self-checkouts became a thing” Howes says, “but our management team was on top of it, they anticipated that these were going to be some of the questions, and they were able to squash the fear right away.”
Not only was reducing staff hours never on the table, after utilization of Port Plus began, the library actually added two staffed hours per week to the Port Dalhousie Branch, to achieve a balanced rotation of days with staff present.
Library staff quickly acclimated to Port Plus and now, it’s simply part of the daily fabric. “They’ve integrated it so naturally into their roles,” Howes smiles. “The sense is, ‘This is just part of the library; of course we have Port Plus extended hours, that’s just how we do it here now.’ Overall, it was a really smooth process into launching, and ever since, it’s been a very natural part of our operations.”
St. Catharines former Board Member, Les McDonald, signing up for Port Plus
In order to use Port Plus, the library requires a visit to a branch in person to learn how it works, along with the signing of an agreement of use, which “…keeps people accountable and I’m sure a lot of other libraries who use extended access have similar checks and balances in place.”
Initially, some community members didn’t understand the extended access model, but library staff held an open house at the Port Dalhousie Branch, with extra staff on hand to explain how to use Port Plus and demonstrate using it step-by-step. Howes says that, during the open house, they stationed a staff member at the Port Plus keypad to directly help people overcome any technological barriers or fears, and they found great success with this technique. “It was a win-win for the community and for staff. Customers have really picked up their usage at the location as a result of Port Plus.”
Holly Jones, Manager of Programming and Promotions for St. Catharines Public Library
St. Catharines Public Library launched Port Plus in early 2023, and in its first year of use, the gate count increased by 42%. Before that, Howes says, “it was quite a sleepy branch. People used it, but not to the same degree as our other locations, but circulation went up by 20% in that first year. A poll that we did with the community showed that the majority of customers using Port Plus were there to pick up holds or just browse the collection and see what was on the shelves. That is the bread and butter of the library, right? We love our Library of Things, we love using the library as a study space, and using internet, and so on. But picking up our books and finding something new to read is where we started and where we are still going strong.”
To enhance and expedite customer autonomy during visits, whether during staffed or unstaffed hours, the library added a selfCheck machine to the Port Dalhousie Branch. “This is a branch that went from basically no independent technology to all of the independent technology,” Howes shares. “We knew we’d have to train the community on using the library independently, but so far, it’s been extremely smooth—shockingly smooth, considering. The community has been a part of every change in the library.”
Ken Su, CEO of St. Catharines Public Library, being interviewed by CHCH TV about the launch of Port Plus
Library staff had the same positive experience when learning to use open+. When they installed it, a Bibliotheca technician taught their team how to use the system, and then“…the library IT team created a series of very easy to follow videos for our staff, and I think that’s a testament to how effortless the system is for customers and for staff to use, because training was very simple, very quick for us, and staff took to it right away.”
One day per week, the Port Dalhousie Branch is fully closed and unstaffed, but those with Port Plus memberships can, and do, use the branch that day. In fact, a Montessori school group uses Port Plus to access the Port Dalhousie Branch on that closed weekday. “They go in and use the kids area to do group reading, and to teach and explore and play,” says Howes. “That only became accessible to them because of the extended access Port Plus system, whereas before, the library would be lights off and no entry. It’s a good way to create a quiet, public space, even when we can’t have staff there. It ended up being the perfect time to bring in a very small school group to do some reading and find some books for the classroom.”
Howes says that St. Catharines Public Library recently rebranded itself and that the rebranding was “…truly inspired by the city of St. Catharines; it’s small but has four square kilometers of green space, which is a lot, given its size. So, it’s nicknamed the Garden City and we pulled a great deal of inspiration from that into our work and into the nature of the library. We redid our tagline, too; it’s now: Ideas in Bloom. We’re constantly trying to inspire community growth and community improvement, to make it a bright, enjoyable place to live.”
Dovetailing with the Garden City nickname and the library’s own tagline of Ideas in Bloom, the St. Catharines Public Library current strategic plan is titled, “A Community in Bloom.” Part of the plan’s first goal states that the library is intent on “…finding new ways to show our customers how we can be part of their day, and making it even more convenient for them to visit…”
Unquestionably, St. Catharines Public Library has achieved this marker. “Creating Port Plus was a strategic goal for us: creating better access and being a library for all,” Howes says. “And now, we feel we are able to do that even better, because we have more access and we’re open longer, essentially.”
Howes challenges other libraries to be fearless in their pursuit of community access. “I would say: don’t be scared of the technology. Libraries are by nature historic institutions because we’ve been around forever, but we’re constantly evolving. Get ahead of the questions, because buy-in is key. You want your staff to be advocates for open+. You want your customers to look to your staff for information on the front lines, and to make them confident and excited about it. I think open+ is a good mission: creating more access to libraries. It’s a great way for us to show our community that we’re available and that they can just swing by and find entertainment, knowledge, and experiences.”
Spread the Word
You may also Like
Insights & Trends
Experience Bibliotheca at IFLA 2025: New Technology, Global Connections
Inside ALA 2025: Technology, Access, and the Fight for Intellectual Freedom
