Citizen Participation in Library Decision-Making: The Toronto Experience by John Marshall (1984)

Citizen Participation in Library Decision-Making: The Toronto Experience edited by John Marshall. Metuchen, New Jersey: School of Library Service, Dalhousie University in association with the Scarecrow Press, 1984. p. 392., illus. and maps.

John Marshall, n.d.

In the early 1970s, reform-minded politicians began to dominate the old city of Toronto council. Strong mayors, such as David Crombie (1972-78) and John Sewell (1978-80), as well as new city councilors were concerned with the direction of urban development, expanded social services, and transparency in politics. They believed community initiatives and citizen action trumped centralization and bureaucratic management. In the previous decade, the Toronto Public Library (TPL) had committed to a long-range plan of building larger regional libraries to better serve the growing population. However, there was a legacy of many older, smaller branches extending back to the Carnegie era and the administration of George Locke that had been neglected during this phase of planning. With the influx of immigrants after 1950, Toronto had become a more diverse city with many different neighborhoods that identified with the idea of ​​‘community.’ Progressive municipal politicians were interested in expanding citizen participation in government; thus, a number of reformist citizens were appointed as library trustees in the first half of the 1970s.

The idea of ​​citizen surveys, public consultation, or ‘friends groups’ working in concert with library boards and library personnel was limited, not new. Yet, the style of political action leaned more  to responsiveness with local community advisory groups. With the ongoing construction of a Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library scheduled to open in 1977, TPL’s trustees could forego district branch construction and focus on refurbishing local branches and services. During the next five-year planning cycle, there were major renovations to older branches such as Earlscourt, Dovercourt, Yorkville, Gerrard, Wychwood, and Eastern, and new branches such as Spadina Road, a timely partnership with the Native Canadian Centre. As well, the library’s focus turned to purchasing more Canadian books, decentralizing authority within the TPL pyramidal management structure, equalizing services across the city population, and offering better services to ethnic groups. TPL had a good reputation for Canadiana and George Locke had emphasized Canadian writers, but renewed nationalist sentiment in the 1970s demanded more attention to these resources.

John Maitland Marshall, a professor at the University of Toronto library school, noted this reform trend and edited a series of essays by contributors who had participated in this remarkable period which lasted for a brief decade. One might argue that urban reformers had more impact on library services than on other major city services, such as policing and housing. The essays demonstrate the concept of urban reform in relation to library services had many aspects and was by no means a uniform political perspective. Services attuned to local public viewpoints was not a new idea, but library planners now would significantly enlarge the scope of ‘stakeholders,’ a term which quickly gained currency after 1980. John Marshall began his career as a public librarian in 1952 and he retired in 1983 after contributing many insightful library publications. His biography is available at the Ex Libris Association .

My book review on Citizen Participation which follows was first published in Canadian Public Administration 28(3) September 1985, pp 497–499.

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Public participation in the delivery of library services in Ontario has evolved in a variety of ways since the late nineteenth century. The concept that citizens participate to some extent with elected municipal officials and administrators in decision-making or program implementation has become firmly entrenched. Initially, the main thrust was political. A tax-supported free library was established by local referendum and its board of management was appointed by school trustees and municipal councillors. In theory the library trustees were broadly representative of their community, and the power vested in the board itself was politically significant: it controlled all aspects of policy-making, planning, raising funds, budgeting, personnel management, and so on.

This participatory model served the library community for a few decades before 1914. It satisfied the general liberal democratic consensus that municipal government was an educational process, the radical position that demanded participation as a right, and the conservative preference for non-elective offices by which prominent persons could exercise some social control. With the advent of scientific management and the growth of the library profession, political/administrative functions were shared to a greater degree. During this period, the model of citizen participation was reshaped and internalized. In larger urban centers “Friends of the Library” support groups were mobilized with some success after the beginning of the Depression. In rural villages and townships, where it was not feasible to establish public libraries, voluntary organizations such as women's institutes were encouraged to incorporate as Association Libraries to provide limited services as a substitute for municipal leadership.

When local government reforms commenced in the 1960s, important changes challenged traditional library governance. Local special purpose bodies were believed to fragment effective planning by municipal councils. Trustees, especially those appointed by greatly enlarged school boards, were held to be unaccountable to the local electorate. In larger regional governments the inherent community-based representative nature of boards was dismissed. In this environment genuine non-elective contributions to the political process became a low priority. Incorporating citizens in government planning by using technical needs assessments or performance evaluations was more prevalent. Feedback, not decision-making, was the rationale for citizen involvement.

Viewed in this context John Marshall’s Citizen Participation in Library Decision-Making is an essential anthology documenting the unprecedented transformation that occurred in the Toronto Public Library between 1974 and 1981. Fifteen contributors, who were either directly involved or close observers, recount their experiences in detail and give various opinions about the value of citizen participation. The editor does a fine job of unifying these disparate views by adding six chapters that explain events and analyse trends. Generally, Marshall and his contributors found participation a worthwhile activity with significant consequences for libraries.

The introductory chapters by James T. Lemon and Michael Goldrick acquaint the reader with the political context of the urban reform movement at Toronto City Hall and the neighbourhood citizen power groups that came into prominence in the early 1970s. As Marshall points out, at this stage the library board and administration were ill-prepared to accommodate any reformers — one participant, Alderman Dorothy Thomas, described the board as “dominated by north Toronto professionals.” But by 1975 reform-minded trustees were in a majority, and dramatic change was under way.

James Lorimer and others describe the entire affair as a turnaround. Over a period of five years TPL was transformed from a closed to an open system, from a hierarchical to a reasonably decentralized structure. Citizen interest in newly formed committees and public input at meetings reordered library priorities at both the system and neighbourhood levels. The library’s administrative practice was reorganized and a staff union created. The concept of district libraries was abandoned; in its place renovated or newly constructed community branches appeared. Inequalities in service were identified and long-range plans set in motion to equalize resources. Library collection policies were reassessed to place greater emphasis on multilingual, Canadian and popular (as opposed to quality) items. By the end of this period, citizens’ advisory committees became a standard feature at TPL.

Throughout this process management was in a state of flux. So too were old-guard trustees and “Friends” groups that supported the traditional political/administrative structure which had evolved. Lorimer concludes that library managers and trustees need to reassess their basic rationale for providing service — that is, they must involve the public to relate collection policies and services to enlarge the community base. Meyer Brownstone stated that TPL's trials and tribulations show that one advantage of an appointed library board is its flexibility vis-à-vis “the more rigid, political, bureaucratic character of the municipal government with its general centralizing tendencies and its pseudo participation.”

Marshall agrees with their analyzes and suggests one way to encourage more responsiveness in libraries is to foster the concept of active advisory committees. Another proposal is to promote administrative commitment to include staff and public in planning and evaluation of services, a parallel structure of decentralized decision-making at the neighborhood (community) and branch (system) levels. Naturally, the major institutional hurdle is to set in place this scheme and keep it operating, Marshall advises the employment of area-based library community organizers to coordinate this activity.

There are a few lessons to be drawn from the Toronto experience. A decade ago, a comprehensive survey by Jane Robbins, Citizen Participation and Public Library Policy, found that participation was the exception rather than the rule. Since 1975 library administrators and trustees in larger urban centers have gradually moved toward involving the community in more significant ways by using committees, meetings or needs assessments. However, the Toronto experience remains unique for the degree of change introduced in institutional goals and objectives, organization, staffing and interface with the public. The drawbacks of participation — the costs in terms of expected money, energy, staff time and so on — are not examined by Marshall at length. In rural libraries where the heritage of voluntarism lives on and the theory of trustee representativeness remains plausible, there is some skepticism about the necessity to adopt participatory methods. What is clear today is that the traditional trustee/administrator monopoly in policy and management is in transition. New forms of citizen participation, use of marketing approaches, and program evaluation techniques offer hope for more responsive and accessible public libraries.

Lome Bruce, McLaughlin Library, University of Guelph