The CEO's Corner - Spring 2025

It is finally feeling like the spring weather is here to stay! With the change of seasons, we’re reflecting on an exciting start to the year at BPL.

Just in the past few months, we’ve crowned the 2025 bookmark contest winners, closed out the fourth annual Burlington Lyrics and Poetry Festival, and hosted a fierce competition at Battle of the Books. We also had to quickly adapt our service at Aldershot Branch due to water damage—thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding.

Another spring highlight was welcoming CBC Radio’s IDEAS to Central Branch for a live recording of their new Ideas for a Better Canada series with host Nahlah Ayed, BPL, the Samara Centre for Democracy, and special guest Ira Wells. It was an exciting opportunity to put BPL and intellectual freedom on a national stage.

Libraries and Your Freedom to Read

Freedom to read has always been a big topic at the library, and the CBC IDEAS event emphasized that. Freedom to read—or intellectual freedom—is all about protecting your right to access information without restriction or censorship.

In our increasingly polarized society, the Library has an especially important responsibility to uphold intellectual freedom. The Library acts as a connector—bringing together people and ideas. This is such an important role because having access to information and experiences that are different from our own allows us to learn, grow, and empathize with different perspectives.

Part of our duty as a Library is to protect intellectual freedom so people from all walks of life can access and learn from a breadth of resources and experiences. I encourage you to listen to BPL’s podcast episode of IDEAS for a Better Canada to learn more about this concept. In a society where it is all too easy to let a social media algorithm decide what you do and don’t see, we want to ensure the Library continues to be a place that sparks curiosity, discovery, and compassion—even when it pushes us outside our comfort zone.

Learning from Each Other

One way we introduce the community to new ideas and experiences is through our programs. Earlier this year, we welcomed 40 people for a walk and talk with neighbours who are living rough or struggling to find and keep stable housing. This meaningful event, presented with Community Development Halton’s Learning From Lived Experience project, was an important opportunity to think differently about a topic we hear about regularly in the media. It invited participants to stretch outside their comfort zone and learn from peoples’ very different experiences. This type of connection and engagement helps us grow and evolve as a community.

Sharing Ideas and Spaces

As spring and summer approach, we’ll begin to see more visitors to the Library. We recognize that intellectual freedom isn’t always easy—you may encounter programs, ideas, book displays, and information that you don’t agree with while visiting the Library. This is part of intellectual freedom. Everyone has a right to choose what to engage with as well as a responsibility to allow others the same freedom. That’s the beauty of the public library.

I hope I’ll see you in our branches this summer. And I hope you’ll join me in embracing the value of intellectual freedom and the joy of new and different experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about intellectual freedom, check out the resources below.

Happy reading!