Even if you know TPL really well, we bet you’ll learn something new here.
- There were over 18 MILLION visits to library branches last year. That’s more than the Air Canada Centre, CN Tower, AGO and the ROM combined.
- 2,000,000 Torontonians use the library – that’s nearly 70% of us!
- Toronto Public Library is the busiest public library system in the world. Busier than New York, Chicago or Los Angeles public libraries.
- The Library’s annual circulation is 32,000,000. That means that almost 90,000 items are borrowed every day!
- In 2019, TPL received 49 million branch + virtual visits.
- 1 in 5 Torontonians visit a library branch at least once a week.
- TPL runs 42,000 programs every year.
- The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Toronto Reference Library is one of the foremost ACD collections in the world.
- The Osborne Collection of Early Childhood Literature has 80,000 rare and modern children’s books, including a cuneiform tablet from 2,000 B.C. and manuscript of Aesop’s Fables from the 14th century.
- Library users get on average $500 worth of services every year.
- The library is a great investment. For every $1.00 spent, the value returned is $5.63. And TPL contributes $1 billion every year to Toronto’s economy.
- TPL has over 300,000 books for people with print disabilities.
- The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy has over 72,000 items.
- The Toronto Star Photo Archive at Toronto Reference Library has 1,000,000 photos of our city’s and country’s past.
- The Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre houses one of the world’s authoritative collections of Canadiana.
- With a Toronto Library card, you can borrow materials from just about any library in the world – delivered to your local branch.
- Books, magazines, DVDs, newspapers and e-collections are available in 40 different languages,
- 58% of Torontonians use a library computer or access the library’s wireless network.
- Many of the 100 branches are historical architectural treasures – like the 10 Carnegie buildings, or have been designed by world-class architects.
- Torontonians love the library! 95% of library users are satisfied or very satisfied with the library.