To complete your return, we require a receipt or proof of purchase. Any returns or exchanges are also offered in-store at 215 Spadina Ave., Toronto.
In any case of a non-defective return, shipping costs will be covered in full by the customer. If you wish to return an item that is not defective, it must still be factory sealed and in its original condition. Secondary copies sent out will be opened and inspected before being re-shipped to guarantee a non defective replacement. It must also be in the original packaging. To be eligible for a return, your item must be unused and in the same condition that you received it. If 30 days have gone by since your purchase, unfortunately we can’t offer you a refund or exchange. “This is our bite out of the elephant.Our policy lasts 30 days. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” Searle said. It is a huge, ambitious project, but definitely worth the time. “One of the results of the audit would be to say, ‘we need more books that reflect fill-in-the-blank’,” Searle said. Once library staff have completed the audit, members may have to look at what to add to really reflect the local community. While the library is starting with one collection, Searle said they endeavour to audit every title that is part of the local system. Seuss books, as well Curious George, Babar the elephant and the Little House on the Prairie books. For example, Searle said they have looked at the Dr. There is a process in place when members of the public ask that a title be reconsidered. It’s simply the gathering of the photograph.” The diversity audit is not the tool to make those conclusions. “We’ve certainly discussed what we would do with the results, but we have not come to any conclusions. “We are just at the beginning of this project we have not drawn any conclusions yet,” she said. Staff is in the early stages of the audit and to date, there has been no talk about what to do with titles deemed deeply offensive. The point of the audit is not censorship, it is to learn how books reflect and mirror society – “to determine what we have in a particular collection according to the criteria we’ve set,” Searle said. Searle wants to be clear – at this point, titles will not be removed from the library’s collection.
That’s one of the reasons we read – to see a better version of yourself, or a grown-up version of yourself or to see a younger version of yourself.” It may not be 100 per cent, but there’s a connection you make with the book you’re reading. “One of the reasons I may enjoy a story is that I see myself in the main character,” Searle said. It is important for us to see ourselves in the books we read (or look at, in the case of the picture books). “Now the mirror part, as it were, is coming to the fore.” “You could read about different life experiences on your own and develop empathy through them,” Searle said. While books were previously considered to be “empathy engines,” intended to touch the heart, these days, Searle said there is a movement to have books mirror experience where patrons “can see themselves.” “One of the criteria will be books that reflect the Indigenous community and the Indigenous experience,” Searle said. In fact, it was one of the 94 calls to action recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in their final report. Searle said the audit is part of the library’s approach to reconciliation. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Once you see what you have, you can determine next steps.” “Once we have all of the scores, we go back and see if our collection reflects the demographics and other statistics that we use to develop a picture of our patrons,” Searle said. Searle said staff will also look at how females and males are represented, and they could also consider size diversity. Staff will consider how Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) are represented, as well as members of the LGBTQ2S+ community, differently abled people and neurodivergent individuals. We made some progress on that and then did some preliminary work with the particular collection,” Searle said. “The original process was to start gathering statistics to describe our population at the main branch.
There are more than 1,100 titles in the picture book collection and only one staff person dedicated to the task, so it will take time to complete. Staff launched the audit last year, but Searle admitted they are not very far along yet. Once complete, the library will produce a report that “reflects what the content of the material is, according to a scale we’ve developed in-house,” Mary Searle, co-ordinator of library collections, explained.