Although the buildings of the library’s six branches and the Archives are closed to the public, library staff are still working hard to bring you information, ideas and entertainment online.

For children and their families, Joanna has been presenting a daily storytime at 10:30 am from Tuesday to Saturday, livestreamed on Facebook.com/peclibrary. We have been delighted with the response and enjoy that families are tuning in from home. The video typically features a story followed by an activity that you can try from home with supplies you probably have on hand.

Additionally, our tech team is working on a series called “Ask a Techie” livestreams, answering your questions and talking about the library’s online resources that you can access.

The first video shared featured Michele talking about how you can access ebooks and audiobooks from the library through Overdrive. If you would like to try any of the library’s electronic resources including Overdrive, but don’t have a library card or can’t find your PIN, call us at (613) 476-5962 and we can sign you up over the phone.

Hoopla is another online service that you can access using your library card number and PIN, and we have doubled the number of items you can borrow from Hoopla each month to keep you reading and viewing! You can now access 10 items per month. Start at peclibrary.org.

If you don’t have an internet connection at home, WIFI will still be available from outside the buildings.

You can bring your device and sit on the benches outside, practicing social distancing from each other, and connect to the WIFI.

We are considering starting an online book discussion group, so if you are interested in that please let us know by phone, Facebook message or email liz@peclibrary.org.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for how we can continue to serve you online please let us know.

We could also arrange a conference call book club if that would be of interest to anyone. If you have library books at home please feel free to keep them until further notice.

We never charge late fees and we will be happy to have them returned in the future.

If you had made any requests for books we would like to reassure you that they will still be waiting when we reopen and we will do our best to ensure you get them.

We have temporarily disabled the ability to place requests to ensure that our systems are not overwhelmed, but keep a list and be sure to ask us when we are back in service.

At the library, we miss seeing you in person but we are thinking creatively to continue to serve you until we can welcome you back.

-Liz Zylstra