The growth in the number of users at the Calgary Public Library over the past year has outstripped even the explosive rate of newcomers coming to Calgary, and that is putting pressure on the organization.

Last year, the library saw 130,000 new library members, increasing the total membership to 818,000. With that many people using the library, demand from the public for library locations to be open for longer hours has been rising.

Due to one-time funding from Calgary city council, the library was able to pilot extended hours on Sundays in 2024.

Making that a permanent change would require permanent funding, said Sarah Meilleur, CEO of the Calgary Public Library.

“We would really like to see and to respond to community needs and have more hours. We’re unable to do that without additional funding. These have been ongoing conversations we’ve been having with administration and council that I know they will consider when it comes to budget time in November,” Meilleur said.

She said that while there wasn’t a specific dollar ask currently, the service request later this year would include both inflationary increases that have come with increased demand, supporting the library collections, and funding for extended hours.

“I’m focused on providing great services that we have now to this growing community that has more demand. So that is a real focus, particularly around supporting collections,” Meilleur said.

Regardless of any budgetary issues, Meilleur said that library memberships would always remain free for Calgarians.

“The foundation of public libraries is free and open access. That is incredibly important, and it is a fundamental principle in order to support everyone belonging at the library, which is our promise to community,” she said.

Extended hours supported by councillors

Ward 5 Councillor Raj Dhaliwal said that he believes there always has to be a value proposition when it comes to budget asks from civic partners, and the social impact from increased library hours meets that.

“If the pilot was successful, then the data should tell us the story that it was successful. What that value proposition is, it’s the social return on investment, which is the well-being of the people bonding, coming together,” Dhaliwal said.

“So, if that’s the case, then we need to approve that kind of funding and support those extended hours.”

He said that the Saddletowne Library, located in Ward 5, was the best-performing library in the city, per capita, but that had meant it had also become overcrowded.

“We need more funding to support these libraries. We just had a prototype open up in Skyview Ranch last year, which is great, amazing, but that doesn’t even have books there. So people want to get books, and secondly, extended hours,” Dhaliwal said.

“We want to see more extended hours, because we’re getting lots of influx in, at least in my world, of new immigrants, international students. And guess what? They use libraries to study and all that. So, I’m fully supportive of that.”

He said that the City of Calgary’s recent customer survey showed that demand from the public.

“These are the things where Calgarians are expecting us to invest more to improve the quality of life for them. Obviously.”

Ward 7 Councillor Terry Wong said while there is a need to expand the physical hours, there were other considerations for increasing library use.

“We also need to move into more of that digital, virtual world of published items. I think that’s that’s where I’d like to look in the ’27 to 2030 budget—how do we could get into that digital library world, as opposed to the physical one,” he said.

City Council passed a motion on May 27, which would support a resolution at the 2025 Alberta Municipalities Conference to ask the province to increase the per capita funding rate for libraries in Alberta from $5.60 per person to $6.94.