Toronto Public Library lends musical instruments

Apr 8, 2016 | News

Serge Halytsky

Books aren’t the only thing that you can get from the library now.

On April 7, Toronto Public Library (TPL), in association with Sun Life Financial, began offering library members the option to borrow musical instruments.

The Parkdale branch is the first location in Toronto offering instruments to the public.

The rules for borrowing musical instruments remain the same as for borrowing books. The loan period for an instrument is 3 weeks, and only two renewals are allowed, so in total TPL member can keep the instrument for 9 weeks.

“We might expand those services to more locations later,” Michelle Leung, TPL Communications Officer  told Humber News. “But for now Parkdale is the only location.”

Leung also said that TPL is looking for more instruments, and is encouraging the public to donate gently used musical instruments to the library.

“We got the idea to create musical Instrument library about a year and a half ago,” Gannon Loftus, Media and PR manager for Sun Life Financial told Humber News. “It is not only the first musical instrument library in Toronto, but the first in Canada.”

Sun Life Financial donated $155,000 to help TPL launch this program. They also donated first 100 portable musical instruments.

“And this is a national program,” Loftus said. “We are looking to extend it to other cities, but we didn’t decide to which ones we will go next yet.”

This initiative is helping to break down barriers by providing music lovers access to instruments, for which they may not otherwise have the means.