Oakville Public Library is the public library

Public library

A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...

 system for the Town of Oakville

Oakville, Ontario

Oakville is a town in Halton Region, on Lake Ontario in Southern Ontario, Canada, and is part of the Greater Toronto Area. As of the 2006 census the population was 165,613.-History:In 1793, Dundas Street was surveyed for a military road...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

Through its 6 branches, its website and its various Book Nook and outreach locations, the Oakville Public Library provides a wide range of services for Oakville residents. In 2008 the Oakville Public Library (OPL) performed over 43.2 million service transactions. Over 79% of Oakville residents have a library card, one of the highest percentages of any library in Canada.

Branch Locations

• Central Branch, 120 Navy St.
• Glen Abbey Branch, 1415 Third Line
• Iroquois Ridge Branch, 1051 Glenashton Dr.
• White Oaks Branch, 1070 McCraney St. East
• Woodside Branch, 1274 Rebecca St.
• Clearview Neighbourhood Branch, 1148 Winston Churchill Blvd.

Brief history

In 1827, Oakville’s first library was established when William Tassie, the town’s first schoolmaster, opened a reading room in the meeting hall located on the site of the current central library. The first use of the name “Oakville Public Library” occurred in 1895. Between the 1860s and the 1960s, the library moved to four other locations in town, only to return to the Navy Street site in 1967 with the opening of the new Centennial complex housing the library and art gallery.