Like other library services across the province, the Windsor Public Library has suspended its inter-library loan service.
The announcement comes after the Ford government announced it was cutting the budget of the Ontario Southern Library Service in half. The service facilitates loans between library services allowing library cardholders access to any book at any branch across the province.
Windsor Public Library CEO Kitty Pope said now that the service is suspended, library members will see their options severely curtailed.
"Right now, if you have a Windsor Public Library card, you have access to every single book at every single library in Ontario. With this cut, Windsorites will have access to 398,000 books. That's it," she said.
The library loans out or borrows 8,000 books on average every year.
Pope said the service is suspended at least until the end of May, while the Southern Ontario Library Service figures out how to handle the budget cut. She admitted the future of the service hangs in the balance.
"Being able to provide access to all the other collections in Ontario has been a real boon to our users and has been a pride of the library systems in Ontario that we could co-operate and share all of our resources without infringing on anybody's rights or access," said Pope. "The possibility that this is lost is a really sad day for co-operation."