Province of Manitoba » Culture, Heritage & Tourism » Heritage & Libraries » Public Library Services » Public Library Services Branch

Through the Public Libraries Act, the role of Public Library Services Branch is to ensure that all Manitobans have access to public library services. The branch fulfills this role by administering departmental policy and provincial legislation,providing consultative support and training to libraries and boards, technical services to public libraries and circulation services from a central library.

Contact Information

Public Library Services
200 - 1525 First Street South
Brandon, Manitoba
R7A 7A1

Phone: (204) 726-6590
Email: pls@gov.mb.ca

Administration Section

The Administration Section of the branch is responsible for the verification of documents submitted by public libraries and the calculation and conveyance of provincial establishment and operating grants paid to public libraries and library associations.

Development Services

Development Services provides educational support to rural and northern public libraries. Continuing education is provided to rural public library staff and trustees through orientations, workshops, a training conference and educational publications.

Development Services staff also provide information and support to libraries in their delivery of cultural and literary programs at the local level.

The Public Library Services Newsletter is published five times a year.

Staff assist communities in establishing libraries.

Technical Services

Technical Services ensures access to library materials through cataloguing and resource sharing support for rural and northern public libraries.

The Cataloguing program provides a centralized cataloguing service to the regional and municipal public libraries, maintains the central catalogue to facilitate resource sharing and catalogues the central PLS collection.

Technical Services is also concerned with the development and maintenance of MAPLIN.

Circulation Services

Circulation Services provides collection support from the central PLS library.

The Inter-Library Loan program forms the basis of the regional public library resource sharing network that locates and facilitates the exchange of library materials between rural Manitoba and other provincial or national sources.

Special Collections support to regional and municipal public libraries include:

• Literacy materials
• Talking books for visually challenged
• Audio/visual
• Large print books
• Multi-lingual books

Extension Library Services are provided to rural and northern Manitobans without access to an established public library with Travelling Libraries to communities and with books by mail to individuals in the Open-Shelf program.

Public Library Services maintains a central library of 100,000 books and audio/visual materials to provide support to rural and northern libraries.

Manitoba Union Catalogue

The central catalogue holds the records of all regional and municipal public libraries in the province as well as the central provincial library.

Public libraries use the Manitoba Union Catalogue to provide service to clients by:

• requesting items in the Public Library Services collection
• locating materials in other rural libraries
• sharing resources

Access to the Manitoba Union Catalogue also provides regional and northern libraries with cataloguing bibliographic information that eliminates the need to purchase expensive cataloguing services.

Public libraries access the Manitoba Union Catalogue via the Web Gateway, or using a Z39.50 client:

Z39.50 settings:

• Domain: pls.chc.gov.mb.ca
• Port: 210
• Database name: MAIN*BIBMAST