Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection most popular during Black History Month

And each February, during Black History Month, he said there's a marked increase in demand, perhaps due to media exposure or special Black History Month programming.

Toronto Public Library holds 16,000 items in the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection at its Malvern, Maria A. Shchuka, Parkdale and York Woods branches.

Each year during Black History Month some of the pieces of the collection are highlighted.

The focus this year is Black Canadians of Caribbean and African heritage.

"Because we have a specialized collection we get a lot of referrals from other branches," D'Costa said, adding the collection also gets a number of referrals from universities.

During Black History Month the library highlights some of its collection in a display in the libraries.

"Based on what we think customers would like, we have a mixture of fiction and non-fiction," he said. "The non-fiction titles focus more on specific people that had a prominent role to play in the black struggles and the struggles in establishing a black community in Canada."

The collection was started in the 1970s by its namesake, Rita Cox, former head librarian of the Parkdale branch. Cox explained it is called the Black and Caribbean collection because not all people from the Caribbean are black.

"They are of European background, they are of Indian background, Chinese, middle eastern, every part of the world," she said.

The region produces very important literature and considerable literary tradition which needs to be singled out and emphasized, Cox said when asked why she started the reserve.

"People know about this collection because for a while it was the only place that they could get books representing the Caribbean," Cox said.

The Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection falls under the multicultural services banner of the Toronto Public Library.

When the City of Toronto amalgamated there were three sites that had Black and Caribbean type material and the collection was renamed Black and Caribbean collection, explained Joan McCatty, Senior Services Specialist in Multicultural for the Toronto Public Library.

"Accessibility is a consideration in terms of ensuring that people, that the collection is targeted to have easy access," McCatty said.

In 2006 the collection was again renamed, this time in honour of Cox.

"Rita had contributed a lot to the library and the community," McCatty said. "Community groups got together and made the request to the library and it was thought, because of her contribution to the community, the library and the West Indian group as a whole it was seen as a good move for the Library."

In its entirety, the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection has items in various formats including print, CDs and videos.

"The children's materials are really very popular and they represent almost half of the usage of the collection," she said.

The Parkdale branch houses about 8,000 items, with adult materials representing more than half of this collection.

The other materials are distributed among the other branches with the size of the collection ranked in order of York Woods, Maria A Shchuka, and Malvern.

"We have been very responsive to change in demographics," McCatty said. "For example our collection that started in the east earlier on, we moved it in 2009 from Cedarbrae Library to Malvern, in response to the change in demographics... because a move of the Caribbean community."

Also during Black History Month, one Caribbean story is featured on the TPL Dial a Story service. Dial-A-Story allows children to listen to their favourite stories over the phone by calling 416-395-5400. The stories are available in 12 languages including English.

Rita Cox, a renowned storyteller herself, can be heard through this service. The feature story for Black History this month is Anansi's Riding Horse, A Jamaican Folktale as read by Cox.

For more information about special Black History Month program at libraries across the city visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/blackhistorymonth