Annual Survey of Public Libraries

The Annual Survey of Public Libraries (ASPL) opened in January 2020 through the GO-Secure portal.  At that time, each library and every contracting municipality received an e-mail from the Ministry with the basic information for your submission and a link to the portal. The submission deadline has been extended to Saturday, August 15, 2020.  To assist you with the process, in the “Funding & Grants” section of the SOLS website, we have posted an overview of ASPL process and provided a copy of the holdings data information you will need to complete Section C of the ASPL.  We encourage you to complete the ASPL as soon as possible, but not completing it will not hold up payment of the PLOG/PE/FNSS funding.

Public Library Operating Grant

On June 17th, the Ministry staff distributed a customized e-mail to each library and contracting muncipality as a way of streamlining the application process for the Public Library Operating Grant, Pay Equity and First Nation Salary Supplement Grants.  Your PLOG/PE/FNSS application was attached to that e-mail along with instructions for uploading the application.  Once completed and validated, this application must be uploaded into Transfer Payment Ontario (TPON) by Wednesday, July 22, 2020.  Payments will be made quickly, with 53 libraries already in the payment stage.   As you complete your application, please consider these points:

  • In Section B of the application itself, you need to enter two different contacts (use the “Add” in the upper right to add the second contact).  One of the two people named must be given the ‘ROLE’ of ‘applicant’ from the drop-down choices.  Doing that will activate the ‘Primary applicant’ checkbox on the right.
  • When you go into TPON and locate your 2020 grant file (which has already been started by the Ministry staff), you need to UPLOAD the application at Step 2 of the process.  Do not try to ATTACH it in Step 3.  Step 3 of the process is only used for attaching items such as the Financial Audit (if you get more than $25,000 from the Ministry) or a library service contract (required for a contracting municipality).  This year, you do not need to attach a Certificate of Insurance or a Pay Equity Report (instead, within the application, you need to ‘attest’ that you have these items).