Library Collection

The Grande Prairie Public Library has over 120,000 items housed within its location at the Montrose Cultural Centre. We provide many different formats – books, magazines, newspapers, DVDs, CDs, microfilms, and electronic materials. Our collection development is guided by the principles of diversity, fairness and intellectual freedom.

Read more about the Canadian Library Association’s Statement on Intellectual Freedom.

Read more about our  collections and materials:

Books

Fiction

We have a variety of popular and award-winning as well as classical and local authors. Our fiction genres include Christian fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, romance, science fiction, western and more. Our World Literature section with classics from all around the world can be found right between our Fiction and International collection at the far end of our adult fiction area.

Nonfiction

Our nonfiction section will help you in your informational, recreational and educational needs and interests. The subjects and topics listed on the ends of shelves will guide you to the right place. Some of the most popular topics include cooking, language learning, business, parenting, automotive repair, health, self-help, sports, biographies, travel, and more.

Check out our New & Notable section with the latest published books and our thematic displays throughout the library.

Paperbacks

You can find our paperbacks right behind the New & Notable shelves. We have a variety of genres and titles to choose from – mystery, western, romance, science fiction or general fiction.

Leased Books

We strive to provide our patrons with the most recently published popular reads. In our leased books collection you will find some of the most popular and hottest bestsellers and new titles. For our patrons’ convenience, there are often several copies of each title.

The items from this collection can be borrowed and placed on hold only by Grande Prairie patrons. The loan period for these titles is two weeks.

Large Print

Large Print books are complete, unabridged books designed with large, clear easy-to-read font on non-glare paper. Look for this section to the right of the central stairway just before the nonfiction collection.

International collection

Your Library offers you books in languages other than English. The languages include (but are not limited to) German, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and Dutch . The collection includes a wide variety of classics, modern fiction, and popular nonfiction. Our International Collection can be found next to the World Literature collection at the far end of our adult fiction area.

Looking for French books to read? Our French collection includes approximately 2,000 titles. You will find it beside and behind our viewing and listening stations.

If the Library does not have books in the language you require, please let us know and we will try to obtain them for you.

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Audiobooks

Your Library offers a variety of audiobooks in all genres and by many popular authors. Look for them next to the Listening and Viewing booths under the bank of windows.

Books on CD

Don’t have time to sit back and relax with a book in your hand? Always on the go?
Check out our Books on CD section located in our audio-visual area beside the French Learning Resources Centre. You can listen in the car, at home, or on your portable audio device. Both abridged and full text versions are available.

DAISY books

Daisy books are books on CD that are recorded in a special standard (Digital Accessible Information System). They require a special DAISY book player. Daisy books and Daisy books players can be borrowed only by people who have difficulty reading print due to a visual, physical or learning disability.

Our DAISY book collection includes fiction and nonfiction titles. Fiction genres include mysteries, romances, adventures, westerns, family sagas and more. Nonfiction includes biographies, self-help, history, and more.

Patrons wishing to use this collection must advise our staff that they want to be Daisy book users.

Click here for more information.

eAudiobooks – OverDrive

eAudiobooks are books that have been read aloud and recorded. A popular format in many libraries, eAudiobooks allow library users to listen to materials on-the-go. eAudiobooks can be checked out from the Library or from a personal computer via the Library's website, 24/7. eAudiobooks can be downloaded or played on any desktop, laptop or portable device that supports Windows Media Player version 9 and above. Users can also transfer favourite titles to a wide range of portable devices, including portable music players, portable media centers and more.

Click here for more information

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Language Materials

Language Learning Materials

Your Library offers dictionaries, phrase books and language kits with CDs  that will help you to study a new language or  in your traveling needs. They can be found in our nonfiction section.

Tell Me More by Auralog

Tell Me More by Auralog is downloadable language learning software. It enables our Library to meet our community’s growing need to learn and master additional languages. The software features speech recognition, self-assessment, as well as cultural activities. You can now learn German, French, English (ESL), Dutch, Italian, or Spanish through our Library!

Click here for more information

French collection

Your Library boasts quite an extensive French book collection. You can find many genres  and popular French titles and authors . Our French books collection can be found behind the Internet stations beside our viewing and listening stations.

International collection

Your Library offers you books in languages other than English. Books in French and 28 other languages are available. The languages include (but are not limited to) German, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and Dutch . The collection includes a wide variety of classics, modern fiction, and popular nonfiction. If the Library does not have books in the language you require, please let us know and we will try to obtain them for you. Please call the Circulation Desk at 780-532-3580 for more details.

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Magazines & Newspapers

Our Library provides a wide range of magazines and newspapers both in print and online formats. Enjoy your favourite magazine in the comfort of our lounge area in front of the fireplace. Our Magazines & Newspapers section can be found right there.

Magazines

Some of our most popular magazine titles include Better Homes & Gardens, Alberta History, Travel, Men’s Health, Golf Digest, Maclean’s, Computer Shopper, Crafts’n Things, Parents, Time and many more!

Need to find a particular article in a certain magazine? Thinking about going to the archives? We just might have what you need! Check out our electronic magazines and journals collections:

For students and researchers:

Academic Search Elite
gives you an access to scholarly journals covering every area of academic study.

For teachers and parents:

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
Provides access to education-related documents and journals.

For Canadian content:

Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly (CPIQ)
Covers a broad range of Canadian magazines, biographies and other reference sources.

Canadian Reference Centre
Includes leading Canadian and international magazines, newspapers, reference books.

For everyone:

General Reference Center Gold
Contains magazines, reference books and newspapers with information on current events, pop culture, the arts, sciences and sports.

MasterFILE Premier
Is a great source for general reference, business, consumer health, general science and multicultural magazines.

Regional Business News
Has comprehensive coverage of regional U.S. journals, newspapers and newswires.

Newspapers

Our Library subscribes to all major local and provincial newspapers like Grande Prairie Herald-Tribune, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun, National Post and many others.

Looking for a Canadian newspaper and can’t find it on our shelves? Check out our online resources.

Canadian Newsstand
It provides access to major Canadian newspapers including Alberta dailies and weeklies.

Interested in the local news from the past? We have quite a few ways to help you browse our archival holdings of the Daily Herald-Tribune . Our microfilm collection goes back to 1913. This collection can be found in the Isabel Campbell room on the library’s main floor. Ask our reference staff for assistance with our microfilm readers.

We also offer the electronic versions of the Daily Herald-Tribune through Sun Media Corporation Library Archives. Here you will find complete editions of our local paper electronically archived back to Nov. 1, 1999. (This resource is available from the library only.)

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Movies

We offer over 3000 titles in DVD format. In our collection you can find both documentaries and movies. Choose from a variety of classic and popular movies, drama, children’s films and more.

Our documentaries include titles on home repair, gardening, history, dance, travel, sports and fitness, health and self-help.

We continuously expand our foreign movies collection. All the foreign movies are with English subtitles and can be equally enjoyed by native language speakers and by those who want to learn more about other cultures through the world of cinematography.

You will find our movies in the audio-visual section past the Internet stations.

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Music

Our Music CD collection is constantly growing. You can choose from different genres -- classical, instrumental, orchestral, popular, rock, country, jazz and more. Our music section is easy to find – in the audio-visual section past the Internet stations.

You can watch a movie or listen to music or to a book on CD right in the library! We have two listening and two viewing stations that are for your convenience right beside our audio-visual collection. Headphones must be worn while using these stations.

More music is available with your library card from the comfort of your own home!

Check out our electronic music libraries:

Alexander Street's Classical Music Library is a fully searchable classical music resource containing a comprehensive collection of distinguished classical recordings. It includes tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to over the Internet.

Alexander Street's Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries® is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions. The collection includes an extraordinary array of more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds.

Alexander Street's African American Music covers jazz, blues, gospel, and other forms of African American musical expression.

Alexander Street's American Song is a history collection that contains 50,000 songs that users listen to over the Internet. Hear and feel the music from our past. Much more than a repository of well known classics like Yankee Doodle and The Star Spangled Banner, this new resource includes music that relates to almost every walk of American life, every ethnic group, and every time period. You'll find songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. There are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and anti-war protests. Hymns, funny songs, college songs, sea shanties, shape note songs, and about topics as diverse as New York and electricity.

Alexander Street's Contemporary World Music delivers the sounds of all regions from every continent, for scholarship and pure enjoyment, online through speakers or headsets. Search, click, and listen to 50,000 tracks of reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres. There is also traditional music -- Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.

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Reference collection

Our reference collection is there to assist you with your information needs. You can find it located behind our nonfiction section. As the titles in this collection are consulted by our patrons very often, this collection is for in-library use only.

Whatever you are searching – family law, government documents, building codes, encyclopedias of geophysics, world literature or anatomy, atlases or maps, these titles are always there for you.

Don’t have time to run to the Library to find some important information? Thinking about using Google, but not sure if you can trust the websites found?

Don’t worry -- your library card will open the door to the most authoritative and trustworthy information. Our electronic encyclopedias, dictionaries and other tools are there for you 24/7!

World Book Online offers more than 26,000 articles as well as more than 12,000 pictures and maps, and 7,000 links to editor-approved websites useful in helping students constructively explore topics further.

World Book Online Kids is an online award-winning Student Discovery Encyclopedia for young learners.

Oxford English Dictionary is the most authoritative and comprehensive dictionary of English.

Oxford Reference Online brings language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource.

Britannica Online Library Edition is a complete research tool that includes encyclopedia, atlas, world data, the classics, biographies, news, multimedia, and more.

Credo Reference is a resource for checking facts, browsing topics, and finding definitions from authoritative encyclopedias and dictionaries from the world's leading publishers.

Check out our other useful and authoritative online tools.

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Special Collections

Our Library houses some special collections that assist our patrons in their specific needs.

Large Print

Large Print books are complete, unabridged books designed with large, clear easy-to-read font on non-glare paper.

Look for this section in DAISY books and magazines.

Daisy books are books on CD that are recorded in a special standard (Digital Accessible Information System). They require a special DAISY book player. Daisy books and Daisy books players can be borrowed only by people who have difficulty reading print due to a visual, physical or learning disability.

Our Daisy book collection includes fiction and nonfiction titles. Fiction genres include mysteries, romances, adventures, westerns, family sagas and more. The Nonfiction section has biographies, self-help, history, etc.

For those who want to stay on top of the events we subscribe to DAISY magazines. Some of the titles include Canadian Geographic, Chatelaine, Good Times, Macleans, Reader’s Digest, What’s New.

Patrons wishing to use this collection must advise our staff that they want to be Daisy book users.

Visunet

The Grande Prairie Public Library is a member of the Visunet Canada Partners Program of CNIB (Canadian National Institute for Blind). This program provides local library access to Canada's largest collection of DAISY books and online resources for people with print disabilities.

As a Visunet partner our library can request any title from the CNIB catalogue and bring it in for our patron.

Visunet also provides registered borrowers with on-line access to the CNIB Digital Library (http://visunet.cnib.ca or http://webcluster.cnib.ca), which includes selected information databases, digital audio books, e-magazines, electronic Braille books, web sites, and newspapers. Borrowers may access these resources at our library or from home.

Registration is required for this service. Please, ask our staff or call 780-357-7455.

Local History and Genealogy

If you are interested in history of Grande Prairie, surrounding areas and our province, you will be pleased with our local history collection. It is named the Hauge Collection after one of the early benefactors of the library – Martin Hauge. These books are housed in the Isabel Campbell Room on the main floor. Most of our local history books can be taken out, but the ones that are marked RHA are for the in-library use only.

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