Community Articles (listed by posting date)
General News · 10th February 2026
Beatrix - VIRL
Ferry closure! Winter Reading Club! It’s the perfect time to get cozy in your cabin and curl up with a tall stack of books.
How the ferry closure will impact us
Good news, it shouldn’t create too much disruption for the Cortes branch. Lane 8 will continue to bring books back and forth for us. Delivery days will be Tuesday and Thursday (instead of Wednesday and Friday), weather and tide dependent. Keep ordering in the books you want to read, and we’ll get them to you as soon as we can.
Adult Winter Reading Club
Adult readers! For every book you’ve read throughout January and February, you can make an entry into our prize draw. A lucky reader will take home a $40 gift certificate to Marnie’s Books. Send ci1virl.bc.ca a review of a favourite (or least favourite) book or audiobook you’ve read lately, and we’ll enter you in the draw!
Read Indigenous Authors
Cortes Women’s Resource Centre is running a Winter Reading Challenge – read a book by an Indigenous Author. VIRL has an extensive collection of books and media by Indigenous writers and thinkers, and we pulled some of our faves into a special display just for the challenge. Richard Van Camp! Louise Erdrich! Tommy Orange! Who will you be reading? Could be a good time to start a book club—we have great book sets by Indigenous authors, like The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
New Account Portal on website
A brand-new Account Portal has been added to VIRL’s upgraded catalogue to replace the My Bookshelf view. Our vendor and IT team are still working out some issues which will hopefully, mostly, be worked out in the next week or so. Change can be hard! Come by the library or give us a call if you have any questions about how to use this new feature.
Keep a lookout!
We’re on the hunt for games! If you find a chess set, dominoes, checkers, etc. in good shape and you’d like to donate it to the Cortes branch, we’d love to have some more games kicking around to encourage longer library hangouts.
Did you know?
• VIRL doesn’t charge late fees anymore! If you have an overdue book and you see a replacement fee charged to your account, just bring the book back as soon as you can. After it’s checked in, the charge will disappear!
• The Creativity Commons at our Nanaimo Harbourfront branch converts VHS tapes into digital files! Bring 2 VHS tapes and a memory stick in a ziplock bag to the Cortes branch and we can send them off to Nanaimo for conversion. It usually takes about 2 weeks to a month. 1 VHS tape holds about 1GB of memory, so for 2 tapes, you need to bring a 2-3GB memory stick.
Don’t forget, your library card gives you access to:
• Libby – an audiobook, eBook, and eMagazine app for your mobile device
• Kanopy – a video streaming service that you can use to watch shows on your tv or computer
• Creativebug – a huge collection of craft classes and tutorials
--
Come hang out! The Cortes branch is on the bottom floor of the Linnaea Farm Ed Building (1255 Seaford Rd)
Open: Tues, Friday, Sat: 10 am – 2:30 pm Wed-Thurs: 2:30 pm – 7 pm
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, statutory holidays, and occasionally due to weather/power outages.
ci1virl.bc.ca 250-935-6566
How the ferry closure will impact us
Good news, it shouldn’t create too much disruption for the Cortes branch. Lane 8 will continue to bring books back and forth for us. Delivery days will be Tuesday and Thursday (instead of Wednesday and Friday), weather and tide dependent. Keep ordering in the books you want to read, and we’ll get them to you as soon as we can.
Adult Winter Reading Club
Adult readers! For every book you’ve read throughout January and February, you can make an entry into our prize draw. A lucky reader will take home a $40 gift certificate to Marnie’s Books. Send ci1virl.bc.ca a review of a favourite (or least favourite) book or audiobook you’ve read lately, and we’ll enter you in the draw!
Read Indigenous Authors
Cortes Women’s Resource Centre is running a Winter Reading Challenge – read a book by an Indigenous Author. VIRL has an extensive collection of books and media by Indigenous writers and thinkers, and we pulled some of our faves into a special display just for the challenge. Richard Van Camp! Louise Erdrich! Tommy Orange! Who will you be reading? Could be a good time to start a book club—we have great book sets by Indigenous authors, like The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
New Account Portal on website
A brand-new Account Portal has been added to VIRL’s upgraded catalogue to replace the My Bookshelf view. Our vendor and IT team are still working out some issues which will hopefully, mostly, be worked out in the next week or so. Change can be hard! Come by the library or give us a call if you have any questions about how to use this new feature.
Keep a lookout!
We’re on the hunt for games! If you find a chess set, dominoes, checkers, etc. in good shape and you’d like to donate it to the Cortes branch, we’d love to have some more games kicking around to encourage longer library hangouts.
Did you know?
• VIRL doesn’t charge late fees anymore! If you have an overdue book and you see a replacement fee charged to your account, just bring the book back as soon as you can. After it’s checked in, the charge will disappear!
• The Creativity Commons at our Nanaimo Harbourfront branch converts VHS tapes into digital files! Bring 2 VHS tapes and a memory stick in a ziplock bag to the Cortes branch and we can send them off to Nanaimo for conversion. It usually takes about 2 weeks to a month. 1 VHS tape holds about 1GB of memory, so for 2 tapes, you need to bring a 2-3GB memory stick.
Don’t forget, your library card gives you access to:
• Libby – an audiobook, eBook, and eMagazine app for your mobile device
• Kanopy – a video streaming service that you can use to watch shows on your tv or computer
• Creativebug – a huge collection of craft classes and tutorials
--
Come hang out! The Cortes branch is on the bottom floor of the Linnaea Farm Ed Building (1255 Seaford Rd)
Open: Tues, Friday, Sat: 10 am – 2:30 pm Wed-Thurs: 2:30 pm – 7 pm
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, statutory holidays, and occasionally due to weather/power outages.
ci1virl.bc.ca 250-935-6566