The Jewish Public Library holds paramount its obligation to transmit Jewish values, knowledge, and cultural heritage.

The Jewish Public Library recognizes its responsibility to provide a full range of library services to meet the cultural, educational, informational and recreational needs of all segments of the Jewish community of Montreal. The Library is a public membership-based institution and considers that, ideally, every member of the Montreal Jewish community should be a member of the Jewish Public Library. Consequently, the Library will undertake all possible means to maintain and increase its membership.

The Library undertakes to provide, without bias, access to materials in print and non-print form, Archives, and any and all special collections that will provide the necessary sources of information and research.  The Jewish Public Library regards as imperative the preservation of materials to safeguard its collective and accumulated body of knowledge.

To this end the Library establishes programs to encourage the creative talents and guide the on-going intellectual growth of the individual.

PREMISES

1. Unlike municipal libraries, the Jewish Public Library serves a clientele that is widely scattered geographically;
2. The Jewish Public Library serves a community that is in every way pluralistic: income levels, ethnic origin, social behaviour, cultural affinities, and religious affiliation;
3. The Jewish Public Library serves a clientele of all ages in five languages: English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish and Russian;
4. The Jewish Public Library is responsive to social and technological changes in the community;
5. The community has established excellence in education as a priority in its long range planning.  In support of this goal the Jewish Public Library is an integral partner in that process;
6. The Jewish Public Library will continue to promote and nurture Jewish culture, literature and traditions to meet the needs of the community.

In recognition of the unique stature that the Yiddish language has earned throughout the Jewish Public Library’s history, the Library will continue to uphold Yiddish language and literature by collecting and preserving