Janette Shipston Chan is pleased that her days as a stalker at the Toronto Reference Library are over.

Not so long ago, the Toronto author spent much of her workday trying to track down essential research material she had used the previous day.

“I would roam the floor to see if someone had it on the table,” said Shipston Chan.

Those book stalking days are over, now that she’s one of the first local writers to get on board with the new Writers’ Room program at the downtown library.

For a three-month period, writers get their own private space on the third floor. One of the best things for Shipston Chan is that she can hang onto reference books for a few days.

“This way, I don’t have to stalk the books,” she said. “This time, they’re stocked on my personal case.

“I don’t have to worry about them going missing. I build my little story world.”

Phyllis Jacklin, the library’s manager of collections, programs and services, spent some time studying the writers’ rooms at the New York Public Library.

“I visited the rooms to see how they set theirs up,” Jacklin said.

There are similar programs in Edmonton, Yellowknife, Dallas, Nashville and Seattle.

The program is available to writers with a library card who can show a need, including visiting writers.

Writers have access to a third-floor area with four work spaces, a lounge, work stations, power outlets and wireless Internet.

It’s open to published or unpublished writers who show a commitment to drawing from the library’s collections.

Early interest has come from people writing novels for adults and young adults, plays, a libretto for an opera and non-fiction works, Jacklin said.

“A lot of them seem to be history related,” she said.

Shipston Chan is writing a young adult novel that involves extensive historical research.

Her latest book is tentatively titled Learning to Walk and is in the hands of an agent. It’s about learning to walk with her 1-year-old after Shipston Chan had a brain cancer scare. She also wrote the children’s book, The Tiny Tiger.

Jacklin said two-thirds of the library’s collections aren’t in the stacks and includes old editions of books, old phone books and city directories.

The program also offers writers one-on-one training from a research expert.

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The writers’ room at the New York Public Library has been around since 1958. Works written there include The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro, judged to be one of the top 100 non-fiction books of the 20th century.

Jacklin said she’s excited to see the talent bubbling up from the tables and stacks of the downtown reference library.

“Writers have been coming here for a long time,” she said. “We just don’t know about it. Now we’re kind of discovering who they are and what they’re writing.”