When Hallmark Met Librarianship – And the Winner is…

December 23, 2025

To start the 2025 holiday season, Librarianship.ca launched a contest to offer Canadian library and information specialists an opportunity to explore both their creative and romantic sides.

In a nutshell:

We asked you to create the plot of a Christmas romance movie that features an information professional (it could have been a librarian, an information management consultant, a freshly minted MLIS grad, an archivist, a library technician, an iSchool professor, a data governance specialist, an FOIP analyst, a vendor, an AI prompt engineer or whoever) and/or an information setting.

You didn’t have to write the entire screenplay but give us:

• A title
• An outline plot summary

In total we received 15 entries from members of the library and information management community.

All the entries were sent to our jury to read and select a winner based on entertainment value.

Congratulations to Reece Steinberg for their winning entry: The Algorithm of Affection!

The Algorithm of Affection

Jackson, a meticulously organized Business Librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University, finds his world of market research reports upended when the campus heating system fails two weeks before Christmas. Forced to temporarily relocate his office, he lands in a room adjacent to the office of Professor Nick St. Nicholas: a charmingly disorganized, perpetually late, but brilliant Digital Humanities Professor. Nick is attempting to digitize a massive, centuries-old collection of handwritten Santa letters for a groundbreaking project on “Epistolary Holiday Hopes.”

Jackson, whose life revolves around efficiency and quiet, is constantly exasperated by Nick’s chaos: rogue wires, overflowing mugs, and the constant sound of him trying to coax his vintage scanner back to life. Nick, meanwhile, is fascinated by Jackson’s laser focus and the joy he takes in a perfectly researched business plan. When Nick accidentally deletes the only backup of Jackson’s annual report data (due to a power surge caused by his faulty string of holiday lights), Jackson is furious.

To make amends, Nick offers to use his digital forensics skills to recover the files, but only if Jackson helps him catalogue and organize his mountain of physical Santa letters: a task he needs done before the university’s massive annual holiday gala. As they work late nights surrounded by dusty documents and the glow of mismatched Christmas decorations, Jackson starts to see past the digital disaster to Nick’s genuine, childlike holiday spirit, and Nick realizes Jackson’s meticulousness is just a cover for a fear of slowing down and enjoying life. A crisis at the gala (involving a poorly-prompted AI chatbot impersonating the President) forces them to combine Jackson’s business savvy with Nick’s tech wizardry to save both their careers and the Christmas spirit. They share a perfectly-lit kiss under a sprig of mislabeled mistletoe, realizing that sometimes, the most important data is found not in a spreadsheet, but in the heart.

Reece will receive a $50 gift certificate to Indigo or to an independent Canadian bookseller.

Thanks to our jury members:

• Chantale Boileau, Barrie Public Library
• Melanie Sucha, Brandon University
• Ashleigh Yates-MacKay, Government of Canada

Thanks also to everyone who entered the contest:

• Kallista Briden
• Cate Carlyle
• Caitlin Crowe
• Rahul Joseph
• Amy Kay
• Barbara Kaye
• Jen Lisso
• Vanessa Ngan
• Ellen Norlander
• Katie Oke
• Helen Power
• Wendy Ricciardi
• Drea (Andréa) Schnell
• Stacey Shackel
• Reece Steinberg

Enjoy reading their creative contributions to LibraryLit!

Entry #1: The Reading List or, Love in the Stacks

Paige Bennett is a 30-something woman living in the big city. She’s stressed out from her job, and she lives in a tiny shoebox apartment because she can’t afford a more expensive place, and her dating life is a mess. She has all but given up on love. When her great aunt, a legendary romance author dies, she bequeaths her country home to Paige. This is the out Paige has been looking for and she immediately makes the move. When she arrives, she learns that there is one condition to her inheritance – she must make her way through 100 beloved books, her aunts favourite romance novels of all time, but some of them aren’t easy to come by! Her great aunt wanted more than anything to restore Paige’s belief in love and find it for herself. Although Paige could not be less in the mood, she makes her way to the local 3 staff library. The librarian who must help her find and locate these 100 books? A grumpy guy named Reid Darcy, who turns up his nose at romance books and has a strong dislike for people from the city, hates noise and believes libraries should be a quiet Over the course of the next few months, Paige’s heart starts to thaw to the idea of falling in love, and Reid’s heart starts to thaw at the idea of Paige. On a mission to convince her he is not the curmudgeon he once was he begins to bring passion and enthusiasm back to the library… first its storytime, then it’s a program to help seniors with their phones… and what once started as a way to win Paige over has turned into winning over the whole town. He might even just apply for that new library grant to add on a children’s section! Love, life and books in a small country town.

— Caitlin Crowe

Entry #2: Lawless Love

Meet Lucy, a law librarian at a courthouse library, staring out the window on a cold November day. Lucy’s had a tough year. Her boyfriend of 5 years dumped her on her birthday. While she contemplates the future, sitting at the reference desk, in walks newly called lawyer Ben. Ben is stressed because he’s been tasked with researching a complex legal issue and doesn’t know where to start. Lucy uses her expertise to pull together resources for Ben. Over the next few weeks Ben comes to the library with increasingly obscure questions. Although suspicious, Lucy pulls resources and leaves encouraging sticky notes on them. They grow closer with each visit and eventually Ben asks Lucy out. The date? A special midnight tour through their local special collections library, which is decked out with Christmas decorations. Ben admits he made up those obscure questions just so he could have an excuse to keep seeing Lucy and just when Lucy thinks they’re about to kiss, Ben runs away. Lucy doesn’t see Ben for weeks and is heartbroken again. We learn Ben struggles with commitment as his former fiancée cheated on him. It’s now Christmas eve and Ben is at his work desk and glances over to see Lucy’s little notes. He realizes he’s made a mistake and rushes to the library, catching Lucy just as she’s leaving for the day. He apologizes and explains his terrible behavior. Lucy forgives him and they kiss as the snow begins to fall.

— Ellen Norlander

Entry #3: Shelved for the Holidays

When overworked public librarian Holly McAllister is tasked with saving her small-town library’s annual “Storytime with Santa,” she expects the usual holiday chaos: glitter in the keyboards, toddlers eating craft supplies, and a printer jam that somehow smells like gingerbread. What she doesn’t expect is the sudden return of Evan Clarke, a charming but exasperating former library page who left town years ago to become a big-city information governance consultant.

The town’s historic community hall, where Santa Storytime has been held for 60 years, is set to close unless the library can prove it’s still essential. With a blizzard looming and only a week to pull everything together, Holly and Evan team up to digitize the community’s holiday archives and create a magical, interactive “History of Christmas in the County” showcase, complete with twinkling lights, old photographs, and letters pulled from dusty boxes.

As they sift through decades of forgotten treasures, sparks fly among the stacks. Holly discovers Evan isn’t the cocky teenager she remembers; Evan discovers Holly’s commitment to community is exactly the kind of purpose he’s been missing.

On Christmas Eve, with the library glowing, children singing, and snow falling just so, Evan must decide whether he’s ready to check out a new chapter, one that begins with Holly and the cozy little library that brought them together. Surrounded by the warmth of the season, they realize that their beloved library truly has a magic all its own, connecting hearts and creating memories that last a lifetime.

— Amy Kay

Entry #4: A Very Bookish Christmas

Approaching forty, part-time writer and full-time librarian at Pine Hills Public Library, Maggie Balsam is content to spend her days assisting locals with their next reads, catching Ginger the sneaky library cat before she knocks more baubles off the Christmas tree and wandering the beach behind her house in search of sea glass and her next romance novel idea. Maggie’s secret multi-million-dollar family trust means she never has to work again, but the library is her safe place and Ginger her only family.

As Christmas Eve approaches, the glistening snow and twinkling light displays (winner of best lights three years running for Frost County!) shine on a new arrival in Pine Hills. Sergeant Mark Von Trapp, a dedicated Mountie with movie star good looks and chocolate eyes, is in town temporarily to look into a long forgotten cold case. Better on a horse than behind a keyboard, Sergeant Mark visits the library looking for research expertise and patience to utilize the dusty old micro-fiche. Little do Maggie and Mark know how their lives will change when their eyes meet over the circ desk that snowy magical day.

As Maggie and Mark connect over ancient headlines, sepia photographs and Ginger’s playful antics, Maggie must decide whether to open her heart to the magic happening with the strapping Mountie or stay tucked among the shelves in her carefully catalogued library. Is this Maggie’s own love story or just a passing fancy that will ride away with her heart?

— Cate Carlyle

Entry #5: Can’t be helped”

A businessman seeks tech training for a new software that his company is implementing in the new year. The librarian receives the tech request. Could it really be THE Johnathan Roth, their high school sweetheart who moved away on a scholarship to Oxford? It is. And it turns out he doesn’t need the help, he just wants an excuse to finally see his lost love and hopefully rekindle their relationship. Could the Christmas spirt help fate to finally be on their side?

After bashful banter and witty exchanges, their tech help appointment comes to an end. They decide to go for festive drinks together where there happens to be a tarot reader offering free readings. Three cards down. The Lovers, The Wheel of Fortune and The Star. Are they dizzy from the wine or did the winds of fate reorient them toward a path of destiny? Looking longingly into each others’ eyes, one of them happens to glace up at the mistletoe. With a little chuckle and a suggestive eyebrow raise, they lean a little closer and take the next step toward a holiday romance they’ll never forget.

— Jen Lisso

Entry #6: Emberneath the Mistletoe

From the high peaks of the Doomfang Mountains, a curious dragon named Ember becomes fascinated by strange creatures called ‘humans’ and even more so, their mysterious custom of “Christmas”. Deciding to observe this strange holiday for himself, he takes on a human form and begins visiting the nearby kingdom of Aria.

Meanwhile, cranky librarian Snowelle Tinsel struggles to enjoy the upcoming holiday preparations after losing her family in a dragon attack when she was a child. When an awkward, handsome young man stumbles into the town library hoping to find out if “carnivores are able to drink eggnog” she’s initially suspicious. But as they gradually spend more time together, decorating the library, making gingerbread and sharing Ember’s first mug of hot chocolate, Snowelle begins to appreciate Ember’s earnestness and gentle personality. After putting up the mistletoe in the library, their eyes meet – and they realize there may be something more between them than mere embers.

Ember’s identity is discovered when he accidentally sneezes fire during a Storytime session. Betrayed, Snowelle rejects him in tears, and Ember flees, heartbroken — however, the town is hit with a terrible snowstorm that freezes them over, stranding her and several patrons at the library. Worried about Snowelle, Ember returns to use his fire to help melt the ice, and the two help the patrons return home. Returning to the library, the two reconcile their feelings, and share a kiss under the mistletoe.

— Vanessa Ngan

Entry #7: The 2028 Christmas Cat-a-logue

“Just sayin’,” went on Ādisōke’s Special Collections Librarian Renée Chartrand, “we loan practically everything now: museum passes, musical instruments, even people! Why not cats?”

“Absolutely!” agreed Mavis Thompson. “We’re all craving real-life experiences. Smartphones have their place, but they’re turning us into social cripples!”

By summer, Ādisōke had converted their solarium into a cat café. They called it Coal’s Harbour, after Parliament Hill’s last cat colony member, who died in 2025. They hired charismatic local portrait artist Griffin Cardinal to photograph the cats for their website, while Renée provided descriptive cataloguing.

Renée and Griff were constantly bouncing ideas off each other, often over coffee or lunch. Soon they were a couple.

By September, Coal’s Harbour was thriving. Cats were fostered or adopted; others took their place.

As the holidays approached, Mavis lamented how she missed the old Sears and Eaton’s Wish Books.

“Let’s put together a cat catalogue this year,” Griffin suggested. “It’ll get my work out there, and Christmas is a popular time for adopting cats.”

People came out in droves to Coal’s Harbour’s first Christmas party. They communed with the cats and placed their orders.

As the Peace Tower clock struck midnight on January 1, 2029, Renée and Griffin got engaged. They would move into their new home in Pimisi Village next month.

“I’d like to start a family right away,” remarked Renée, leafing through their catalogue. “And the best part is, I won’t have to endure morning sickness or labour pains!”

— Barbara Kaye

Entry #8: All the Way Home I’ll be Warm

There is nothing like a fresh snowfall during the holiday season! Everything is glistening white; trees laced with snow, icicles dangling off the sides of the building like gleaming crystals when that hopeful ray of sunshine hits them. Day six of non-stop snow, my humming of Let it Snow has stopped; I’m not having it anymore! The weather outside IS frightful, the fire IS so delightful, and I CAN’T go anywhere! The roads are closed, and I am stuck at work – the library, where every day is an adventure. Hi, I’m Jules, Manager at the Honeybrook Public Library.

Ping, the ploughs were finally on their way and I could go home. Not 2 minutes after reading that email, I hear the rumbling of, what I didn’t know at the time, was my knight in shining armour, more like with shining armour! I hear the machine come to a stop, and in through the door comes the most attractive man I have ever seen. The first thing I notice is his piercing green eyes and a smile through scruffy stubble on a perfectly chiseled jawline, then the smell of pizza. He already knows he is my hero. “Hi” he says, “I’m Landon, here to save the day,” as he places the pizza on the counter. Before I could say a word (I actually had to push my mouth closed), he opened the box. “Help yourself,” he said.” “To you?” I thought. Yes please!

— Wendy Ricciardi

Entry #9: The Algorithm of Affection

Jackson, a meticulously organized Business Librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University, finds his world of market research reports upended when the campus heating system fails two weeks before Christmas. Forced to temporarily relocate his office, he lands in a room adjacent to the office of Professor Nick St. Nicholas: a charmingly disorganized, perpetually late, but brilliant Digital Humanities Professor. Nick is attempting to digitize a massive, centuries-old collection of handwritten Santa letters for a groundbreaking project on “Epistolary Holiday Hopes.”

Jackson, whose life revolves around efficiency and quiet, is constantly exasperated by Nick’s chaos: rogue wires, overflowing mugs, and the constant sound of him trying to coax his vintage scanner back to life. Nick, meanwhile, is fascinated by Jackson’s laser focus and the joy he takes in a perfectly researched business plan. When Nick accidentally deletes the only backup of Jackson’s annual report data (due to a power surge caused by his faulty string of holiday lights), Jackson is furious.

To make amends, Nick offers to use his digital forensics skills to recover the files, but only if Jackson helps him catalogue and organize his mountain of physical Santa letters: a task he needs done before the university’s massive annual holiday gala. As they work late nights surrounded by dusty documents and the glow of mismatched Christmas decorations, Jackson starts to see past the digital disaster to Nick’s genuine, childlike holiday spirit, and Nick realizes Jackson’s meticulousness is just a cover for a fear of slowing down and enjoying life. A crisis at the gala (involving a poorly-prompted AI chatbot impersonating the President) forces them to combine Jackson’s business savvy with Nick’s tech wizardry to save both their careers and the Christmas spirit. They share a perfectly-lit kiss under a sprig of mislabeled mistletoe, realizing that sometimes, the most important data is found not in a spreadsheet, but in the heart.

— Reece Steinberg

Entry #10: Snowglobe Wishes

After a painful heartbreak two winters ago, forty-something librarian Mabel has learned to move through the holidays with quiet grace. Each morning, she slips into her favourite cardigan, lights the library’s twinkling lights, and loses herself in stories where love always wins. Still, the approaching Christmas season feels lonelier than she lets on.

One snowy evening, with flakes swirling like a shaken snowglobe, Mabel’s car gets a flat on a deserted road. Just as tears threaten, a man dressed as Santa steps from the flurries, his warm voice and kind eyes calm her instantly. He fixes her tire, offers a gentle smile and disappears before she can ask his name, though the magic of his presence lingers.

Days later, he appears again in the library, just as a stack of books slips from her arms. Their fingers brush as they gather the fallen stories, sending a quiet spark through her. He vanishes again, leaving her wondering if Christmas magic is guiding her somewhere.

Christmas Eve, under twinkling garlands, he finds her once more. And, as if woven from the same magic that had rescued her twice before, he appears just when her heart feels fragile. Handing her a candy cane like a secret gift, he whispers, “Let the magic of Christmas show your heart where it truly belongs.” As he disappears into the gently falling snow, Mabels feels something shift inside her, a tender warmth blooming where grief once lived. For the first time in years, she dares to hope love might find her again… just as magically as he did.

— Stacey Shackel

Entry #11: Joy to the Squirrel

Recent MLIS grad Elspeth Twittingfern has moved to the quaint, woodsy village of Bortly Falls to take a position as Adult Services Librarian. Her plan is to seize the opportunity to unite her two passions: Inspiring a love of reading and wildlife rescue. While presenting on 20th century novels that highlight the relationship between humans and wild animals, Elspeth meets local woodsmen and carpenter Ben Strongbrowman. Ben might not have gone to library school, but he sure turns Elspeth’s pages. They bond over a shared love of nature and books, and soon, Ben is helping Elspeth decorate her squirrel hotel – a structure to house injured or abandoned baby squirrels – for Christmas, her favourite time of year! Just when it seems like they will spend the season bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and nuts about each other, Elspeth learns that Ben’s carpentry firm has hired a pest control company to evict a family of squirrels at one of their construction sites! Ben says he didn’t know, but Elspeth feels betrayed, and a rift grows between them. Will Elspeth and Ben spend the holidays burrowed up alone or will the Bortly Falls Public Library’s annual Christmas Carol Extravaganza provide the perfect place for them to remember why they fell in love? Will Ben and Elspeth ring in the Yuletide singing Joy to the Squirrel?

— Drea (Andréa) Schnell

Entry #12: Preserving Christmas

A preservation librarian has been working at this library for several years now. This library has a rare book collection, which she spends a considerable amount of time checking on to ensure the books are not deteriorating quicker than they should. Due to a snowstorm that hit the town, the temperature control for the rare book room has stopped working, and it is very important for the safety of the items in the collection that it is fixed as soon as possible.

She was expecting the HVAC tradesmen to arrive and fix the unit, but she was not expecting one man on the team to be so cute. It is a race against the clock over the few days he visits, because she might never see him again once the temperature control unit is fixed.

The preservation librarian is successfully able to ask him out to get a coffee with her one day. During this date, he asks if she would like to go to his place so he can make her dinner. Having agreed, they both get the chance to talk at length about their interests over dinner. A “Let It Snow” type of scenario occurs after dinner, where they find they are snowed in the tradesman’s home, which they become optimistic about as they spend more time together. Throughout their time together, they practice their personal Christmas traditions to prepare his home for the holiday.

— Kallista Briden

Entry #13: Shelving Christmas

Every December, Nicholas has to shelve Christmas. Something always goes dreadfully wrong, from the time his neighbour burned down the apartment building while baking sugar cookies, to when he was mugged at sharpened candy cane-point by Santa’s elf.

This year, his library is being defunded. He has until Christmas Day to prove their services are needed by the people of Bigg City. But he just can’t find the budget for holiday festivities.

On December 1st, a new volunteer bursts into the library. Lilah is annoyingly cheerful, with her bright flannel, small-town ideals, and love of scraggly Christmas trees. She’s determined to bring her hometown Frankenmuth’s Christmas magic to the heart of Bigg City—and into the heart of one man in particular. But Nicholas is the only one irritated by her distributing home baked goods and humming off-key Christmas Carols.

Lilah rounds up volunteers to run holiday programming to show the mayor how vibrant the library could be with better funding.

Nicholas starts to warm up to her. But when she uses fragile archival photographs for a Christmas Eve display, he snaps. In tears, Lilah runs back home.

A non-delinquent Santa’s elf helps Nicholas realize that Lilah’s heart was in the right place. Nicholas hurries to Frankenmuth to win it back with a grand gesture involving a hundred scraggly Christmas trees. They return just in time to convince the mayor to support the library.

With true love on Nicholas’ side, this year, Christmas won’t have to be shelved.

— Helen Power

Entry #14: A Library Christmas Story

Successful journalist Ryan goes back to hometown of Maple Hills for the holidays to visit his parents

His hometown library is in trouble from budget cuts, Ryan goes to visit the library and bumps into Jill, his high school sweetheart

Jill is the children’s librarian

They talk about the budget cuts and what that could mean for the library staff, who are all afraid of job redundancy and bumping

Jill wants to do a fundraiser. She manages to get a popular rock star to play at it

Ryan writes a story about it

Ryan and Jill share a kiss

Jill overhears Ryan on the phone to New York, saying he’s got a flight out tonight

Jill is shaken; she rushes out the door, saying to her worried colleagues that she needs some air

She gets a message from Ryan, telling her that he looked for her before he left, that he’ll be back

Ryan comes back and professes his love, tells her about his new promotion at work

Ryan heads backstage after the show to hear the total funds raised, and Jill follows him

The total is enough to save the library from cuts

Ryan finds Jill, and they kiss.

At dinner the next night, Ryan reveals he’s been talking to his boss, and the promotion means that he can work remotely from Maple Hills. Ryan asks her to go house hunting with him.

— Katie Oke

Entry #15: Kiss and read

A single mom – Dee moves to the big city with her SK superstar Rose, at the start of winter. A fresh start offers so much promise however it is a lot to juggle a new space for a five year old. The winter drop-offs are challenging with the narrow school driving lanes. Dee is approached by a support volunteer who gestures for her to stay in the car and gently unbuckles Rose out of the carseat and guides her to the school entrance with her backpack. Dee mimes a thank you however doesn’t get to speak to them for weeks because she has to keep driving away from the kiss and ride section.

One day, she takes Rose to the library to get some books which have been a constant lifeline amidst all their changes and spies the volunteer behind the reference desk. Dee wouldn’t have recognized Blake without all the winter layers except for that wide eye smile. The decision to ask them out to a meal has to work past Dee’s nervousness and anxiety about taking another risk. There’s been many moments for Dee to have been brave so far, this surprisingly feels the easiest.

Their relationship grows through Christmas and new year until Dee sees the pressures of working in the front lines building up through which Blake protects this budding family. Dee’s background in social work in combination with her billionaire parents fund the next 10 years of library growth.

— Rahul Joseph

a