Canadian Library History Blog

Canadian School Libraries in the Neoliberal Era

2026-05-02T15:34:00.077-04:00

Ontario library class, 1980s

A New Vision for Teacher-Librarians in the 1980s

The growth of elementary and secondary schools for two decades after 1960 led to the rapid development of school library facilities, improved collections, and qualified staffing on an unprecedented scale. Statistics Canada reported in 1979 that 72 percent of Canadian schools operated a centralized library (8,201) serving 85 percent of the total school population (3,698,512). However, only 47 percent of these schools had a full-time professional librarian/media professional due to the large number of rural and smaller schools. Total staffing reported as 5,171: there were 451 professional librarians, 3,390 other professionals, and 1,330 support staff. The average material expenditure per secondary school library was about three times larger than that per elementary school library. Throughout this thriving period, school librarianship had entailed the promotion of a general model program based on the role of the teacher-librarian (T-L) in leading student instruction in library skills and providing resources of all types for classroom use by teachers. Notwithstanding the success of this approach, leadership in the school library profession began to revise this overarching philosophy of service because it emphasized a supportive role to mainstream teaching and curriculum development.

To further the standing of T-Ls in the field of education, the Canadian School Library Association (CSLA) issued a statement, "The Qualifications for School Librarians," in 1979. By this standard, a T-L must possess dual professional qualifications: a valid teacher certification in a province or territory, as well as expertise in librarianship through a specialized diploma or degree. In this statement the CSLA adopted an ambitious plan to advance the role of T-L s by proposing nine areas of competence: (1) administration; (2) selection of learning resources; (3) acquisition, organization, and circulation of resources; (4) guidance; (5) design and production of resources; (6) information services; (7) promotion; (8) cooperative planning and teaching; and (9) professionalism and leadership. The CSLA officially adopted the term "teacher-librarian" and also released a second publication, "A Recommended Curriculum for Education for School Librarianship," in 1981. This document, prepared for the CSLA by a special committee, outlined educational programs that reflected the competencies in the Qualifications statement and could be used by universities to compare and evaluate their school librarianship programs.

Although clear statements on qualifications and improved training were necessary forward steps, there were barriers for teachers to confront. Many were reluctant to enroll in full-length professional library degree programs at faculties of library science that offered few courses on school libraries and had residency requirements. The faculties of education offered some courses in school librarianship, and the ministries of education encouraged teachers to pursue additional qualifications; however, there were many other attractive options available to teachers, such as special education. Because education authorities did not require school libraries to be staffed by qualified teacher-librarians, there was less incentive to enroll in library courses. Most T-Ls were also more inclined to be attentive to developments in provincial teacher federations than a national library association where the interests of school libraries were often passed over. In fact, the idea of a national school library association, distinct from the CSLA, was the subject of much discussion in the early 1980s. Further, to be successful, the national 'model' proposed by CSLA must necessarily be enacted at local and provincial levels.

The Stanley House Seminar on Education for School Librarianship (1982)

In 1982, a small group of Canadian library educators gathered at Stanley House on the Gaspé Bay Peninsula for a week-long session to review the current state of school librarianship and to recommend specific actions to further the education of school librarianship. The CSLA and provincial leaders across the country believed the national statements and a shared vision of partnership across provincial and territorial education authorities would succeed because they emphasized collaborative planning, teamwork, and collective responsibility for student learning. This collegial philosophy placed greater emphasis on the T-L's work as a cooperative planner and joint implementer of the curriculum with teachers. The planning concept proposed integrating the development of library skills into jointly planned and implemented classroom teaching. The direction and focus of this strategy were increasingly centred on helping students 'learn how to learn' and on advancing the role of the T-L within the school planning framework. Now, the school library resource centre was to be a more dynamic hub offering a flexible schedule for teaching information skills as part of classroom activities.

Partners in Action, 1982.

The Stanley House seminar was a major step in the planning for the education of school librarians. The conference presented 43 recommendations to CSLA to implement the Qualifications Statement and its Recommended Curriculum. However, this alternative 'model' was developed during two severe economic recessions: the first from 1980 to 1982 and the second from 1990 to 1991. Most notably, governments at all levels across North America began to adopt 'neoliberal' economic policies. Generally, neoliberalism stands for free-market capitalism and government policies that dictate deregulation, privatization, and reduced public expenditures to promote economic growth and individual freedom.

The tenets of neoliberalism shift the purpose of education as a public good towards transactional terms of investment by taxpayers. What students should be taught is relative to their individual prospects for future earnings. Schools, traditionally mandated at the provincial level and governed locally by elected boards, increasingly came under the scrutiny of neoliberal values of efficiency and economy. In 1980 public funding for elementary and secondary schools had reached just over $14 billion; in 2001 it was almost $38 billion. However, adjusted for constant dollars ($32 billion in 2001), the growth rate was just over 18 percent over 20 years.

During this time, elementary and secondary education underwent fluctuating innovations and restructuring. Governments in different jurisdictions consolidated smaller/rural schools, and many new priorities, such as French immersion classes, computer training, and standardized testing, emerged. Enrolment in 1970 was 5.8 million, in 1985 it declined to 4.9 million, and in 2000 it rose to 5.4 million. In 1970 there were 262,000 full-time teachers; in 2000 there were about 298,000 working full and part-time. In 1970 there were approximately 15,000 schools; in 2000 there were 16,000. After the federal government began to slash transfers to provinces for health, education, and social services in the mid-1990s, educators were forced to make hard choices about their programs and the future of student learning. Collective action by T-Ls also evolved: in 1989 a new national organization, the Association of Teacher-Librarianship in Canada (ATLC), was established to represent T-Ls at a national level. This group grew to about 300 members and in collaboration with the CSLA published an important document in 1995, Students Information Literacy Needs in the 21st Century: Competencies for Teacher-Librarians.

Several provinces and regional districts did provide general policy statements or guidelines, such as Partners in Action (1982) in Ontario, as well as consultative assistance at the provincial level. But, gradually, the number of professionals at the provincial or district level with supervisory responsibility for school librarianship declined, and so did the influence of these policy statements. Increasingly, in teacher librarianship, there was a disconnect between educational policy and school practice. Reliance on quantitative standards for school libraries was often ignored because decision-makers reacted negatively to such guidelines, including those in the aging Resource Services for Canadian Schools (1977).

Continual downsizing, cutbacks, and the merger of boards into larger geographic entities were all examples of the institutional erosion of support. In 2000, there were just more than 500 Canadian school districts, and New Brunswick had eliminated school boards entirely. At the national level, there was no general agreement among principals, teachers, T-Ls, and librarians on the role of the library and the T-L in resource-based programs. This was a fundamental problem which required a change in the school authorities' attitudes about the benefits of school libraries. Consequently, the professional standing of T-Ls did not receive widespread recognition in the curriculum, and the T-L's active presence in the school curriculum was not typically considered a significant factor in the development of educational programs.

Too often, the library component of joint planning was subordinate to the provincially mandated policies governing student classroom learning and standardized testing. T-Ls were reassigned to teaching, reduced to half-time, allocated to more than one school, or eliminated. Library technicians, non-professionals, and volunteers who substituted for T-Ls or media specialists were generally not trained in evaluating materials for appropriate-age school collections. By the early 1990s, Canadian publishers were noticing a reduction in the volume of school library sales and interest in Canadian authors.

Across the country, newspaper articles described a systematic decline in local and district schools. The Times-Colonist commented on the harm that library staff reductions and temporary closures in the Greater Victoria school district were having on March 11, 1992. On May 4, 1994, the Montreal Gazette reported that the Lachine high school library and other libraries were being closed on certain days due to staffing shortages. The elimination of T-Ls left elementary students with little or no instruction in information skills, according to the Hamilton Spectator on Oct. 5, 1996. In New Brunswick, on Nov. 28, 1997, the Telegraph-Journal reported administrators were "holding the line" on the $7 per student formula for materials established in a decade before in 1988.

School library funding eroded as governments prioritized economic restraint, and educators implemented various new educational programs or fostered the adoption of emerging technologies. With the rapid growth of the Internet, educators were faced with an entirely new way to teach information skills. A national project, SchoolNet, was launched in 1993 to link schools and libraries via the Internet and to develop Canadian educational resources. It was particularly prominent from 1995 to the early 2000s and promoted a new way to introduce students to self-learning. The T-L's place in this context was heightened as the term 'information centre' or 'information commons' began to be applied to some school libraries.

Forging Forward (1997) and The National Summit on School Libraries (2003)

As the declining fortunes of school library funding and staffing became more apparent in the late 1990s in affluent provinces such as Alberta and Ontario, library associations and leading spokespersons began to sound a warning and reevaluate current conditions. In British Columbia, a 1996 survey of T-L working conditions confirmed that the vast majority of school districts had experienced a decrease in staffing at both the elementary and secondary levels since 1983-84. In November 1997, at Ottawa, CSLA and the ATLC organized a summit, Forging Forward: The National Symposium on Information, Literacy and the School Library in Canada, to discuss the role of computers, the impact of the 'information highway,' and serious threats to funding. Delegates expressed the idea that T-Ls were 'knowledge navigators' in an information rich environment who could relate the objectives of the school and classroom curriculum to the school's learning resources. The three-day symposium set many objectives and goals, most importantly, that the school library belongs to everyone because it is an integral part of school quality and a fundamental right of Canadian children. Important principles were reaffirmed:
* every child should have the opportunity to engage with the best learning material available.
* every child should leave the school equipped with skills and literacy capabilities leading to a continuous learning process.
* every child should be able to use the computer to find needed information and to realize that the school is only one part of a global learning environment.

Participants felt the 1997 Summit was a success in identifying new directions, and the conference received favourable media attention. Nevertheless, the thorny issue of halting cutback management at all levels persisted. Unfortunately, reliable statistical data was not immediately available because Statistics Canada (SC) had long ceased its annual surveys in favour of occasional data collection. During the late 1990s, administrators also had to deal with annual inflation rates of about 1 to 2.5 percent. There were concerns from coast to coast about the state of school libraries, and the newly appointed National Librarian, Roch Carrier, also became alarmed. In June 2003, a School Library Summit was held in Ottawa in conjunction with the International Forum on Canadian Children's Literature.

The Summit opened with the National Librarian welcoming participants and announcing that a Canadian National School Library Day would be held each October. Important speeches and the release of detailed reports on the state of school libraries and T-Ls highlighted the conference. The newly formed Canadian Coalition for School Libraries had sponsored a major study by Ken Haycock, The Crisis in Canada's School Libraries, which analyzed recent data from across the country. The Haycock report painted a gloomy picture: for example, in Alberta in 1978, there were 550 T-Ls working half-time or more; by 1998, this number had declined to 252, and by 2000, to 106.

Across the country, teacher-librarians are losing their jobs or being reassigned. Collections are becoming depleted owing to budget cuts. Some principals believe that in the age of the Internet and the classroom workstation, the school library is an artifact. In a growing number of Canadian schools, in fact, the libraries are shuttered all or part of the time, with well-meaning parents scrambling to fill the void. Through neglect, too many school libraries are now little more than storage rooms.

One of the major findings in Crisis was that current research showed student achievement improved when the library operated with adequate hours and was staffed by a qualified librarian. Thirteen recommendations were put forward, most directed to Ministries of Education in order to provide useful data, provincial direction for clear roles and program definitions, and improved staffing qualifications

Another speaker, Marla Waltman-Daschko of Statistics Canada, spoke about the results of data collected by the Canadian Centre for Education Statistics, Elementary and Secondary Schools: The Role, Challenges and Financial Conditions of School and School Library Resources in Canada, which confirmed the decline in library funding in current dollars relative to late 1990s trends.
* overall public spending by provincial and municipal governments on school libraries decreased by .4%, dropping from $535.3 million to $532.9 million between 1993-1994 and 1998-1999;
* provincial government spending on school libraries decreased from $261.8 million in 1993 to $260.1 million in 1998, a drop of -.6%;
* overall per student school library spending decreased by -5.3% between 1993-1994 ($102.74) and 1998-1999 ($97.26). School library spending per student varied widely by province.

To conclude the summit, Dianne Oberg and Ray Doiron, two prominent school library educators, explained the new national standards for Canadian school libraries issued in a joint publication by the CSLA and ATLC, Achieving Information Literacy, which had been released earlier in June at the combined American Library Association/Canadian Library Association conference in Toronto. This reworking of standards went into detail about staffing school libraries, collections, facilities, information and communication technologies, and collaborative teamwork to implement successful literacy programs in schools. But it recognized, in a wistful way, that the vision it presented entertained exceptionally hard work ahead to reach 15,000 schools.

If each school library were to have a teacher-librarian who taught children and youth the skills necessary to be effective users of information in all its forms, a powerful mechanism would be in place for enabling Canadian children and youth to be literate citizens, lifelong learners, and contributing adults in a learning society.

The Summit caught the attention of many newspapers across the country. On June 27th, the National Post reported that a proven "literacy tool" was being eroded. A Regina Leader-Post editorial on June 28th surmised that governments should recognize that "School Libraries Play a Key Role" in improving student literacy rates. In a July 6th article in the Toronto Star about the worrisome decline in school libraries, Graham Fraser wrote, "computers can't replace books" and "books and libraries are invaluable for young people." Realizing the need for a stronger, unified voice for T-Ls, the CSLA and the ATLC, each with about 300 members, agreed to merge in 2004 to form the Canadian Association of School Libraries (CASL) and continue as a division of the Canadian Library Association.

In the following year, 2005, another Statistics Canada survey, Canadian School Libraries and Teacher-Librarians, provided additional information on the status of school libraries at a time when public elementary and secondary student enrolment had dipped to 4,979,112. The findings provided detailed information.
* the vast majority of schools (14,451) had libraries, 93.3%, but the median expenditure on resources was only $2,000. In total, schools with libraries spent $56.2 million on collection development in 2003/04. Most schools spent little or no money on electronic materials.
* few schools in Canada had a full-time T-L on staff: on average, each school had 0.25 full-time T-L.
* staffing included 3,424 T-Ls, 433 professional librarians, 3,476 library technicians, 679 teachers who were not librarians, 2,060 clerical staff, and 712 'others' (i.e., volunteers, assistants). Total staff: 10,784.
* the provinces with some of the lowest average numbers of T-Ls per school had the highest number of library technicians: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba. The levels of T-L, library technicians, and total staff in secondary schools were roughly twice those in elementary schools.
* schools with at least one T-L devoted to the school library were roughly three times more likely than those with less than one full-time T-L to have links to the library on the school's informal website.
* since 1998, education funding had increased approximately 2% but library funding had decreased 4%.

One result of the 2003 Summit was a call to bolster research. To fortify the argument that T-Ls and trained library staff were making a positive contribution to student learning, a 2006 study commissioned by the Ontario Library Association and its allies, School Libraries and Student Achievement in Ontario, reported that the presence of a T-L was strongly linked to greater student reading enjoyment and resulted in higher reading achievement. This was the first Canadian study to demonstrate this crucial correlation.

Millennium Re-evaluations to 2010

Achieving Information Literacy had established a new set of standards at a time when Canadian school administrators lacked the resources to implement them in terms of staffing and technology. Teachers and school librarians were still tasked with being teaching partners in implementing units of study in the classroom. The idea of the library as an 'information centre' was persuasive but perhaps too all-encompassing, especially in smaller schools. Although the aim of the school library program to help students become informed decision-makers and lifelong learners was laudable, there were disparities in access to qualified staff, adequate collections, and computers. The emphasis was often on developing competency using computer hardware to locate information. Further, the long-standing services of T-L guidance in student reading, listening, and viewing continued to be valued and perhaps contributed to the lack of a clear implementation strategy inherent in the new standards. The commons approach encouraged students to collaborate, be creative, and work as a team.

Despite the recency of the 2003 standards, they came at a time when the role of an information centre was beginning to give way to the idea of the library as a 'learning commons' that could harness library resources to foster collaboration, creation, and learning engagement rather than access to information. The concept of 'Library 2.0', whereby patrons could use social media to create content and shape services, and the rise of the 'Google Generation', who grew up with search engines, quickly changed the thinking of library educators and practitioners. Educators began to call for the transformation of the school library and computer lab into a virtual and physical learning commons. In 2010, the Ontario School Library Association outlined new principles in Together for Learning: this study wholeheartedly adopted the learning commons concept, in which teacher-librarians and other learning partners cultivated student reading engagement, multiple literacies, critical thinking, creativity, and guided inquiry so that students could learn how to learn.

At the federal and provincial levels, politicians and economists continued to rely on the neoliberal catchwords of reducing government spending, lowering taxes, and relying on private sector investment and market growth to drive the economy. However, faith in neoliberal policies was shaken by the financial crisis of 2008, and skepticism grew about the value of global free trade, deregulation, and privatization. Governments began to give more consideration to intervention in the domestic economy and increased protectionism. National funding of elementary and secondary education increased by almost a quarter from 2010 to 2020, slightly outpacing inflation. However, the long, slow decline in school libraries persisted.

Shortly after 2010, following the dissolution of CLSA as a division of CLA, a national advisory group of school librarians began to work on revised standards for the learning commons. In its half-century of existence after 1961, the CSLA-CASL had many accomplishments to its credit: it had encouraged professional development, established national standards for school libraries, and advocated for the role of teacher-librarians. Achieving Information Literacy was still a valued resource because it had solidified two decades of efforts to establish the T-L as a highly skilled teacher, able to function on the school team as a professional with competencies from teacher education, classroom experience, and school librarianship and media services. The resulting publication, Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada, appeared in 2014. Leading Learning focused on fostering student literacy and empowering lifelong learning. Now, the attention of school advocates returned to the library's role, in which the combined activity of students, teachers, and T-Ls could stimulate learning in a multitude of ways. Community groups of parents and concerned citizens at provincial and national levels were better able to articulate this type of learning environment and the value of libraries to students than the previous focus on professional concerns.

By fall 2020, a new group of Canadian educators, library workers, writers, children's book publishers, and library advocates came together to form the Save School Libraries Coalition. The Coalition sought to press for open, well-staffed school libraries and children's access to quality reading materials, a constant goal of library organizations since the 1950s but one that became more difficult to attain after the rise of free-market capitalism in 1980. The school library, in its many manifestations, and bolstered by its many supporters—parents, educators, community members, publishers, authors, friends groups, journalists, organizations interested in literacy and student success, as well as librarians—looked forward to a post-neoliberal revival after 2020.

Further reading

Provincial guidelines published by departments of education in the 1980s and 1990s are available on the Internet Archive.

Ontario's Partners in Action (1982) is at this link.

Alberta's Focus on Learning (1985) is at this link.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Learning to Learn (1991) is at this link.

Les bibliothèques scolaires québécoises (1989) is at this link.

A report on the Prince Edward Island School Library Policy (1997) is at this link.

Also,

The Crisis in Canada's School Libraries by Ken Haycock (2002) is at this link.

The CSLA Achieving Information Literacy (2003) is at this link.

The 2006 Ontario report on School Libraries and Student Achievement is at this link.

My earlier blog on School Libraries and the Education for School Librarianship Workshop at Jasper Park in 1968 is at this link.

Janet Carnochan and the Niagara Library

2026-03-13T16:56:09.157-04:00

On the grounds of the Niagara Historical Society and Museum in the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake there is a familiar Ontario Heritage Trust plaque erected in 1984 commemorating the contributions of a respected local woman, Janet Carnochan.

Janet Carnochan, n.d.

For more than thirty years Janet Carnochan, a native of Stamford, Ontario, taught elementary and secondary school at Niagara-on-the Lake, but she made her greatest contribution to the community as a historian rather than as an educator. A distinguished historical preservationist, Carnochan founded and was first president of the Niagara Historical Society, 1895-1925, and laboured tirelessly to safeguard and promote the rich heritage of Niagara. She wrote and edited numerous historical works including the History of Niagara and successfully campaigned for the construction of Memorial Hall, the first building erected for the purpose of a museum in Ontario. In 1949, when the town's former high school was incorporated into this complex, it was renamed Janet Carnochan Hall as a tribute to her efforts and dedication.

This provincial plaque was originally cast in 1934. It currently resides on the property of the Niagara Historical Society Museum.

Janet Carnochan and 19th Century Historical Writing

The decades after Canadian Confederation in 1867 witnessed an increase in many retrospective works, amateur histories, as well as the development of local historical societies across Ontario, which sought to preserve the records of past families and groups. Although lay historians lacked training in methodology, some demonstrated high standards when working with primary and oral sources. They specialized in specific topics and events that were often overlooked by historians focused on provincial or national issues. Janet Carnochan was representative of this trend, for she co-founded the Historical Society of Niagara in December 1895. She was the Society's first president, and with the collaboration of a small group of local residents, she conserved and promoted the town's early history. Also, she wrote more than a dozen accounts of the development of Niagara's community organizations. She showed not only an avid interest in regional history but also a persistent loyalty to the concept of community progress.

Canadian historical writing in this era was infused with the idea of community building at the national, provincial, and local levels. These histories often depicted the march of political, social, and economic progress from the past to a satisfactory present, which is usually referred to as Whig History. As professional historical research, teaching, and publications unfolded at Canadian universities, especially the first volume of the Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada in 1897 at the University of Toronto, higher standards of historical writing developed. History began to demand greater accuracy and extensive training. Nonetheless, the work of non-specialists such as Janet Carnochan provided much needed documentation and accessible works that provided information lacking in national or provincial studies. She was old enough to remember the early experiences of the 'Niagara frontier' and to record the people, events, and pioneer life with some perceptive observations. Such is the case with her publications on the Niagara Library, a subscription library first organized in 1800, and its successor, the Niagara Mechanics' Institute, later reorganized as a public library in 1895.

Janet Carnochan's Library Work

Janet Carnochan's contributions to library work have not been overlooked. An article in the Canadian Magazine in 1912 by Francis Drake described her as the library's "unpaid official" who had acted as its secretary for many years, prepared three catalogues, selected books, served as treasurer, and sometimes worked as librarian. A 1985 biography by John Field, Janet Carnochan, also praised her energetic efforts to promote the library. She first became involved as secretary to the Niagara Mechanics Institute in 1891. She continued in this role after Ontario legislation required the institute to change its title to 'public library' in 1895, allowing municipalities to contribute to its operation (the library eventually became a 'free library' eligible for municipal tax support in 1938). During her tenure, the library occupied a space in the old covered market at the rear of the district Court House on Queen Street. Residents in the small town of 1,500 found this location convenient, and there was gradual growth through subscriptions and small annual municipal payments of about $50 to $100. In 1900, the Niagara Library had a small membership of about 100, it spent just over $300/year, and held 5,000 volumes. Ten years later, the membership had increased to 130, the library spent $350, held 7,000 volumes, and circulated more than 8,000 items. By 1920, the library was circulating almost 16,000 books from a collection of 9,500 volumes.

After the formation of the Ontario Library Association in 1900, Miss Carnochan began to attend its sessions and regional institutes. At the association's second meeting in 1902, she presented a paper titled "The Vicissitudes of a Library during Fifty Years." According to the Toronto Globe, "she sketched the history of the Niagara library, which was founded in 1848. She mentioned that the President, Mr. [William] Kirby, had occupied that position for 25 years, and had been a member for 40 years. Miss Carnochan contended that the full grant earned by each library [from the provincial government], should be paid, without the 20 percent reduction as last year, and that the present classification system should be rescinded." No doubt she knew some Ontario libraries, such as London and Hamilton, had adopted the Dewey Decimal Classification system because it was superior to the older system recognized by the Dept. of Education since the 1870s. The May 1902 issue of the Library Journal noted her criticism of the older scheme's faults, quoting her, "the result is misleading and dishonest, and leads to confusion in the arrangement of books." After this time, the Niagara Library adopted the Dewey system, and when a provincial study was published in 1913 by the Inspector of Public Libraries, Niagara reported that it had classed 4,821 non-fiction and 2,087 fiction literature books in this way, an achievement that put it at the forefront of association library work in Ontario. Miss Carnochan served on the OLA nominating committee for a few years and was a Councillor in 1904, 1909, and 1910. And she continued attending meetings by contributing a short account of the formation of the first library in Ontario in an issue of the new Ontario Library Review in 1917, "First Library in Upper Canada."

The Niagara Library

This OLR article was the culmination of many years of speaking and writing about the original Niagara Library. When she was invited to speak to the Canadian Institute in Toronto in 1894, she gave an insightful paper that was printed in the Institute's Transactions. She recounted how she found an original manuscript recording the short history of the Niagara Library from its founding in 1800 to its demise in 1820 while browsing through the vestry of her Presbyterian church, St. Andrews. She provided a detailed description of the information contained in the manuscript as follows:
◼️ a list of proprietors through the years from 1800 to 1820
◼️ a list of payments by members and non-subscribers
◼️ a catalogue of the library with payments for books and magazines
◼️ the financial activity by year
◼️ the rules and regulations of the library
◼️ an account of annual and special meetings of directors and members
◼️ a list of books circulated with the date of return, and
◼️ an alphabetical list of subscribers with a separate page for entries for each.

The volume records the tumultuous history of the library through the War of 1812, the town's burning in 1813, the loss of books during the war, and the difficulties of maintaining the library by private subscription. Miss Carnochan notes that prices were high for books and selections, such as the Edinburgh Review and Lady's Magazine, were careful and tasteful. She regarded this as reading of a 'high order,' noting that "It may be doubted if in this day of boasted enlightenment we are willing to pay so much for our reading. One thing at least is certain, against the proprietors of this library cannot be made the charge of light reading now brought so justly against the frequenters of modern libraries." Of the many people who led the library, the name of Andrew Heron (1762-1848) stands out among the many residents who directed it—he was a founder and acted as secretary, treasurer, and librarian for most of the library's existence. However, after the library's demise in 1820, Heron acquired some of its former books and incorporated them into a new subscription library. Unfortunately, little is known about this venture or its subsequent existence. Throughout her article, the author carefully depicts the library's role in fostering education and intellectual life, drawing on her primary source to explore finances, membership, and collections.

Towards the close of her account she recognized the efforts of the early Niagara pioneers to provide reading materials for the community by adding, "Judge, then, how much the people of this vicinity owe to the proprietors of the Niagara Public Library, furnishing to the young people of so many households reading of so high an order, fitting them to fight manfully the great battle of life." At the close, she lists the library's holdings of approximately 1,000 books. She finishes her narrative by recognizing the efforts of the early Niagara pioneers to provide reading materials for the community by adding, "Judge, then, how much the people of this vicinity owe to the proprietors of the Niagara Public Library, furnishing to the young people of so many households reading of so high an order, fitting them to fight manfully the great battle of life." Her efforts to focus interest on community history succeeded because she understood the local background and observed history with a critical eye.

Niagara Library interior, c.1909

Janet Carnochan did not influence library work beyond her community; however, her dedicated efforts to improve library service in Niagara-on-the-Lake can be considered a shining example of what can be achieved in a modestly sized library by force of character and earnest determination. Walter R. Nursey, the Ontario Inspector of Public Libraries, recognized her and wrote in his 1909 report that "It would be a great thing for the library workers in Canada if more of the fraternity were animated with the same degree of energy and zeal as Miss Carnochan." Indeed, her memory is a persistent presence in Niagara-on-the-Lake where a provincial plaque at Memorial Hall recognizes her work. It stands on the grounds of the local museum she helped found in 1906, which was Ontario’s first purpose-built museum.

This building, the first in Ontario to be constructed for use solely as an historical museum, was begun in 1906 and completed the following year. Its erection was due largely to the dedicated efforts of Miss Janet Carnochan, founder, and for thirty years curator of the Niagara Historical Society. Previously the Society had used a room in the Town Hall to preserve objects of this early Loyalist region. Donations were received from the federal and provincial governments, local municipalities, British regiments once stationed in the area, and private citizens. The museum was officially opened June 4, 1907, by Sir William Mortimer Clark, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario.

In recognition of her reputation as a community builder, the Niagara Museum celebrates Janet Carnochan Day every June 4th to commemorate the museum's opening.

Further information:

Janet Carnochan, “Niagara Library, 1800 to 1820.” Transactions of the Canadian Institute 4 (1892): 336–356. [at Hathi Trust]

Janet Carnochan, “First Library in Upper Canada.” Ontario Library Review 2, no. 1 (1917): 2–3. [at Internet Archive]

Janet Carnochan, "Niagara Library, 1899-1820," in her History of Niagara (in part), p. 46–55 (Toronto: William Briggs, 1914. A shorter and updated version of her original 1894 article, e.g., omitting the list of library holdings. [at Hathi Trust]

The record book of the Niagara Library from 1800 to 1820 is held by the Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum at this link.

Janet Carnochan's biography is in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is at this link.

Three Ontario Public Library Buildings before 1900

2026-03-06T23:20:00.053-05:00

In the early stage of the public library movement in Ontario after the Free Libraries Act came into force in 1882, there were no standalone public library buildings. The concept of the Canadian public library as a public building—a building type in its own right—was in its infancy. Of course, architects and librarians could refer to purpose-built American or British buildings, but these normally were in metropolitan cities supported by sufficient private philanthropy and ongoing municipal tax support. The four 'large' populated Ontario cities in the census of 1891 were Toronto (181,220), Hamilton (48,980). Ottawa (44,154). and London (31,977). Of these smaller cities, three would undertake to establish a separate building before 1895. These communities would generally follow Anglo-American ideas concerning library purpose, public access, book storage, and user needs (such as separate reading rooms) within a single structure.

The proper arrangement of space for the needs and purposes of library buildings was a challenging opportunity. In the 1890s, Anglo-American library architecture was entering a transitional period. Early public library structures often were divided into small rooms and shared accommodation with other local groups, a legacy of the compartmentalized space afforded by many mechanics' institutes, museums, and cultural groups that proliferated in the 19th century. No clear-cut consensus existed on what constituted conventional library services, uniform administrative practices, public access, and proper staffing. Until the 1890s, nearly all new public libraries, for reasons of security and efficient use of space, operated on the closed access system normally based on a centrally supervised reading room with adjacent rooms often divided on gender distinctions. Book catalogues and a time saving English invention, the ‘indicator,’ permitted users to know what volumes were held and their availability.

Although numerous articles on library architecture appeared before 1900, there were few authoritative publications to aid trustees, librarians, or city officials. An English treatise by Frank J. Burgoyne, Library Construction: Architecture, Fittings and Furniture (1897), advocated assessing local space needs for basic services that he deemed to be reference and lending departments, a reading room, and a staff work area. He felt additional options might include separate rooms for women, a lecture hall, a museum, or an art gallery. On the question of free access, Burgoyne cautioned his readers that,"a large public library should have the bulk of its books shelved on the stack system."

Even so, there was growing support for the open access system in the United States where unrestricted entry to book collections was progressing in cities such as Cleveland in the 1890s. However, it was not until 1902 that Charles Soule, a Boston bookseller and library trustee, authored an introductory architectural booklet published by the American Library Association. He provided careful, practical advice for the erection of new buildings and also briefly discussed adapting older buildings, recommending that "When a library outgrows three rooms, it ought to have a building all its own." Concerning exteriors, a variety of styles were in favour, notably classical revivals, and in the United States, the Richardsonian Romanesque style in the 1880s and 1890s. It was in this general Anglo-American setting that Ontario communities began to construct independent library structures before 1900.

Toronto Free Library opened in 1884

Toronto Mechanics' Institute, n.d.

Toronto, Ontario's capital, was the first to open a separate building on March 6, 1884, in the former Mechanics' Institute on the corner of Church and Adelaide Streets. The architectural firm of Cumberland & Storm originally had planned and supervised construction of this handsome Renaissance-style building between 1854 and 1861. When the institute opened to the public in July 1861, the reference library and two reading rooms were located on the main ground floor.

TMI plan, 1861

A contemporary report in the Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures highlighted its features together with floor plans:

To the left are the Reading Rooms (B and C), each 35+24 feet and 24+15 feet, fitted up in the most comfortable and convenient manner, and well supplied with newspapers and other publications. The Library (D), 28+24 feet, contains about five thousand volumes. Both Library and Reading Rooms are expensively fitted up with oak.

The annual membership fees were relatively modest: $2.00 for men and $1.50 for ladies.

Free Library plan, 1884

By 1882, Toronto Mechanics’ Institute held 10,500 books and circulation had reached 27,000. Two city aldermen, John Hallam and John Taylor, promoted the adoption of a free library, and, after the directors of the Institute transferred its real and personal property to the city for a public library in June 1883, the entire ground floor was refitted. A new stack room was added at the back of the building to accommodate 50,000 volumes. The book stacks were closed by two counters, one for circulation and one for lending. There were separate reading rooms for periodicals and for reference. It was reported that the city council allocated $50,000 for alterations. When the renovations were completed, the Globe and Mail enthusiastically reported the results before the opening day on March 3rd:

The original promoters of the Free Library scheme had no intention of utilizing this building for the new project, but when the people assemble on Thursday next to witness the formal opening there is every probability that they will be both surprised and delighted to find the city in the possession of so beautiful, so extensive, and so convenient a public institution at withal so small an outlay.

In its first decade, the new library system, under the able direction of James Bain, proved to be popular with Toronto citizens. They increasingly used the free lending services, e.g., during 1894 the central library issued more than 350,000 volumes. In July 1884, the first of many book catalogues with a code recording each book was provided to borrowers to aid their selections. As well, the installation of a wood framed 'indicator,' a British innovation with numbered, trays in a framed board, allowed librarians to track books (each insert was coloured, e.g., red-out and blue-in, to reveal a book's status) for patrons who were not permitted to browse shelves. Later, in 1889, a subject catalogue of reference books was published.

However, the condition of the central library was not entirely satisfactory. By 1887, a new roof and enlarged reading room were in place. Still, there were ventilation problems, especially in the warmer summers when staff, six young female assistants who earned between $300–$450 per year, suffered from poor air arising from the reference room. The Toronto Daily Mail reported in July 1889 that, "Pale faces of fair young ladies look through the wire casement that shuts them off from the public whom they are waiting to supply with mental food, and appeal for the chance to breath the cool fresh air that everybody else is rushing off to the lakeside resorts to inhale." But, according to the chief librarian, "the young ladies had the easiest position of any in Toronto." Three years later, in 1892, a Toronto medical health officer reported that the ventilation in the reference room was wholly inadequate when it was crowded and suggested necessary improvements. At this time, extensive renovations took place: the newspaper reading room was moved to the old mechanics' institute music hall above the ground floor, a circulating library was created in the former reading room, and a reading space for unemployed workmen was created in the basement.

These physical alterations, in conjunction with James Bain's development of collections and dedication to improved access for users by opening branch libraries, put Toronto in the forefront of the public library movement in Canada in 1895. By this year, when the Ontario government enacted a new Public Libraries Act that permitted communities to designate older mechanics' institutes as public libraries and become eligible for public funding, there were sixteen free libraries (i.e., library boards eligible for a special maximum rate of one-half mill on the dollar of assessed property) in the province. One, Hamilton, had erected a new building in 1890, and another, London, was under construction.

In Toronto, the realization that the central library was no longer adequate to suit early 20th century library standards led to a decision to seek a Carnegie library grant. In January 1903, the library board received a promise of $275,000 for a new Reference Library. It officially opened on College Street on September 8, 1909, and the reference and circulating collections from the old central library were transferred to it. The old library continued as a branch—the Church St. branch—for two decades until it closed in 1928. Several agencies then occupied the building until it was completely demolished in 1950 to make way for planned urban development of the Church-Adelaide area.

Hamilton Free Library opened in 1890

Hamilton library, Main St., n.d.

When the Hamilton and Gore Mechanics' Institute was forced to close in 1882 due to financial difficulties, its older building on James Street, along with its books and furnishings, were sold at a public auction. The city was without a 'public' library for several years, until January 7, 1889, when voters passed a bylaw to establish one. A library board was formed, and Richard T. Lancefield was appointed Hamilton's first chief librarian. After some controversy, a downtown site at 22 Main Street West was purchased for a new building. Officials laid the cornerstone for the Hamilton public library on October 23rd, 1889, and Lord and Lady Aberdeen opened the library on September 16, 1890. It was the first purpose-built free library to open in Canada. The architect, William Stewart, had the honour of supervising its construction at a cost of about $45,000—more than twice the original estimate that the Ontario Association of Architects had criticized for being unreasonably low.

The library interior was just over 7,000 square feet to serve a city of almost 50,000 people. Its internal plan followed North American experience: a reference room and two reading rooms (one for ladies, 24 ft. x 25 ft., one for general readers, 25 ft. x 78 ft.) flanked by a nine-foot corridor leading to a long counter for borrowing transactions with three indicators, a catalogue area, and a librarian's platform. The general reading room was 25 ft. x 78 ft. Behind the counters was a 33 ft. x 58 ft. stack room, closed to the public and fitted with shelves to hold 50,000 books. The librarian's platform allowed surveillance of the entire ground floor.

Hamilton interior, n.d.

The library's exterior architecture was somewhat eclectic, a late-Victorian Richardsonian Romanesque style, red and black brick facing, a north-west corner tower, and an impressive wheel-window, a feature Stewart often utilized. A staff workroom, storage area, washrooms, and utilities were located in the basement. A ventilation system was designed to remove contaminated air from the upper floors via of an prominent exterior shaft on the east side of the building. To complete the facility, rooms for an Art School and the Hamilton Association occupied the upper floors. The building was heated by steam utilizing radiators throughout.

Reading room, c.1905

The Hamilton library's first decade was relatively positive. Richard Lancefield published a book catalogue in 1894 and began to catalogue holdings using the Dewey Decimal System, a bold, time-consuming decision for Ontario in the 1890s. The library's second decade was less satisfactory. As the collection grew, more space on the main floor was required, but other developments, such as a section for young children (Hamilton maintained an age limit of 14), adequate space for story hours, and the issue of open access to shelves made the prospect of extensive renovations and expansion moot.

Hamilton Library before 1925

However, the Art School was quite successful and continued to occupy the upper floors. Library trustees were reluctant to evict art school students in the two upper floors or the rental room funds the library received from small rooms in the basement. When Sir John M. Gibson, the future lieutenant governor of Ontario, wrote to the Carnegie Corporation on January 20, 1906, to inquire about the possibility of receiving a grant, he remarked, "we have a public library, which however is scarcely up to what might be expected in a growing city like Hamilton." He was rebuffed, but after a concerted effort in 1909, Hamilton received a Carnegie promise of $75,000 for a new building and was later granted an additional $25,000. A fine Beaux-Arts structure on Main Street West officially opened on May 5, 1913. The property and assets of the old library were transferred to the city in the fall of 1913. The building served as the home for the Hamilton Art Gallery until 1953. It was demolished in July 1955.

London Public Library opened in 1895

Sketch of London Public Library with floor plans, 1895

Although London ratepayers had approved a bylaw to establish a free library in 1884, it was repealed in 1888, leaving the indebted mechanics' institute as a major source of reading for city residents. Eventually, London city council granted funds to the Mechanics’ Institute on condition that they provide free public access to their library and reading room. After ratepayers again petitioned the city council, on January 2, 1893, London citizens approved a library bylaw by a large majority. After the idea of transferring the older Mechanics' Institute building was rejected due to its unsuitability, in April 1894, the city council issued debentures for $20,000 to build an entirely new library. A competition for building plans was conducted, and Herbert L. Matthews, a local architect, was selected in the fall of 1894. On November 26, 1895, a fine new red brick library building on the southwest corner of Queens and Wellington was opened, with Robert J. Blackwell as the first librarian.

London Public Library exterior, n.d.

The new building cost $14, 818 including furnishings. The library assumed the defunct Mechanics' Institute’s book collection. There were two moderately large reading rooms for reference and browsing on the main floor across from the closed stack area. The west room on the second storey was also used as an Art Gallery. A museum also was planned for the second floor. On June 1, 1897, Robert J. Blackwell, the librarian of the London Public Library who was a former bookseller, issued the library’s first published catalogue using the new Dewey decimal classification system. He was known to be progressive because he supported free access to non-fiction and improved services for children, although an age limit of 12 was in effect. Crowded conditions in the library soon necessitated an addition at the rear costing $5,300 and a separate ladies' reading area on the west side of the main floor, which opened in 1902. Books were moved to the new extension for an enlarged stack room with shelving 8 ft. in height.

London floor plan in 1906

When Blackwell died unexpectedly in 1906, William O. Carson became chief librarian. Under his administration, the open access system was completely implemented in 1908, improved reference space and service began in 1910, and a children's room opened in 1913 to replace the ladies' reading room. During this period, the librarian and trustees realized the library was too small for the growing city and decided to apply for a Carnegie grant. But the unfortunate death of a library representative in New York and the outbreak of the First World War intervened before London could complete its request. When Carnegie funding for new libraries ceased in 1917, there were repeated failed bylaws to fund a new library from municipal sources. The building continued in use as London's main library until 1940. Then, a handsome two-storey limestone central library opened on Queen's Avenue—the Elsie Perrin Williams Memorial Library and Art Museum. Later, in 1954, London's original library was demolished to allow for the expansion of the adjacent YMCA.

Library Building and Design

As Anglo-American library planning developed in the years before 1900, architects often concentrated on exterior styling and interior ornamentation, while librarians relied on functionality and services for purpose-built premises. Library interiors varied in size depending on finances and available locations. A reading room for newspapers and magazines and access to reference resources were popular services, but, increasingly, the lending department was assuming primacy. Many people came to the library to charge out fiction, a somewhat difficult problem that could lead to crowding in smaller areas when free access was permitted. Most libraries did not have children's sections and their presence was an afterthought until Queen's Park enacted a legislation clause in 1909 that effectively removed age restrictions, thus allowing an influx of children and making children's sections a practical necessity.

Library interiors began to be standardized for efficiency, adopting principles like locating main services on a single floor and allowing for future extension. The early adoption of the decimal classification system at Hamilton and London allowed the rearrangement of books so readers could find their own books without frequent reference to the catalogue or an indicator (after some time Toronto adopted the DDC in 1910). Essential utilities such as ventilation and heating often presented problems, with coal powered boilers for radiators and troublesome systems to control humidity and temperature. The transition of lighting from gas lighting to electricity was already underway by the 1890s. There were many challenges to surmount as disagreements about services, functionality, ornamentation, and the need for surveillance of patrons could produce dissimilar results. By the turn of the century, there was an emergent trend in Ontario to more accessible, less restrictive interiors. The Toronto architect William A. Langton, who penned a short paper on "Library Design" in the Canadian Architect and Builder in April 1902 recognized this direction. He felt that "One is inclined to think that there is too much stress laid upon the need of making a sort of policeman of the librarian."

Despite initial enthusiasm and purposeful renovations of varying quality, both the Toronto and Hamilton central libraries were no longer adequate within two decades. Both cities sought Carnegie funding to address their problems. London also realized its smaller building needed to be replaced within fifteen years; however, it was unable to fund a new edifice until a benefactor, Elsie Perrin Wiliams, left the city a significant bequest to construct a sleek Art Deco style, air-conditioned library with an auditorium and art gallery. These three newer central libraries represented a major step forward for each locality and also pointed the way in new directions for library architecture in Canada.

Further resources:

F.J. Burgoyne's Library Construction (London: George Allen, 1897) is available at the Hathi Trust at this link.

Charles Soule's Library Rooms and Buildings (Boston, ALA, 1902) is available at the Internet Archive at this link.

The Toronto Library catalogue of circulating books issued in July 1884 is at this link.

The Toronto subject catalogue published in 1889 is available at this link.

My earlier blog on Victorian and Edwardian libraries in Ontario is at this link.

The Hamilton correspondence with the Carnegie Corporation is at this link.

Henry Pearson Gundy (1905–1994)

2026-02-26T14:41:00.011-05:00

Henry Pearson Gundy was a prominent scholar-librarian who made important contributions to Canadian literature, printing, and publishing as well as library services. After commencing his career in 1931 at the new campus of McMaster University in Hamilton, Gundy taught for a short time at the University of Chicago before becoming an English professor and eventually head of the English Department at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. Then, towards the end of WW II, Gundy's career track changed after he completed a summer course in library studies at Columbia University, a prestigious library school many Canadians attended to further their careers. In 1947, he was appointed chief librarian of Queen's University, succeeding the retiring incumbent, E. C. Kyte.

Under his leadership for almost two decades the Queen's library expanded its services, staffing, and collections, notably the Lorne Pierce collection of Canadiana. By the time he relinquished his office, in 1966, the library system possessed more than half a million volumes. During his tenure, he became known for publications on Canadian printing and publishing that are still of value. As well, Gundy successfully planned an important (and much needed) addition to the older Douglas Library (1924) with a new wing in 1965. He was the editor of the Queen's Quarterly from 1967 to 1972 and taught bibliography and Canadian literature. Although he formally retired in 1970, he continued to publish, notably The Letters of Bliss Carmen (1981).

I originally posted this biographical outline for the Ex Libris Association in 2018. The post continues on the current ELA website. H.P. Gundy’s image is undated from the Queen's University Archives.

Henry Pearson Gundy
b. June 1, 1905, Toronto, ON; d. July 27, 1994, Toronto, ON

Education:
1928 BA (University of Toronto)
1930 MA (University of Toronto)
1944 (Columbia University School of Library Service summer courses)

Positions:
1931-1935 Lecturer in English, McMaster University
1936-1937 Instructor in English, University of Chicago
1937-1942 Professor in English, Mount Allison University
1942-1947 Head of English Department, Mount Allison University
1944-1947 Director of Library Services, Mount Allison University
1947-1966 Chief Librarian, Queen’s University
1956-1960 Editor, Douglas Library Notes
1957-1975 Editor, Historic Kingston
1967-1972 Editor, Queen's Quarterly
1966-1970 Professor of Bibliography, Queen’s University
1970-1971 Associate Director and Senior Editor (co-founder), McGill-Queen's University Press

Publications (major contributions):
Gundy, H. Pearson (1948). “New tools for the research worker: recent advances in microphotography.” Queen’s Quarterly 55 (3): 282–289.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1949). “Libraries in Kingston 1811-1949.” Ontario Library Review 33 (1): 7–11.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1957). Early printers and printing in the Canadas. Toronto: Bibliographical Society of Canada. [2nd ed. in 1964].
Gundy, H. Pearson (1959). “Edith and Lorne Pierce Collection in the Douglas Library.” Newsletter of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 38 (2): 5–6.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1961). “A national Library for Canada: A record and a promise.” Canadian Library 17 (1): 170–178.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1965). Book publishing and publishers in Canada before 1900. Toronto: Bibliographical Society of Canada.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1967). Queen’s University at Kingston. Kingston, Ont.: [Queen’s University].
Gundy, H. Pearson (1972). “The development of trade book publishing in Canada.“ In Royal Commission on Book Publishing: background papers of the Ontario Royal Commission on Book Publishing, 1–37. Toronto: Queen’s Printer.
Gundy, H. Pearson (1972). The spread of printing; Western Hemisphere, Canada. New York: Abner Schram.
Carman, Bliss (1981). Letters of Bliss Carman, edited by H.P. Gundy. Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Associations/Committees:
Bibliographical Society of Canada
Canadian Association of University Professors
Canadian Historical Association
Canadian Library Association
Humanities Association of Canada
Kingston Historical Society
Ontario Historical Society
Ontario Library Association

Accomplishments:
H. Pearson Gundy was a scholar-librarian with deep interests in Canadian literature, printing, publishing, and librarianship. Over his term of office as chief librarian at Queen’s he built important collections with a national focus including the outstanding Edith and Lorne Pierce Collection of Canadiana, the books and papers of the poet Bliss Carman, and the private library and papers of the novelist and Canadian Governor General John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir). As collections and staff grew, he sought to expand the old Douglas Library and shortly before he stepped down a new wing was completed in 1965. In retirement he continued his scholarly contributions culminating in his publication of Bliss Carman’s letters in 1981.

Sources:
Morley, William F.E. (1993). “Professor H. Pearson Gundy, Queen’s University librarian: a memoir.” Ex Libris Association Newsletter, no. 13: 17–21. [PDF download]
Henry Pearson Gundy fonds, Queen’s University. Accessed August 28, 2018.
Stedmond, John. (1994). “Henry Pearson Gundy: 1905-1994.” Queen’s Quarterly 101 (3): 764–65.

Early Toronto Libraries, 1810–1830: Toronto Library and York Subscription Library

2026-01-15T12:05:00.025-05:00

The Town of York was founded in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as the capital of Upper Canada. York replaced Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake), the capital from 1791-93. The town was an established frontier trading site with indigenous people and possessed a good harbour for transport and farmland that attracted settlers. About 1,000 people—settlers, traders, officials, and soldiers—populated the settlement in 1800. With increasing growth over the next quarter century, York became the centre of Ontario government, business, and cultural life. It was renamed Toronto in 1830 in recognition of its indigenous roots and incorporated as a small city in 1834 with a population of about 9,000.

Books and the value of literacy in a colonial setting were important elements of cultural life fostered by the Upper Canadian elite—Loyalists, government and church officials, wealthy merchants and investors, and emerging career professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Jointly, this conservative network of Upper Canadian men sought to control political, economic, religious, educational, and judicial power and became known as the Family Compact. These prominent citizens, who often possessed substantial personal libraries, also formed voluntary associations for various purposes, one being a ‘public library’ by subscription. Books and libraries were recognized as important sources of knowledge, entertainment, and inspiration for ideas, both personal and public. The development of private and professional collections by prominent men, such as Bishop John Strachan, who acquired an important collection of 18th-century English and Scottish religious and political thought, influenced the direction of education and civic life. Personal books were often lent between friends: after the death of David Burns, a Scottish-born surgeon and Clerk of the Crown, his estate administrator advertised in the Upper Canada Gazette on June 7, 1806, for a return of missing books from the deceased’s library, works such as Plutarch’s Lives, and volumes by Voltaire, Pope, and Swift. Beyond York, another admirable collection belonged to Robert Addison, an Anglican minister, who brought 1,300 sixteenth and seventeenth-century books to Niagara in 1792. He supported the formation of the first subscription library in Upper Canada, the Niagara Library, established on June 8, 1800, “to diffuse knowledge” for a small group of forty-one residents. Citizens in Toronto would soon follow suit.

Subscription libraries, originating in the United States and Britain, were important social institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Robert Gourlay, the Scottish-born reformer who ran afoul of the Family Compact, noted the development of small libraries in his Statistical Account of Upper Canada in 1822: He remarked that, “Books are procured in considerable numbers. In addition to those with which particular persons and families are supplied, social libraries are introduced in various places; and subscribers at a small expence thus enjoy the benefit of many more volumes than they could individually afford to purchase.” The collective aspect offered a cost-effective way to access a greater number of books and enabled community engagement beyond personal means.

Although funding for many subscription libraries was inconsistent, they did offer the opportunity to support the growth of collections of value accessible to local residents. Over time, these libraries increasingly expanded beyond elitist circles and could be said to have democratized access to knowledge, information, pleasurable reading, and civic engagement. The two Toronto libraries highlight this aspect, as our knowledge of both groups clearly indicates an evolution from elite membership to membership by the general public. These two libraries aimed for useful knowledge by balancing recreational reading with educational resources. As well, the Toronto libraries may be considered one part of the ‘public sphere’ where residents could meet beyond their own homes at a particular place, to read, discuss ideas, engage in civic dialogue, and advance self-knowledge. Notably, it became possible to expand literacy among subscribers of modest means. As such, they helped foster the idea of creating public libraries in localities.

The Toronto Library, 1810–1813

Roberton’s Landmarks of Toronto

The Toronto Library was a private subscription library formally established on December 9, 1810, following preliminary meetings. It was located in Elmsley House at the southwest corner of King Street West and Simcoe Street. This residence was originally built in 1798 for Chief Justice and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, John Elmsley, and served as Government House from 1815 to 1841. The library’s prominent members included Thomas Scott, Alexander Wood, George D’Arcy Boulton, William Dummer Powell, the Treasurer William Allan, and its Librarian William Chewett, later John Macdonell.
■ Thomas Scott was Chief Justice, 1806–16.
■ William Allan was a banker, businessman and politician who negotiated the terms of surrender when York was captured by American forces in 1813.
■ William Dummer Powell was a Loyalist lawyer, judge and significant political figure in the Family Compact and became Chief Justice from 1816–25.
■ George D’Arcy Boulton was a lawyer, judge and political figure who was appointed Solicitor General in 1804.
■ Alexander Wood was a businessman, militia officer, magistrate (appointed in 1800), and office holder who became a leading merchant in York.
■ William Chewett was a surveyor, office holder, justice of the peace, and militia officer.

These men formed the nucleus of a small group whose members are otherwise unknown. However, their literary tastes may be gauged from a 1810 letter requesting orders for the library in February 1811. This list was published in 1956 by the historian and Ontario Archivist (1950–63), George W. Spragge, who located it in Civil Secretary’s Letter Books, Upper Canada, held in Ottawa (RG 7 G-16-C). This letter was a list of books transmitted to the Rev. Mr. Walker of London, England, to be sent to the Toronto Library, February 1, 1810.

At a meeting of the directors of the Toronto Library, held the 17th January, 1810, it was agreed that the following books, or as many of them shall cost £100 Sterling shall be purchased in London, and Imported for the Library, by the Treasurer.

Johnson's Dictionary,
Rapins History of England,
Doctor Henry's History of Great Britain,
Robertsons Works,
Laings History of Scotland
Lelands Do. of Ireland,
Biographia Britannica,
Robins Ancient History,
Russells Do. and Modern Do,
Annual Register for 1809
Blairs Lectures
Johnson's Works
Spectator, Guardian, and Tatler
The Mirror and Lounger
The Looker on
Payley's Moral Philosophy
Blair's Sermons
Sherlock's Sermons
The Bishop of London's Lectures
Fordyce's Sermons to Young Men & Women
Milton's Poetical Works
Thomson's Poems
Goldsmith's Works
Smollets Works
Fieldings Works
Drydens Works
Popes Works
Swifts Works
Sully's Memoirs
The Gentlemans Magazine beginning 1800, 20 volumes
Plutarchs Lives, By Langhorn
Middletons Life of Cicero
Monthly Review for 1809
Fergusons Roman Republic
Gibbon's Roman Empire
Gillies Green
Volneys Travels thro' Syria & Egypt
Lady Mary Wortley Montagues Letters
Burrow's Travels in China.
Blagdens Modern discoveries
Johnson and Stephen's Shakespeare
(signed) / MACDONNELL, Secy.

The list of potential acquisitions demonstrates a broad interest in reading. Items were chosen because they could be mutually beneficial to the membership. Requests tended to focus on a range of subject areas: history, poetry, travel, biography, philosophy, religion, magazines, and novels.

For two years, the affairs of the library were published in the York Gazette:
June 29, 1811: a notice of meeting to be held in the library room of the Elmsley House by J. Macdonell, Secretary.
August 1811: notices during the summer for subscribers to pay the $4.00 annual fee which had been posted earlier in January (e.g., August 31, 1811).
January 1, 1812: notice to subscribers of the annual meeting of the Toronto Library to be held at 12 o’clock on January 10th.

Despite a promising beginning, the growth of the Toronto Library was abruptly halted during the War of 1812. When American forces occupied and set fire to York in April 1813, Elmsley House was vandalized and its collection of books looted. However, later, in November 1813, Isaac Chauncey (the Commander of the American naval fleet) returned two cases of books, apologizing to Judge Scott or Judge Powell and the library directors in a letter dated November 14, 1813. Edith G. Firth, librarian in charge of the Toronto Public Library Canadiana rare books and manuscripts, reprinted his note of regret in The Town of York, 1793-1815 (Toronto, 1962):

I beg you Sir to assure the Trustees of the Toronto Library that it has been a source of great mortification to myself and Officers that so useful an institution should not have been deemed Sacred by every person under our command—you however Sir must be aware, that it is not always in the power of Officers with the best disposition to controul [sic] those placed under them Situated as they were at York.

Although some books were returned, after a temporary hiatus, it appears a brief revival was attempted. A notice from the librarian, William Chewett, in the York Gazette on June 17, 1815, advised of a meeting to be held on July 3 and noted “any Subscriber or any other person or persons having any of the Books belonging to the Library, are requested to deliver them to the Subscriber immediately.” However, on October 14, 1815, another notice in the Gazette signed by Thomas Scott, President, announced that a meeting would be held on October 17 in the Church in York to consider the disposal of “such Books as are now remaining of that Library.” The library venture had ended.

Nevertheless, at some point. William Allan, the former treasurer, came into possession of some books returned by Isaac Chauncey and kept them for nine years, until 1822. On September 11th of that year, William Allan wrote to the Chief Justice Powell. Allan suggested the books were “an encumbrance to me but they are most likely [suffering] injury from being so long [and] as there is now four of the Gentlemen here out of Five who were chosen Directors at the Original meeting — [I] must beg that some determination may be made respecting them [the books] either to have them sold by Auction (as many of the volumes are now wanting) — or otherwise that I may be freed from any longer charge.” Later, on September 19, the Chief Justice replied that Allan should advertise in the Upper Canada Gazette to hold a meeting of subscribers and former directors to decide the issue. Both these letters, held by the Toronto Public Library, were reprinted in 1954 by Florence Murray, a former TPL librarian and, at that time, a library school professor at the University of Toronto.

Apparently, the meeting decided to auction the books in Allan’s possession: a notice in the Upper Canada Gazette on December 12, 1822, announced a sale of “several volumes of Books, in best order, that formerly belonged to the Toronto Library in this town.” There may have been suspicions that further books, perhaps those in circulation that were absent from the library when the American attack force arrived, were still in use, for, a year later, in December 1823, notices in Upper Canada Gazette appeared and continued into March 1824. These postings offered a handsome reward —“full value will be given, and no questions asked”—for missing volumes of the Toronto Library believed to be at large and formerly belonging to the Toronto Library, namely,

Goldsmith’s Works (1806 ed.)
Smollett’s History of England (1791)
Fielding’s Works (1806)
Ferguson’s History of the Roman Republic (1805)
Henry’s History of Great Britain (1805)
Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1807)

Charles Fothergill authored the notice and likely became the owner of the incomplete sets he wished to restore. He was the King’s Printer and Gazette editor, and, at various times, a businessman, journalist, politician, naturalist, publisher, and politician. In 1831, he was one of the founders of the York Literary and Philosophical Society, established to promote Literature and Science. His success in obtaining the missing volumes is unknown, and he does not feature in any new library ventures in York.

The York Subscription Library, 1827–31

A few years later, a small group formed York’s second short-lived subscription library. On April 26, 1827, a short note appeared in the Colonial Advocate on a meeting held in Thomas Appleton’s school room on April 20th to form a “public library on liberal principles” that “all classes might enjoy the benefit of it.” The notice advised that another meeting would be held on April 30th to develop this plan in more detail. A subsequent Advocate report informed readers that Peter Paterson was appointed library chair with John Fenton as secretary. After opening remarks by Rev. William Ryerson, Rev. Stewart and Messrs. Appleton, Henderson, and Fenton, the following resolutions were adopted:
1) the desirability of forming a public library.
2) the name of the institution to be the York General Subscription Library.
3) A subscription of 10 shillings be paid, and subsequently a further subscription of 5 shillings a year be paid on a semi-annual basis by each member.
4) the secretary to enroll members as follows:
Mr. Harris, Rev. William Ryerson, Rev. Alexander Stewart, Dr. [James] McCague, J[ohn] Carey, P[eter] Patterson, T[homas] Appleton, R[obert] Meighan, J. Sanderson, E[dward] Henderson, B.W. Smith, J[ohn] Fenton, J. Caldwell, J. Roddy, W. Moore, J[ames]. Leslie, T. Elliott, J. Lackie, J. Armstrong, J. Lawrence, and R. Patch.
5) A committee be formed to draw up a constitution and rules with membership of Rev. Harris and Ryerson, John Fenton, Peter Paterson, and Dr. McCague.
6) subscriptions to be paid at McPhall’s bookbinder, Mr. Lesslie’s store, Patterson’s store, or to members of the committee.

In the same issue, William Lyon Mackenzie enthusiastically endorsed the scheme and pledged to become a subscriber and present twenty to thirty volumes to the new library, but thereafter, he grew silent about his own participation in its activities. Mackenzie was an enthusiastic proponent for all types of libraries. Still, he did not make further reference to the York Library even though the membership of the library was distinctly different from the select group that formed the Family Compact:
■ Rev. William Ryerson was a Methodist minister and brother of Egerton Ryerson.
■ Rev. Alexander Stewart was a Baptist minister and former teacher in York.
■ Dr. James McCague practiced medicine in York.
■ Thomas Appleton was a schoolmaster at the York Common School.
■ Robert Meighan was a merchant.
■ John Carey was a publisher and printer.
■ William Moore operated a drugstore.
■ John Fenton was a school teacher, an Anglican parish clerk, and a police clerk.
■ James Lesslie was a merchant, publisher, reform politician and later became one of the founders of the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute in 1830. He was a lifelong friend of Mackenzie.

Later in the summer of 1827, on August 22 and 30, the Advocate reported on the progress made by the committee members. At their meeting, held earlier in the summer on July 2, the following resolutions were passed unanimously:
1. That a number of subscription papers be printed, and that the committee use their best endeavours to procure subscribers.
2. That the president, treasurer, and secretary, do their utmost to procure the books already proposed, viz.—
Dr. Clarkes tract on the use and abuse of Tobacco; Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son; Evangelical Magazine by Jones; Goldsmith’s Works; British Methodist Magazine, 2 copies new series; Rollin’s Ancient History; Mosheim’s Church History; Watts on the Mind, Watts Logic; Reid on the Mind; Bishop of Landaff’s answer to T. Paine; Thornton Abbey; Locke on Toleration; and the works of the Author of Waverly.
3. That there be transferable tickets procured by the committee.
4. That Mr. Edward Henderson be librarian for the first year, and that he keep the books at his house; also that every Monday from 3 to 9 o’clock P.M. be the time for giving out and receiving books.
5. That a proper bookcase be procured for the use of the institution.
6. That the rules of the society be printed.
N.B.—A meeting of the subscribers will be held on Monday,, the 3rd day of September, at seven in the evening, in [Thomas] Appleton’s school room.
John Fenton, Secretary
Edith Firth reprinted this report in the Colonial Advocate concerning the organization of the York Subscription Library issued on August 23, 1827, in the Town of York, 1815–1834 (Toronto, 1966).

Despite this promising start, there was little news about the library until over a year later, on Thursday, December 4, 1828, when a notice signed by the President, Peter Paterson, of the quarterly meeting of York Subscription Library was announced for 7 o’clock Tuesday [Dec. 10th] 1828 at Thomas Appleton’s school. More than two years later, an Advocate notice in April 1831, announced a meeting for subscribers on Wednesday, April 27, at Thomas Appleton’s school for “starting afresh or discontinuing the Institution” and warns of forfeiture of claims by persons who do not come forward and pay their dues by Peter Paterson, President.

After this public statement, the York Library was dissolved, perhaps because, on December 24, 1830, a small group of men had previously met at the Masonic Hall on Colborne Street near Church Street to organize a Mechanics’ Institute for York. The Institute’s most active founders were Joseph Bates, a watchmaker from England, and James Lesslie. Once established, the Institute was housed in a rented space on the second floor of the Masonic Hall. When it opened in 1830, the Institute’s library comprised 1,300 volumes. The primary aim of mechanics’ institutes was to provide adult education for working-class members, including lending libraries, and they had broader educational goals and social appeal. In Upper Canada and Ontario, they immediately garnered legislative grants for their activities, a public funding advantage that subscription libraries seldom enjoyed at this time.

Radio Broadcasts by Canadian Libraries before 1945

2026-01-01T10:35:00.027-05:00

Canada was a pioneer in the development of radio. As early as May 1920, the Montreal station XWA (later CFCF) went on the air delivering a short concert broadcast to an audience as far away as Ottawa. Listeners initially utilized crystal sets, simple radio receivers. Eventually, these devices were superseded by many types of vacuum tube receivers that became standard consumer purchases as less expensive tabletop models were sold by the 1930s.

Even so, Canadian audiences were largely confined to major cities before the electrification of rural areas. For most of the 1920s, there were few Canadian stations and radio enthusiasts along the southern border, especially in Ontario, who often listened to American stations, such as KDKA in Pittsburgh, which began operating at the end of 1920. This station offered library storytelling for children, such as popular short fairy tales and animal stories.

The Golden Age of Radio and Libraries

In 2008, at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference, I presented a paper on the early broadcasts by Canadian libraries and librarians spanning the era of old-time radio from the 1920s to the ascendancy of television in the 1950s. It is mostly an overlooked subject in library history, but it has some parallels with the challenges posed by the advent of movies, television, and later, the Internet, Web 2.0, and social networking. Radio presented an opportunity to reach a mass audience beyond local registered users by entering people’s homes from all cultures and educational backgrounds across a broader geographic region. The British Columbia Department of Education was a leader in school radio program broadcasting: it began a regular series of radio programs for schools in March 1938 in cooperation with the new CBC station in Vancouver, CBR.

At first, libraries began participating with local stations operated by newspapers and other commercial establishments before the rise of national networks. It was an innovative era for librarians, demonstrating their readiness to embrace new technology. However, the role of broadcasting was comparatively small and limited to major libraries like Toronto or Vancouver. Radio was often viewed as an external ‘extension service’ rather than a mainstream activity. There was usually no provision for specialized broadcast sections or dedicated staffing as administrators sought to develop a range of other new services, such as a readers’ advisory service. In response to the new medium, librarians used radio in a sporadic way before expansion commenced after 1945, when libraries turned to ‘outreach’ and programming on a more systematic basis.

During this formative period, there was a gradual evolution from a local focus to national programming. Small independent local commercial stations secured broadcast licenses from the federal government at the outset and provided a flurry of programs featuring news, concerts, sports, advertising, discussion groups, and short segments with local groups willing to participate. After the Canadian National Railway (CNR) established a network of stations between 1923 and 1933 that eventually became part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national network in 1936, ‘library programs’ were developed for a national audience. The CNR radio was initially used as entertainment for passengers and railway hotel guests. Radio headsets and radio receivers in parlour cars of transcontinental passenger trains were linked with a network of transmitting radio stations from coast to coast. The CNR controlled the network content, usually from Toronto.

The CNR recognized the potential for educational programming along with educational authorities. This type of broadcasting began in the 1920s with the University of Alberta’s station, CKUA, and the Nova Scotia Department of Education’s use of station CHNS. A few years after the Aird Commission report in 1929, which recommended a national, publicly-owned radio system to foster Canadian culture and national identity, the federal government created Radio-Canada to replace the older CNR network. It offered programming in two separate networks, one French and one English.

Libraries began participating more formally with the CBC as they envisioned a growing national audience. In 1943, Stuart Griffiths, head of CBC programming in Toronto, spoke to Ontario librarians about effective radio cooperative projects and the CBC organization. Toronto Public Library, in particular, developed a good relationship with CJBC, the flagship station of the CBC English network. In 1944, TPL devoted an entire section of its annual report to radio broadcasts highlighting one successful program, “Lets Visit the Library:”

The interviewer strolled through the Central Library building chatting with various members of the staff and collecting items of interest in the Circulation Department, the Reference Library, the Microphotography Room, and the Boys and Girls House where a story was in progress, and several boys and girls were ‘interviewed.’ The visit ended in the chief librarian’s office when Mr. Sanderson told of other library activities, aims and ideals, which couldn’t be covered in the actual tour.

Charles Sanderson followed in the autumn of 1944 with a lengthy weekly series of talks, “Books and Us,” on CJBC. These were educational in nature, encouraging reading through discussions of book content, library services, literary topics, and trends in reading, rather than presenting reviews or promoting certain genres or authors. Attractive posters announcing the series and book lists, in the form of bookmarks for each talk, were made available to the public after the broadcasts.

Library Leadership in Types of Programming

Radio use by libraries varied over the interwar period and WW II. Canadian librarians did not develop specific plans for the new medium. Leadership on broadcasting came from the American Library Association, which established a radio committee in 1926, mostly to link it with adult education and literacy work. Librarians often relied on publications to develop their own ideas and discover successful efforts elsewhere. Three books in particular were helpful: (1) Francis W.K. Drury, The Broadcaster and the Librarian (1931), which emphasized educational aspects of melding discussions and library events on local airwaves; (2) Faith Holmes Hyers, The Library and the Radio (1938), a practical guide for promotion and community outreach; and (3) Julia Sauer, Radio Roads to Reading: Library Book Talks Broadcast to Girls and Boys (1939) which reprinted transcripts of radio book talks presented by the Rochester Public Library where she was in charge of children’s services for more than three decades.

In the course of her work with ALA and preparation of her book, Julia Sauer solicited scripts from libraries and received replies from Toronto and Vancouver. The Library and the Radio explored cooperation with educational authorities and the kinds of broadcasts conducted by children’s librarians. In general, Canadian libraries pursued several types of radio programs: children’s story hours, book talks, library publicity and programs, novel readings, and question and answers sessions with patrons.

Children’s story hours — Storytelling was the predominant program format in the early days of radio. Children’s librarians were used to story hours for various ages and locales, such as schools. Also, this developing subset of librarianship deeply believed in the power of stories to inspire youngsters and inform them about becoming the best they can be. Through the 1930s, Louise Riley, a Calgary librarian who would later rise to prominence across Canada after 1945, often presented stories on local stations, such as CJCJ, CFCN, and CFCA. In Saskatoon, Dorothy Clancy began reading stories on Saturday and Monday mornings on CFQC in the early 1930s. There were many other instances across the country. Eventually, librarians began supplying radio with subjects for dramatization by professional announcers, a development leading to popular CBC Dominion Network programs in the 1950s, Cuckoo Clock House on radio and Hidden Pages on television.

Library publicity and programs — On the occasion of ALA’s 56th annual conference held in Montreal in 1934, John Ridington, chief librarian of the University of British Columbia, broadcast a national address on Thursday evening, June 28th, on “Libraries as Public Safety Insurance.” He stressed the important role of libraries in communities and the need to finance these educational institutions properly. However, there were skeptics about the success of library publicity via radio. Mary Duncan Carter, the Director of the School of Library Science at the University of Southern California, told delegates at the Pacific Northwest Library Association meeting at Victoria in August 1941 that surveys suggested radio publicity for library work had comparatively limited appeal. She believed in concentrating on promoting the reading interest of various groups of listeners.

Book talks and novels — Using the airwaves for discussions about new books, important authors, or trends in reading were always comfortable topics for librarians. Alerting audiences to popular Canadian authors, such as Grace Campbell, was considered another essential duty. The quality of the TPL program “Books and Us” prompted the Globe and Mail to editorialize on March 9, 1945, that stations beyond Toronto should include it in their Sunday evening programming schedules. By this time, book talks were well established. In Hamilton, Freda Waldon, who later became the first President of the Canadian Library Association, hosted weekly Saturday afternoon chats about new books and Canadian issues on CHML. Similarly, Alexander Calhoun, the chief librarian in Calgary, arranged a series of talks starting in October 1936 that touched on foreign affairs and issues of the day. However, Calhoun and his library staff also took another step by inviting guest speakers to give presentations, a measure that became more frequent. Local libraries were also helpful by supplying materials to producers and professional radio announcers for their own book programs. The “Library Shelf” program on Toronto’s CFRB in the 1930s was particularly successful.

Promoting Library Services — Of course, as librarians became more adept at programming of all sorts, not just radio, the idea of public relations crept into the minds of administrators. Creating a favourable image of the library became an important aspect of broadcasting. The most notable instance came in June 1936, when the Special Libraries Association met in Montreal. American special librarians used a series of radio addresses to inform and promote the public about type library work, an event I documented in an earlier blog at this link. Through the 1930s and 1940s, librarians often suggested a visit to the library would open new vistas. In early 1946, the Montreal Children's Library (a privately funded library) used radio to advertise its services. On one segment, Ted Miller, an announcer on CBM, interviewed a boy and a girl who were library users. They explained their experiences and enjoyed their adventure over the airwaves. By the mid-1940s, as librarianship developed, a few librarians, such as Elizabeth Dafoe, chief librarian of the University of Manitoba, began using radio to promote regional systems and to entice students to pursue a career in librarianship.

Conclusion

Although some librarians were reluctant to participate in radio broadcasting because they feared it might reduce the popularity of reading books and the use of libraries. Also, there was concern about the commercialization of literature. In his 1935 annual report, Charles Sanderson, deputy chief librarian at Toronto Public Library, noted the demand for books stemming from radio broadcasts: “whilst some of these broadcasts represent disinterested comment, many of them have a camouflaged commercial support which is unknown to most listeners.” Sanderson suggested one solution was independent library programming to offset commercial coercion. Nevertheless, many successful experimental library efforts emerged in the interwar period. Generally, library broadcasts offered a broad range of programming aimed at enriching the lives of people of all ages.

Ultimately, despite generally enthusiastic support for radio, librarians shared the fate of others who advocated for educational programs. Commercial programs, especially American ones, proliferated, and as radio programming became more segmented and competitive, and television achieved its primary, local library efforts were given less time on the air. However, they continued to provide support for broadcasters by supplying information and materials for programs. There were other difficult factors as well, such as the allocation of less popular or irregular hours, the lack of direct public response, inconsistent ties to local stations or broadcasters, and the absence of reliable survey data on audience size. Nonetheless, librarian broadcasters, especially children’s librarians, were determined to use radio to promote reading and library use through book talks, storytelling, and promotional programs.

Dorothy Cullen, a Prince Edward Island librarian who had earned her BLS at the Pratt Institute Library School in 1936, and who had experience with radio book talks, summed up this period astutely in a 1946 article on broadcasting published in the Maritimes and Ontario: “If the question were put to a group of librarians — ‘Are radio programs worthwhile as publicity’ — you would find considerable difference of opinion about them; but probably most of the people who have given this medium a tryout would say that they found broadcasting worth the time and effort. It does take a good deal of time preparing radio broadcasts ... but radio publicity can compare favorably with projects undertaken within the library - displays, booklists, etc. because it has possibilities of reaching people who are not library patrons.”

In the dominant age of radio before 1950, larger Canadian public libraries used the new medium and a variety of broadcasting partnerships to cultivate community engagement and popularize their services, especially for children. Radio programming was an opportunity to reach people and groups that might not typically attend library programs or register to borrow materials. After 1952, with the advent of CBC Television, librarians began to turn their attention to another new medium, which would supplant radio and have an even greater impact on society.

Further suggestions:

My 2008 Canadian Library Association radio presentation in PDF format on 'Reaching Listeners and Users' is at this link.

An audio and transcription of my interview by Mr. Rex Murphy on the CBC network in March 1995 about the future of libraries and books is the subject of an earlier blog at this link.

Use of radio at the Special Libraries Association conference in Montreal in 1936 is the subject of an earlier blog at this link.

Cullen, Dorothy, “Radio Programs,” Maritime Library Association Bulletin 10, no. 2 (1945): 6–1; Reprinted as “Library Radio Programs,” Ontario Library Review 30, no. 1 (1946): 48–52.

George-Émile Marquis and Public Libraries in Quebec before 1945

2025-11-27T17:22:00.023-05:00

Nos bibliothèques publiques, by Georges-Émile Marquis. Québec: Éditions du Terroir, 1925, 16 p., illus.
Plaidoyer pour les bibliothèques publiques, by Georges-Émile Marquis. Montréal: L’Oeuvre des tracts, 1946, 16 p.

G-É Marquis, c.1930s

In 1890, the government of Quebec passed a statute, the Municipal Aid to Public Libraries (Chapter 34), authorizing municipalities to approve bylaws to “aid, in conformity with the laws governing them, the establishment and maintenance of free public libraries in their municipalities or in adjoining municipalities.” This law also stipulated similar permissive assistance for library associations and mechanics’ institutes. The city of Westmount, on the island of Montreal, was the first to create a municipal library under this statute in 1899. Yet, the vast majority of communities in Quebec continued to be served by bibliothèques paroissiales, that is, small local collections created and managed by the Catholic Church for use by parishioners since the mid-19th century. These libraries offered ‘wholesome reading’ with an emphasis on Catholic values and they were operated, for the most part, by priests and volunteers.

There were critics of the dominance of clerical influence in Quebec society, such as André Siegfried (1875–1959), a French academic and political writer who authored Le Canada, les deux races (1906) published in English in 1907. Despite his critique of clerical power, he proposed that French-speaking Canadians had formed a “national” identity and affiliation with French civilization. His view influenced generations of Quebec leaders and was especially evident in G-É Marquis's writing about life in Quebec during the first half of the 20th century. Siegfried believed that it was necessary to encourage Québécois to modernize and escape from the constraints of conservative Catholic traditionalism to become a more liberal, secular society. Public library formation through municipalities was one such step in which he felt the Church's opposition was a negative force.

Ecclesiastical resistance to the establishment of secularized municipal public libraries remained strong, even in Quebec’s urban centre, Montreal, where the city council, forced to turn down a $150,000 Carnegie grant promised in 1901, eventually erected a public library. The Bibliothèque de la Ville de Montréal, a beautiful, classic Beaux-Arts style building, became the city’s central public library after its official opening in May 1917. However, its holdings were deficient for a city of more than 600,000, borrowing was subject to a $3 to $6 deposit, and French-language publications were lacking. By the mid-1920s, only small steps had been taken toward municipal tax-supported public libraries in Quebec. Few writers or journalists were publishing articles in newspapers, journals, or monographs advocating the adoption of this type of library, which was making greater strides in English-speaking countries.

One such author, largely ignored in Canadian public library histories, was Georges-Émile Marquis, who was born in Saint-Pierre-de-Montmagny in 1878. He became a teacher after graduating from the Laval Normal School in 1896; he then taught schoolchildren for a short time before becoming a school inspector in 1905. A few years later, he was appointed Chief Statistician of the Quebec Bureau of Statistics in 1914. Marquis had an eclectic range of interests spanning history, economics, travel, the presidency of the Canadian Club at Quebec City, and the honorary rank of colonel in the Lévis Regiment. As a member of the Société des Auteurs Canadiens and the Société des Arts, Sciences et Lettres, he was intent on publishing his lectures and issuing small pamphlets: one such special focus was the library situation in Quebec. This attentiveness became a vocation when, in 1934, he was appointed as Director of the Library of the Legislator, a position he held in Quebec City until his retirement in 1952.

G.-É. Marquis and Nos bibliothèques publiques, 1925

Marquis’ first library publication, Nos bibliothèques publiques, drew on his knowledge of general statistics for all types of libraries collected by the provincial government as well as his practical experience as an inspector of school libraries. His booklet reprinted his speech to the French section of the Canadian Authors Association held at the Château Frontenac, Quebec City, on May 4, 1925, in advance of the Book Week held across the province. Marquis, an entertaining and informative speaker, demonstrated a conversational style and interest in book learning, libraries, and the notion of cultural progress in Quebec. Although he addressed all types of libraries, it was clear throughout his talk that he interpreted ‘public library’ in a broad sense to include municipalities, societies, schools, and parish libraries. Drawing on statistics for 1924 tabulated by the Bureau, he stated there were 1,899 public libraries with holdings of 3,853,815 volumes and pamphlets in the province—the vast majority of which were school libraries. There were 225 parish libraries and just a handful, 30, designated as public libraries (p. 12). By comparison, Marquis used comparative figures from the Ontario Department of Education to calculate that Quebec’s neighbour held 3,315,346 volumes in 466 public libraries (free and association) and 5,645 school libraries, for a total of 6,111 libraries. Marquis suggested his comparison might give pause for consideration because, under Ontario legislation there were 195 free public libraries supported by municipal taxation serving more than 1,500,000 people, i.e. about half the provincial population.

For the most part, in his opening section (pp. 3–7), Marquis provided a reliable account of the growth of private, public, and semi-public libraries from the period of New France to the early 20th century. Major libraries were mainly in Montreal and Quebec City where there were leading figures in religious, educational, or commercial fields. Surprisingly, he does not mention the well-known exploits of Alexandre Vattemare in the early 1840s to establish book exchanges, a program that received much attention at the time. Marquis does highlight the historiography of library related contributions by Eugène Rouillard, Pierre-Georges Roy, Édouard-Zotique Massicotte, Aegidius Fauteux, and the neglected history of Frederick C. Wurtele on the valuable library (still active today) of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. A second section (pp. 7–11) summarizes the development of printing, publishing, and book collecting beginning with the Gazette de Québec in 1764. One notable collection, the library of Philéas Gagnon, 8,000 volumes, was purchased for $31,000 and became the property of the Montreal Municipal Library in 1910. The entire collection was a prominent feature of the new Beaux-Arts library opened on Sherbrooke Street East.

The final two sections of Nos bibliothèques publiques present Marquis’ knowledgeable statistical summary, followed by a concluding part (pp. 14–16) that offers some optimism for future progress. He notes current provincial efforts to fund Canadian books for Quebec schools, the efforts of journalists and editors of popular newspapers and periodicals to supply reading for the public and indirectly to promote libraries. He closes by observing that private initiatives strengthened by public assistance can improve present conditions and develop an abundant source of notable Canadian books that would contribute to “les nombreux chefs-d’oeuvre de la littérature française.”

G.-É. Marquis and a Plea for Public Libraries in Quebec, 1946

Two decades later, in 1946, Marquis expanded the theme of public libraries more directly. This pamphlet is more polished and displays greater knowledge of librarianship that he gained after a decade in his office as Librarian of the Legislative Library. In his opening, he reaffirmed his life-long love of books, “Sans livres, que ferions-nous pour nous cultiver ou nous évader? me suis-je souventes fois demandé, et c’est pourquoi je m’apitoie sur le sort des populations qui en sont privées.” [Without books, what would we do to cultivate ourselves or to escape? I have often asked myself, and that is why I am sorry for the populations deprived of them.] To bolster his case for the universality of public library development beyond Anglo-American librarianship, Marquis cites an unusual source neglected throughout North America: The League of Nations International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, which mainly operated from Paris from 1922 to 1946. In 1937, this committee published Mission sociale et intellectuelle des Bibliothèques populaires; Son organisation, ses moyens d'actions that went on record asserting,

Qu’il s’gisse de l'éducation des jeunes, des adultes et de l'auto-éducation, de procurer un simple délassement de l'esprit, d’enseigner, de renseigner, de former ou de distraire, toujours la bibliothèque populaire offre ses ressources, et sa responsabilité s’en augmente d’autant. [Whether or not it is education for young people, adults, and self-education, providing a simple relaxation for the mind, teaching, informing, training, or entertaining, the public library always offers its resources, and its responsibility increases accordingly (p. 5).]

This early mission statement still rings true in 2025. Marquis also credits Andrew Carnegie’s oft-quoted belief that libraries exist to help those who help themselves as well as Jules Ferry, a French statesman and philosopher, who believed that libraries were a vital asset in education. Further, Marquis, employing a much narrower conception of a ‘public library’ than he relied on in 1926, stated there were only six libraries for predominantly English-speaking readers and four serving French-speaking readers (pp. 2–3), admittedly an unpleasant truth. However, he points to positive changing attitudes to public library development pp. 8–9):

the formation of l’Association des Bibliothécaires catholiques in 1943 and its call for a reorganization of libraries across the province;
the proposals by the Conseil de l’École des Bibliothécaires de l’Université de Montréal to consider new avenues to improve library services;
the call for regional library development by the Société d’Éducation des Adultes du Québec, and
a Montreal city council investigation into the possibility of establishing city branch libraries.

In viewing the broader postwar landscape, Marquis suggests that Quebec’s public library system might be invigorated by potential federal assistance for libraries from Ottawa, especially if they came under the direction of a provincial Department of Public Instruction, based on current denominational lines and free from any political interference (pp.19–11). His proposal looked, in part, to earlier American ideas, but it reflects the fact that Canadian Dominion-Provincial financial relations were under discussion immediately after 1945. A more liberal tone beyond conservative Quebec nationalism is clearly expressed that foreshadows later progressive development (p. 14): “Que Québec me donne des compétences, et j’obtiendrai notre quote-part des faveurs du pouvoir central” [Give me strength in Quebec, and I will get our share of favours from the federal government]. But Marquis asks: where was the leadership to address the question at hand? when might the government act?

The writer proposed that knowledgeable library promoters should take the lead by explaining the utility of public libraries to the public through speeches, radio, and publications. Then, the demand for establishing public libraries could be successful and Quebec could keep pace with library progress in the rest of Canada which was increasingly aligned with American librarianship after Word War II.

The power of libraries to benefit society, Marquis opines, is everlasting as a source of learning. He finishes by illustrating his point with the motto beneath a stained-glass window in his legislative library depicting a woman drawing water from a stream — “Je puise mais n’épuise” [I draw, but I do not exhaust (p. 16)].

Mostly, Marquis is a minor but not entirely forgotten figure in Canadian librarianship. Gaston Bernier has written about his career at the National Assembly by remarking that he possessed a conservative, military mindset and a standoffish attitude that narrowed his social advancement. Certainly, he did not participate in any degree in library associations, choosing to pursue personal interests that led him to publish more than two dozen small tracts outside the field of libraries. Yet, from the 1920s to the 1940s, his voice advocated for better libraries, especially those supported by municipalities. He wrote at a time when even three prominent Anglophone authors of Libraries in Canada (published in 1933) conceded that the immediate improvement of parish libraries was the most practical step forward for library progress in Quebec due to general political and religious support. After his retirement in 1952, Marquis issued a few publications on Quebec commemorative monuments, Mexico, and his regiment at Lévis. He died in 1960 in Quebec City.

An article by Gaston Bernier discussing the tenure of Marquis at the Legislative Library, “Georges-Émile Marquis (1878-1960): un bibliothécaire dynamique mais rébarbatif,” Documentation et bibliothèques 58, 2 (2012): 77–83 is available via Érudit at this link.

My earlier blog on Les Bibliothèques Populaires (1890) by Eugène Rouillard is at this link.

My blog on Raymond Tanghe and his proposal for Quebec libraries in 1952 is at this link.

Canadian Public Libraries and Democracy

2025-10-25T15:54:00.053-04:00

The ‘Library Faith’ in Books, Reading, and Democracy

A longstanding belief in the positive influence of the public library in 20th-century North American librarianship was encapsulated in the short term, ‘the library faith,’ a visionary construct best summarized and articulated in an examination of public library service commissioned by the American Library Association (ALA), the Public Library Inquiry, which published its research from 1947 to 1952. The Inquiry developed this descriptive model of prevailing beliefs guiding the evolution of public libraries to understand and interpret the past in a structured way. Modelling can be helpful in identifying central ideas, beliefs, and opinions during an era when a prevailing consensus exists within a conceptual framework. The extensive Inquiry study noted that librarians, indeed, many educators and political leaders, believed in the beneficent power of books and reading. Reading was regarded as a crucial element in personal growth and full citizenship.

Ideally, the library, as a responsible democratic institution, provides free access to printed resources of recreation and knowledge to every person in its community, a prime egalitarian impulse. In this process, librarians contributed to the democratic value of life by offering selected sources of knowledge for personal growth and an informed citizenry to make sound judgements in public affairs. As a democratic political institution, the tax-supported public library served broader social and cultural functions by preserving and organizing printed knowledge for its communities and, ultimately, for the nation. Libraries and librarians were a positive force in an effort to transform individuals and society for the better through the power of reading. The ‘library faith’ was interwoven with democratic structures and ideals: free library access, the appetite for public reading, the freedom to exchange ideas and opinions, permissive library legislation, government tax support, and the power of knowledge to contribute to the betterment of society.

However, the Inquiry concluded that libraries too often failed to achieve the ideals described in the library faith, such as being a centre of popular education. The reality of everyday library services in 1950 America, including a limited clientele that read serious books, public apathy, the exclusion of many citizens, a lack of funding, and regional inequities, revealed an institution that did not (and could not) live up to its humanistic articles of faith identified in the Inquiry. For librarians and library users, the library faith was a guiding spirit—a virtue—rather than an everyday reality. Censorship was a common feature in libraries where objectionable books were not purchased or safely relegated to restricted shelves. Many citizens were either not eager readers, preferred ‘lightweight’ literature, or were excluded unjustly. In fact, many American communities were without library services. The Inquiry advised that the library faith was still relevant as a guide for developing services, but less useful as an argument to secure public support. Instead, libraries should fashion clear, uniform statements about the public library’s purpose.

It is axiomatic that democracy means the ‘rule of the people.’ Free and fair elections give expression to the ‘will of the people’ that provides the basis of the authority of government. But there are conflicting viewpoints concerning priorities and perspectives about the use of power, and the actual desires of citizens. Fundamental civil liberties protect against government interference: freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly or association, freedom of worship, and equality before the law. Yet, the public regards many civil rights that provide equal treatment under the law as equally important, such as the right to vote and hold free and fair elections, protection from discrimination, various rights of persons before the law, and the right to a public education. In Canada there are a host of problems besetting representative liberal democracy, issues such as blatant racism, discrimination, suppression of minority rights, sexism, alienation, government transparency, hatred, violence, and political corruption. In this environment, educational concerns and the freedom of expression and thought have been central issues in library history. The traditional democratic role of libraries, as expounded by promoters and librarians, has encouraged people to think for themselves and become enlightened citizens. Democracy requires people who understand and believe in its principles and institutions and are determined to work together to preserve, criticize, and improve it as the public interest evolves. Over the course of time, the library’s collections have served as an educational resource, informing citizens, circulating useful knowledge for self-improvement, and integrating immigrants into the life of the nation. These are desirable roles for fostering and maintaining an educated citizenry in a democracy. But one might question whether an ‘informed citizenry’ is a necessary condition for a democracy or simply wishful thinking.

No comparable national study to the Public Library Inquiry occurred in 20th-century Canada. Even so, numerous statements after 1900 document the commitment to the idealism embodied in the model outlined in the ‘library faith’ and support for democratic ideals. An insightful thesis by John Wiseman in 1989 cited the metaphorical concept of ‘temples of democracy’ to describe the aspirations of Ontario library promoters to bring literature free of charge to the public before 1920. John Hallam and John Taylor, the enthusiastic champions of the free library established in Toronto in 1883, spoke to the need for an intelligent and enlightened populace. Hallam stated, “I know of nothing more useful, nothing more genuinely ornamental or creditable to a community, than the possession of a good free library, by means of which may be enjoyed the productions of the finest minds.” Taylor outlined the progress of public libraries in the United States, and opined: “We cannot, of course, compare Toronto with such cities as Boston and Chicago, but surely we should not be outdone by every small manufacturing town in New England in the matter of intelligence.”

Ideally, the library was maintained and belonged to the people who benefited equally from the minds of the past through books, newspapers, and journals. In the early development of Canadian free public libraries, successful library referendums on bylaws reflected the ‘will of the people’ who often accepted the underlying utilitarian argument that free access to books in public libraries produced a greater amount of well-being for a greater number of people. When Hamilton ratepayers voted to establish a public library in 1889, the Hamilton Spectator editorial summed up the matter concisely: “It will make the people better able to govern themselves.” The requirement for local plebiscites, followed by municipal bylaws establishing public libraries, was a standard feature of public library legislation into the second half of the 20th century, augmented by provincial government decisions to convert older mechanics’ institutes and association libraries into public libraries and offer limited financial support.

But the rationale for tax-supported libraries in their formative stage and adequate accommodation for services was sometimes rejected by electors, as in two large Canadian cities, Kingston and Halifax. At Kingston, on 24 September 1899, the Whig-Standard editor complained, “The libraries have not been doing adequate public service, intellectually and as a source of moral recreation. There is a great want in the line of profitable resort [resource] and ready reference.” In Halifax, on 5 November 1912, when the issue of establishing a municipal public library arose at a town hall meeting, library supporters were defeated despite requisite democratic oratory from the noted suffragist, Dr. Eliza Ritchie, the first Canadian to receive a PhD (Cornell University). The Halifax Evening Mail reported: “She defined the aim of the citizens’ library as distinctly democratic—that of providing all citizens with the literature they need or desire. It is FOR THE PEOPLE.” Kingston (until 1925) and Halifax (until 1951) continued to resist adequate tax-supported public library service with suitable buildings for many years.

The Democratic Conviction in Canadian Librarianship before 1940

Canadian librarians often relied on the persuasive power of democratic rhetoric to advance the cause of public library development, especially during wartime, when the founding principles of democracy faced the prospect of suspension. At the 1916 annual ALA meeting at Ashbury Park, New Jersey, an astute promoter of libraries from Toronto, Edwin Austin Hardy, the secretary of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), told his American audience:
The dynamic of library work is the vision of democracy in the coming years. The present giant struggle will leave no nation untouched. One result will be the rush to North America of millions of new population. Another result will be the recasting of the federal relations within the British Empire. Another will be the revision of the international relations of all the great powers. Who can be sufficient for these mighty tasks of the future? An enlightened and ennobled democracy, of sound knowledge, wide sympathy and broad vision can render the highest service in the great days to come. The United States and the Dominion of Canada must be such democracies and the librarian must rank alongside the teacher, the legislator, and the preacher in the making of the new world.

In 1918, another prominent librarian, Mary J.L. Black, told her OLA colleagues:
If a library is not an embodiment of democracy and universal in its service, it is not fulfilling its functions. As a democratic institution the public library stands alone. In it, the scholar and ditcher, the school boy and the society dame are on an equal footing, and service should be rendered them accordingly. In it, the monetary relationship does not exist, for the public are only coming to their own, and if it does not contain material that is of special interest to each one of them, then they indeed have a grievance.

She was not alone in espousing the value of free access to resources. Another early instance was a presidential speech by Helen Gordon Stewart, Victoria Public Library, to the Pacific Northwest Library Association in Spokane, 1921.
There is no way of telling truth from error, but the best test of the power of a truth is to get itself accepted in free competition in the market place, and the Public Library should be the intellectual market place of every community. Democracy needs all the ideas it can get, and a stuffed press or a stuffed library, instead of safeguarding civilization, lead to atrophy and decay.

The democratic theme, coupled with the power of reading, was a key argument to establish public libraries. In 1927, when Canada celebrated its sixtieth anniversary by asserting its national identity more confidently, the Fort William (now Thunder Bay) library entered a parade float with the popular verse, “Books are keys to wisdom’s treasure.” This phrase came from a short rhyme by the American author, Emilie Poulsson, which included another expression librarians often employed to draw attention to entertaining literature: “books are gates to lands of pleasure.” When economic conditions worsened in the 1930s and threatened the economic livelihoods of many people, librarians reinforced their ties with democratic ideals and public education. Foremost was George Locke, chief librarian of Toronto Public Library, who declared in 1933, “It is as necessary to provide for adult education as for elementary education, and so the library and the school are necessary for the perpetuation of democracy.”

Locke and Mary Black, together with John Ridington, included multiple references to democracy in their Carnegie financed commission survey of libraries published in 1933, Libraries in Canada. They put the case for the public library:
The realization that, by ten thousand people each paying the cost of a single book, to be kept available for all in a general collection, each contributor would have access to ten thousand volumes, long ago commended itself to general public judgment as a worthwhile piece of co-operation. This realization is the foundation on which the public library is built—and that foundation is as broad and as strong as democracy itself. (p. 9)
They also contended that the library’s resources for reading were a force for personal development and societal good:
...if it is recognized that no one can be educated without books, it inevitably follows that a government should put libraries in the same class with schools, making both compulsory. This contention rests on the basis that modern thought realizes that education of all the people is necessary to the preservation and the permanence of a democratic form of government. (p. 135)

Yet the democratic spirit did not appeal to everyone, and successes were few outside major cities. As the 1933 survey admitted, three-fourths of Canada’s population of 10,500,000 were without public library service of any kind at a time when the rise of ruthless authoritarian regimes threatened the tenets of democracy itself. The Depression era devastated national economies on a global scale, thereby halting opportunities for library growth. Cooperative partnerships were one solution with the development of regional library systems through local referendums, being most evident in British Columbia. The American economist, Alvin S. Johnson, reinforced another response in 1938. He authored The Public Library—A People's University, giving greater currency to an earlier phrase, and he devoted an entire chapter to “The Public Library in a Democracy.” He called upon librarians to be more proactive in educating adults to be knowledgeable citizens, to go beyond book lending and to withstand pressure to provide ephemeral publications. The phrase gained popularity with librarians, but the outbreak of war dimmed immediate prospects for improvement.

Changing Perceptions after 1940

The Second World War was a struggle for freedom and a dramatic period of change for Canada and America. During the war, Canada emerged as a prosperous nation by producing weapons, ships, airplanes, vehicles, and agricultural products for itself and for its allies. Canadians realized that peaceful international relations were vital for their security and came to regard the United States as their primary ally. In May 1940, the Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, issued an influential paper to ALA members that argued librarians should become stronger agents of democracy and assume a more vital role in civic life. Earlier in March, at the annual OLA conference, the president, Kathleen Moyer Elliot, addressed the theme of ‘The Library and the Community,’ stressing interaction with people and suggesting a refashioning of the ‘library faith’ by placing more emphasis on community involvement.
But while Books for People as a fundamental purpose of libraries has remained unchanged through the years in which both the character and the care of book collections have changed greatly, the emphasis has shifted. Once it was on Books, now it is on People.
Liberal librarians, believing in the importance of the individual, encouraging every man to read as widely as he will and form his own opinions, are defenders of democracy.

In 1941, a few leaders formed a small national body, the Canadian Library Council, to expedite progress in the library field. It issued a pamphlet, Canada Needs Libraries, in 1945, stating that the library possessed resources and educational and recreational potential for all ages. In short, “it has a very special part to play in the life of the community which no other agency can fill.”
...the information and enlightenment oi the people of Canada from printed sources is a vital force in the growth of the intelligence, character, economic advancement, and cultural life of the nation. An adequate supply oi books should be available to all citizens, whatever their geographical location or economic status.

In a review of Canadian trends for the Wilson Library Bulletin in November 1944, a Windsor librarian, Eleanor Barteaux, reiterated confidence in the beneficial association of books and democratic well-being that librarians were attempting to achieve.
Librarians know from past experience that when this war is over, there will be an abnormally large demand for library service of all kinds in all the provinces. Upon this postwar library, in a country where democracy is the way of life, must fall the task of providing the materials for continuing education and intellectual recreation for an enlightened citizenry.

In another booklet, The Public Library (1944) by Angus Mowat, the inspector of public libraries for Ontario, also outlined a broader vision—the value of libraries to communities and organizations. By developing reliable resources for carrying on more active adult education programs with other agencies, public libraries could become “an essential sinew in the body of community life.” He said,
The free public library belongs to the community and it is supported by the community, just as the school, fire, and police services are supported. This is the normal and intelligent practice in a democracy. Not all libraries are successful but the free public library has an infinitely greater chance of success than has the association library.

Another cornerstone of the library faith came under scrutiny by John Grierson, the dynamic Commissioner of the National Film Board of Canada from 1939–45. The NFB had produced a documentary, the Library on Wheels, in 1944, demonstrating how bookmobiles could serve twenty rural communities in the Fraser Valley region of British Columbia. In an address to American and Canadian librarians at Buffalo in June 1946, Grierson warned, “the old library outlook is over and done with.” He challenged the primacy of the book and the passive role of simply circulating resources and dispensing information. He suggested librarians adopt new methods to spread popular education by reaching out to community organizations and being more proactive beyond the confines of library buildings.
I do not say that the day of the book is over, but the day of the book only is certainly over. It is not information that is needed today; in fact, it is not information that is sought. It is enlightenment, and that is a very different thing involving, as it does, the dramatic process of sparking the mind and the heart into new hope, new vision, new realization, and new efforts in citizenship.
You can no longer think that the work is done if the information is made available or even conveyed. The work is not done until we spark the gap between the citizen and the world of his citizenship, bring into his imagination the great and beneficent struggle of man which we see today, and finally secure his creative participation in that struggle.

Writing in the Canadian Forum in July 1946, Nora Bateson, a champion of regional library development, argued for the need to employ modern methods of communication to reach rural communities, nonusers, and underserved groups. She reflected on the value of the older concept of using books to edify the public:
In less turbulent days it was another function of the library that was usually put first and it is still as important as it ever was: the enriching of individual lives in a thousand quiet ways. In literature, art, philosophy, science, history, many find their delight and refreshment. One of the more tangible effects of such reading is that it makes people live more fully, enables them to see more and deeper meaning in their own lives and experiences. And the largest possible number of fully developed individuals is the aim of any robust democracy.

Library recruitment, 1945

As the national population grew and the pace of life picked up in postwar Canada, public libraries sought to expand their range of services. The establishment of new regional systems and library outreach were noticeable features. More effort was made to reach non-users (the majority) or underserved rural populations. Public relations, attendance at community events, in-house film festivals, park programs, partnerships with groups, work with hospitals, and delivery of books to people with disabilities. Libraries placed greater emphasis on language resources and sponsored classes for immigrants because ‘New Canadians’ sought assistance in their new homeland. The concept of the library as a major hub for community activity beyond book lending was taking a firmer hold. It became a place where adults and children could discover books, films, radio programs, recordings, educational television broadcasts, or newspapers, thus satisfying their desire to learn. It was becoming in the popular parlance, a people place, and the University of Toronto created a recruitment poster with an expression that took hold: “You like people, you like books.” In 1949, the Canadian Library Association (CLA) inaugurated Young Canada’s Book Week to promote good reading, cultivate personal values, and introduce children to Canadian literary authors. The Book Week national campaign unabashedly aimed to inspire a love of reading by connecting children with authors and illustrators through communal events, such as essay and poster competitions.

In a conservative era, the older reliance on the enlightening power of books and the democratic theme retained some currency in library thinking. When the Canadian Library Association issued Suggested Standards of Service for Public Libraries in Canada in 1955, the National Librarian, William K. Lamb, introduced the guidelines using a familiar theme:
In the world in which we live, adequate library service is becoming more and more vital. Few institutions can make a greater contribution to democracy than an adequately staffed and equipped public library. It offers wide opportunities for general education, ready access to books expressing varied points of view on questions of the day, vocational help of many kinds, books on all sorts of hobbies and handicrafts, and a wide range of recreational reading. It can help to make our working hours more effective and successful, and to ensure that leisure time is passed in some pleasant and socially desirable way.
Nevertheless, the brief purpose statement in the 1955 standards did not reference a democratic theme. It relied on the utilitarian principle: “the basic purpose of public library service is to provide a sufficient number of books of quality, so housed and organized, and with their use so promoted, that they reach the greatest possible number of people, thus making their local contribution to the education and to the cultural growth of the community.”

Informed Citizenship through Intellectual Freedom

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, reliance on the efficacy of books diminished as it became evident that libraries were avoiding the selection of objectionable or controversial literature that some citizens would prefer to borrow or consult. In 1951, the newly formed OLA Intellectual Freedom Committee tendered a resolution, which was successfully passed at the general meeting, requesting that the CLA adopt a Canadian Library Bill of Rights that all Canadian libraries might embrace. But the proposal was not acted upon: librarians were reluctant to investigate self-censorship in book selection. In principle, the CLA opposed official censorship. In April 1953, the association forwarded a brief to the Senate Special Committee studying ‘salacious and indecent literature’ criticizing the prohibitive government approach used to censor books. The prevailing attitude to book selection often crystallized around the mindset that the antidote for bad books was good book selection and the establishment of more libraries across the country to supply acceptable literature. The 1955 CLA Standards provided a succinct summary: “A high quality of book selection is assumed.”

The practical matter of localized adult services and programs for groups resonated more strongly, driven by planned community needs and cooperation with other agencies. Librarians were more inclined to curtail interest in individual ‘readers’ advisory’ work and emphasize literacy and basic lifelong adult education programming. The promotion of an enlightened citizenship and assistance in realizing democratic ideals was melded with more functional, systematic goals as specialized services developed. The formal expression of these trends appeared in the revised CLA standards of 1967, which provided an expanded statement of the purpose and objectives of a Canadian public library:

1. To provide opportunity and encouragement for continuous education for every individual in the community—children, young people, men and women.
2. Through guidance, stimulation, and communication of ideas, to promote an enlightened and enriched citizenry.
3. To assemble, preserve and administer in organized collections the library's print and non-print materials to support the educational, cultural and recreational program of the community.
4. To provide an accurate, reliable information service.
5. To support and co-operate with groups and organizations in the community in presenting educational and cultural programs.

But the most important change in library thinking for engaging an informed citizenry came with the CLA’s adoption of a statement supporting intellectual freedom in 1966. There was a growing realization that public libraries sometimes posed obstacles to free democratic debate and open expression of ideas, precisely through the composition of collections and the delivery of services. Canadian librarians had not been outspoken advocates in resisting censorship until they adopted the precept that access to the broadest range of ideas coupled with the rights of readers was essential in a democratic society: “Intellectual Freedom comprehends the right of every person (in the legal meaning of the term), subject to reasonable requirements of public order, to have access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual creativity, and to express his thoughts publicly.”

For decades, Canadian librarians had been reluctant to formally uphold freedom of expression and thought. They adhered to restrictive ‘community standards’ and believed the perfunctory lending of good books and reliance on democratic rhetoric would suffice to improve society and validate the library’s standing as a fundamental service. Intellectual freedom was a significant accomplishment of librarianship that marked a dramatic shift to linking libraries more closely to democratic freedom of expression, thought, and opinion by supporting the lawful diffusion of ideas and information without restriction. It had evolved in part from the beliefs associated with the concept of the ‘library faith,’ but moved far beyond its simpler comforts. Into the 21st century, the contribution public libraries make to offer citizens access to all points of view continues to be considered a vital (but difficult to achieve) component in supporting and encouraging democracy.

My previous blogs are available on John Hallam and John Taylor.

My review of Confronting the Democratic Discourse by Sam Popowich is at this link.

The blog on the 1966 CLA intellectual freedom statement is at this link.

The blog on the 1933 Libraries in Canada commission is at this link.

My blog about the Canadian Library Council’s Canada Needs Libraries (1945).

My blog on the issue to counter undesirable literature in postwar Canada is at this link.

Three Maritime Memorial Libraries at Dalhousie, Acadia, and Mount Allison

2025-10-08T10:53:00.025-04:00

College and university education evolved slowly in the Canadian Maritime provinces before 1900. By the time of the First World War, Dalhousie was the most prominent university in the region. Established in Halifax in 1818, it began to expand after 1911 when it relocated to the more spacious Studley campus where much-needed new buildings could be constructed. By this time, two other smaller, distinguished liberal arts universities had also gained prominence: Acadia in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and Mount Allison in Sackville, New Brunswick. Acadia was established in 1838 and began to grow in the early 20th century. Mount Allison, founded in 1839, was noted for being the first university in the British Empire to award a bachelor’s degree to a woman as early as 1875. Collections at all three institutions were relatively small. When James Bain reviewed library progress across Canada in 1895, he reported that Dalhousie (college) held 20,000 volumes, Mount Allison held 4,500 volumes, and Acadia held 3,850 volumes. Prior to 1914, the three institutions shared a common problem—there was no separate building for library purposes, although university officials and alumni alike acknowledged the necessity of erecting one.

The Macdonald Memorial Library, Dalhousie University, 1915

Macdonald Library sketches by Arthur Lismer, c.1918

The largest university library building in the Maritimes in the first half of the 20th century was named for Charles MacDonald, a mathematics professor at Dalhousie from 1864–1901. After he bequeathed the university $2,000 to purchase library books, a memorial fund in his name had succeeded in raising this amount to $33,000 by 1905. Progress stalled at this point because no suitable location was available for constructing a library. But the acquisition of the Studley estate in 1911 cleared the way to proceed. Officials laid a cornerstone in the spring of 1914, and construction was completed by the fall of 1915. Andrew R. Cobb (1876–1943) of Halifax and Frank Darling (1850–1923) of Toronto, who served as a consultant, were the design architects. Andrew Cobb would figure prominently in all three Maritime memorial libraries. The influence of the Georgian style is evident in the rectangular dimensions, columned portico, Palladian window, and classical exterior symmetry of Andrew Cobb’s design. These exterior elements exhibited a heritage of order and balance rather than monumentality. The small building cost $90,000 and was ready for students by the summer of 1916. By necessity, the library contained only a few offices, limited work space for staff, and a reading room on the second floor. The catastrophic explosion of two ships in Halifax Harbour in December 1917 briefly damaged the reading room before it was restored.

Macdonald Library floor plans

In a unique (and fortuitous) circumstance in Canadian library history, Arthur Lismer, one of the distinguished Group of Seven artists, created three sketches of the Macdonald Library in 1918 for a publication to mark the centennial anniversary of the university, One Hundred Years of Dalhousie, 1818-1918. His sketches of the exterior, especially the columned portico entrance, highlighted the elegant stone facing that conveyed a rustic style, a feature of the Studley campus buildings designed by Frank Darling and Andrew Cobb. Local quarries provided the dark grey limestone for the library, which featured a variety of encrusted red and brown salts that added colour and texture to the building. Two classrooms located in the entrance hallway on the first floor were used for teaching purposes. The attractive reading room on the second floor was almost 3,000 sq. ft. in size (90 ft. x 32 ft.) and featured fireplaces at each end. Bookcases along the wall held the reference collection. An office for the University Librarian, Archibald MacMeachen, was also located on the second floor. He wrote in the Dalhousie Gazette on October 27, 1915, that “No finer memorial for a college teacher can be imagined than a building devoted generation after generation to the sacred work of teaching.” Indeed, the building continued in use as the main library until its replacement by the Killam Library in 1971.

When the library first opened, only a small collection existed on site, and a decision was made to recatalogue materials by using the Library of Congress system. It was not until 1921 that a five-storey expansion added book stacks to the rear on the north side. However, even this added shelving for 125,000 books was insufficient. As a consequence, scientific volumes were located in departmental libraries for chemistry, physics, and geology. When Philip Turner, a lecturer at McGill University, reviewed Canadian university libraries in 1931, he published updated floor plans for the library. At this time, Macdonald was a closed stack library, a typical arrangement in many instances. Two years later, in the national study, Libraries in Canada, headed by John Ridington, it was recorded that Dalhousie held some noteworthy special collections, especially the J. D. Logan Collection of Canadian literature, the Stewart Collection of Canadiana, and the Thompson Library of Dramatic Literature. By this time, the library was operating its popular Patterson Travelling Library service, which furnished small boxes of books to many Maritime communities, a service that continued until the mid-1950s.

There was a further addition to the building on the west side in 1956. This new wing was opened to alleviate space problems on a temporary basis: it housed the Kipling Room, a notable collection of Rudyard Kipling’s works recently donated to the university. When the modern Killam Memorial Library opened in 1971, the older Macdonald Memorial Library continued to serve as a science library before its collection was relocated again. In the 1990s, the former stack rooms of the Macdonald Building were converted into administrative offices, and the reading room was refitted as a meeting space for various events.

Emmerson Memorial Library, Acadia University, 1914

The Emmerson Memorial Library in Acadia University opened in 1914 and was formally dedicated in June 1915 by Charles H. Gould, McGill’s University Librarian. The library, constructed with stone fashioned with brown and olive sandstone trim, was designed to accommodate 125,000 volumes in steel stacks. Designed by the architect Andrew Cobb from Halifax, the building was named for Rev. Robert H. Emmerson (1826–1857), an influential New Brunswick Baptist minister whose family donated $25,000 towards building a suitable memorial. Cobb planned Emmerson as a two-storey, stone building in the Italianate style featuring wide eaves supported by large brackets and a low-pitched hip roof topped with a small cupola. Two Doric columns flanked the entrance steps with a copper seal of the University crest embedded above the door, surmounted by a stone transom and window. Large three-bay Palladian windows on each side allowed for exterior lighting to flood the interior.

The library featured comfortable reading rooms, study alcoves, areas for special collections and staff processing of materials. The collection of about 20,000 volumes was initially classified using the Dewey Decimal system and accessed through a dictionary catalogue. On Sundays, the reading room was given over to students to listen to and reflect on talks by professors. After the library officially opened, several special collections were acquired. A collection of Canadiana was purchased from Major J.P. Edwards in 1917 and renamed in memory of Eric R. Dennis. Two other collections, the John D. Logan Collection of Canadian Literature and the William Inglis Morse Collection, followed. The Emmerson reading room was the site of a meeting in April 1918 leading to the creation of the first Maritime Library Association with a small membership.

Mary Kinley Ingraham joined Acadia in 1917 as the new chief librarian and remained until her retirement in 1944. During her distinguished tenure, Acadia’s library experienced significant growth, including expanded circulating holdings, special collections, and enhanced services for students and faculty. In 1930 and 1931, Acadia operated two book trucks fitted out to carry about 1,500 books to numerous stations for exchanges. However, financial constraints during the Great Depression ended the bookmobile service, although community groups continued to access books through box loans.

With increasing enrollment and modernized library service in the 1960s, Acadia realized a new library building was necessary. Fortunately, a generous donation from Harold S. Vaughan initiated planning for a new library in memory of his son, Harold C. Vaughan. In 1965, the Vaughan Memorial Library opened, and the aged Emmerson Library was converted into classrooms and offices for the School of Education in 1967, becoming known as the current Emmerson Hall.

Mount Allison Memorial Library, 1927

Mount Allison Memorial Library, n.d.

A third memorial library opened in June 1927 at the Sackville, New Brunswick, campus of Mount Allison. It originally was proposed as a memorial to the Mount Allison students, faculty, and alumni who had died during the First World War, and as funds accumulated, construction began in 1926. Andrew Cobb reprised his earlier efforts as the building's architect and, on this occasion, he chose to display a three-storey Tudor-revival-style exterior. The building cost $110,000 and was designed to hold 60-70,000 volumes in the rear five-storey stack room with the potential for expansion. Red Sackville stone was employed for the outside, with Dorchester olive stone for the trimmings. The entrance doorway featured a notched roof porch that offered patrons the impression of a safe castle-like setting.

Astride the front entrance, the memorial hall exhibited plaques recording fallen university soldiers from the Great War. Additionally, two rooms were designated for historical records containing valuable documents, books and selected archives. A stack space was situated at the rear beside the main staircase. Small offices and study rooms were located towards the front facade. Of special note was the Mary Mellish Archibald Memorial collection featuring resources devoted to art, music, household science, and modern literature. The basement rooms contained a workroom, business office, unpacking room, lavatories, and stacks space. The second floor was dedicated to a large reading room (80 ft. x 36 ft.) flanked by wall shelving with seating accommodation for about 150 students. A catalogue was available, and a circulation control desk was located at the back of the reading room.

Mount Allison Library floor plans

At its opening, the library held about 15,000 books but the collection naturally grew in size until the stacks reached capacity. Even with the addition of an annex in 1960, student enrollment and university expansion required a new building. When the Ralph Pickard Bell Library opened in 1970, the Memorial Library was renovated to become the University Centre, a popular, functional student home for decades. However, following a controversial administrative decision, in 2011 the building was completely demolished to make way for a new state-of-the-art fine arts and performance facility. The original memorial tablet was reassigned to the main floor of the Wallace McCain Student Centre in 2008, together with other tables listing casualties from other wars. Veterans Affairs Canada has a site displaying these plaques.

University Libraries and Memorialization

These three memorial libraries connect the enduring idea of the library as a meaningful tribute to deceased persons and families to a legacy of community and knowledge. Memorializing campus buildings such as libraries was a well-established practice in America and Britain long before its adoption in Canada. The earliest and foremost instance was the McGill University Library which opened in 1893; it was a gift of Peter and Grace Redpath and named accordingly. Universities were eager to preserve their history, achievements, and benefactors. Family members, too, believed memorization provided a material way to acknowledge and commemorate loved ones. The symbolic linkage of a person’s life in a shared library space provided a continuous tribute that informed and serviced students, faculty, and the university community. It was a tangible way to connect the university community with important people through shared experiences and legacies.

Mount Allison chose to commemorate soldiers lost in the Great War, 1914–18. Dalhousie and Acadia honoured individuals who had made significant contributions in education and religion. Individual and family donors combined with fundraising efforts and, eventually, institutional revenue, reflected the era of generosity Andrew Carnegie fostered in the public library sector during the first decades of the 20th century. While the former libraries are no longer part of contemporary Maritime or Canadian library activity or modern library networking, they marked the beginning of significant donations for university libraries and for memorial naming conventions that persisted across Canada in the 20th century. In that aspect, these libraries stand as historic memorials in their own right.

A Wikipedia article on the impressive career of Andrew R. Cobb is at this link.

My previous blog on Mary Kinley Ingraham is at this link.

An article with historical photographs of the Macdonald Library is at this link.

An Acadia article on the Emmerson Library is at this link.

A Mount Allison article on its memorial library is at this link.

Pour une histoire des femmes bibliothécaires au Québec (2020)

2025-09-23T18:50:00.016-04:00

Pour une histoire des femmes bibliothécaires au Québec: Portraits et parcours de vies professionnelles edited by Marcel Lajeunesse, Éric Leroux and Marie D. Martel. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2020. xviii, 178 pp., illus.

This book is a welcome and unusual addition to library shelves dedicated to Canadian librarianship. For too long, the role of women in the development of Canada’s libraries was mostly overlooked. We now have a well documented history/biography of seven women who made significant contributions to the culture of Quebec and its librarianship. The three editors in charge of this collection are all associated with the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information at the l'Université de Montréal. Marcel Lajeunesse is a librarian, professor, and Quebec historian who served as the director and professor at this school and has authored many articles and books on librarianship. A Wikipedia entry provides more information on his remarkable career. Professor Éric Leroux’s interests include the history of libraries and librarians as well as the history of printing and the book trade. Professor Marie D. Martel’s current research involves projects related to social media platforms such as Wikipedia. Together, they have gathered several authors to provide interesting and lengthy accounts of women who worked in different types of libraries before and after the ‘Quiet Revolution’ dramatically changed Quebec society and politics after 1960. It was after this time that women began to emerge in leadership positions and librarianship assumed more prominence in the social, intellectual and cultural life of Quebec. The different authors provide a chapter on each.

The role of women in the development of Canadian libraries has not been charted in detail, even though as early as 1921 Mabel B. Dunham, chief librarian at Kitchener Public Library, flagged librarianship as a profession for women in her presidential address to the Ontario Library Association. Only a few individual biographies have been published that outline their contributions and recognize their leadership. The attainment of democratic freedoms by women in Quebec was a lengthy process spanning the years of first and second-wave feminism. A few highlights suffice to show that gender equality often lagged behind other provinces. In Quebec, it was not until 1940 that women gained the right to vote and be eligible as candidates in provincial elections. During the Quiet Revolution, the Civil Code of Quebec was amended to eliminate a wife’s duty to obey her husband and to allow them to practise a profession different from their husband. Most importantly, in 1976, Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms was enacted which explicitly prohibited discrimination based on gender. Female librarians in other provincial jurisdictions also faced discriminatory challenges, but they were able to secure positions of leadership and advance their careers in greater numbers. The Introductory chapter summarizes the progress of women in Quebec librarianship and provides some interesting background for the individual studies that follow.

Éva Circé-Côté (1871–1949) leads the list of seven influential women who worked in Quebec libraries. Andrée Lévesque discusses her career as a journalist, writer, and librarian who became head librarian at Montreal’s first public library, the Bibliothèque technique de Montréal, in 1903, only to be demoted in 1909. Perhaps her short-lived marriage to Pierre-Salomon Côté, her outspoken progressive viewpoints on social issues and feminism, or male prejudice led to this decision. After 1910, she became curator of the prestigious Philéas Gagnon collection of Canadian antiquarian books acquired by the city of Montréal. She classified and catalogued this collection, and, when it was transferred to the new Bibliothèque de la Ville de Montréal, she continued to work until her retirement in 1932. During this time, she continued to contribute literary and journalistic pieces that won her admiration from critics and friends alike.

Marcel Lajeunesse documents the career of Mary Sollace Saxe (1865–1942), chief librarian at the Westmount Public Library for three decades, by concluding that she possessed many qualities: a strong and creative personality, significant leadership, recognized political acumen, and a clear vision for the public library (p. 40). Some of her innovations included the introduction of reference service, the implementation of an open shelf system for the public, better children’s services, and expanded library space. Mary Saxe also contributed articles and published Our Little Quebec Cousin, a children’s book describing life in Quebec.

Marie-Claire Daveluy (1880–1968) was an author, historian, librarian, and library educator. Johanne Biron charts her extraordinary library career after obtaining a library diploma from McGill University when she became an assistant librarian at the Bibliothèque de la Ville de Montréal from 1920–43 and advanced to chief of cataloguing from 1930–41. Most importantly, in 1937, with Aegidius Fauteux, she founded the École de bibliothécaires at the Université de Montréal and served as an assistant director and professor for many years. In 1943 she participated in the formation of the Association canadienne des bibliothèques d’institutions (now the Association pour l’avancement des sciences et techniques de la documentation, Asted). She was the first woman to be a member of the Historical Society of Montreal in 1917, and she was the author of popular children’s works exemplified by Les Aventures de Perrine et de Charlot published in 1923. She was at the forefront of cultural life and was accorded many honours during her lifetime.

Hélène Grenier (1900–92) is best known for her work in Montreal school libraries and promotion of good reading for children. Éric Leroux provides an excellent account of her career, commencing with her work in 1926 at the Montreal Municipal Library alongside two notable colleagues, Éva Circé-Côté and Marie-Claire Daveluy. In 1931, she was hired by the Montreal Catholic School Commission, which operated both French and English-language schools, to establish a Teachers’ Library. Then, from 1952–61, she was elevated to director of school libraries for the commission. In this capacity, she greatly expanded and improved elementary and secondary school libraries. During her tenure, 159 new libraries were established and 80% of Catholic schools had a library when she retired. A lifetime interest in music and cultural pursuits led to her nomination as an Officer of the prestigious Ordre national du Québec in 1988

Claude Bonnelly studies the career of Céline Robitaille-Cartier (1930–2017), who served as director of the Laval University Library from 1978–88. She was the first female director at Laval and worked to improve the standing of her staff and library services at the university. The author knew her personally and succeeded her as director upon her retirement. He credits her humanistic approach to management in a period when automation, networking, and the initial challenges of the information society loomed large.

Paule Rolland-Thomas (1929–2021) is the subject of a biography devoted to library education by Michèle Hudon. She joined the École de bibliothéconomie when it was established at the University of Montreal in 1961 and continued teaching, training librarians, and researching until her retirement in 1994. A notable achievement was her preparation of the French language first and second editions of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules published in 1973 and 1980. Her expertise in cataloguing, classification, bibliographic work, and subject access to resources made a significant contribution to librarianship in Quebec.

The closing chapter deals with two women, Hélène Charbonneau (1929–2021), a specialist in children’s literature, and Louise Guillemette-Labory (b. 1953), who rose through the ranks to become the Associate Director of Libraries in the Culture Department of the city of Montreal. During her tenure, the network of public libraries in Montreal underwent various studies leading to the renovation, expansion, and construction of new libraries throughout the city. Hélène Charbonneau was head of children’s work for the city of Montreal from 1972–79 before services for adults and children were combined, a typical realignment across North American libraries. She continued to coordinate and advise until her retirement in 1992. Just this year, in 2025, the Bibliothèque Ahuntsic on the Island of Montreal, where she worked for two decades after receiving her library diploma in 1952, was renamed the Bibliothèque Hélène Charbonneau in her honour. Marie D. Martel writes about their successes, yet notes that female librarians often remain underrepresented in reference works, especially Wikipedia.

These portraits of female librarians remind us of the important contributions women have made, not just in librarianship, but in the history of social, intellectual, and cultural life in Quebec. As well, all the women were determined to overcome the issue of gender-based discrimination. While they belong to different generations, the ‘glass ceiling’ existed in various manifestations that hindered their advancement for many years. The case of Claire Godbout, who was ‘bibliothécaire en chef’ at Trois-Rivières, recalls the earlier fate of Éva Circé-Côté. Her position was abolished in 1956 so that a man with the title ‘conservateur de bibliothèque’ could be hired in her place. Godbout was demoted to head of cataloguing at a lesser salary and informed of the decision without any forewarning. Despite the combination of male chauvinism with social restrictions, female librarians in Quebec persevered in their pursuit of executive careers, cultural pursuits, and social justice. They succeeded because they were ambitious, strong-willed, and determined to be recognized in the library profession as it developed in Quebec, especially after the Second World War.

It is perhaps fitting in this review to recount that other women, born in Quebec, made contributions that transcended local, regional concerns. A few librarians who briefly appear in this volume, such as Alvine Bélisle and Laurette Toupin, are also deserving of similar detailed biographies. I could add other Quebec natives, such as: (1) Juliette Chabot (1902–87), who earned her BLS at McGill University and subsequently authored valuable works on librarianship; (2) Beatrice Simon (1899–94), for many years Assistant Librarian at McGill and very active in special library work (especially medical science); (3) Margaret Ridley Charlton (1858–1931), a pioneering medical librarian working in Montreal and Toronto who helped found the Medical Library Association in 1898 in the United States; and (4) Mariam H. Tees (b. 1923- ), who was one of the first presidents of the Corporation des bibliothécaires professionnels du Québec and who was inducted into the Special Libraries Hall of Fame in 1988 after a lengthy career at the Royal Bank headquarters in Montreal.

As an added highlight to the informative historical research each author provides, two notable features of this book are the portraits and bibliographies that appear with each chapter, thus providing images and entries that future researchers will find of considerable value.

Further information:

My blog on Marie-Claire Daveluy is at this link.

My blog on Mary Saxe is at this link.

My blog on Mabel Dunham’s 1921 address to OLA delegates in Toronto about the role of women is at this link.

There are useful Wikipedia articles for Alvine Bélisle, Juliette Chabot, and Margaret Ridley Charleton.

Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries as Neutral Places, 1960–2020

2025-09-11T16:37:00.026-04:00

Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries as Neutral Places, 1960–2020 by Whitney Kemble. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books & Library Juice Press, 2024.

Whitney Kemble, a librarian at the Scarborough Campus of the University of Toronto, has contributed an important work in the growing field of ‘critical librarianship’ about the contentious issue of ‘library neutrality’ in public library event bookings from 1960 to 2020. She has identified thirty-three controversial events held in Canadian public libraries using various resources, such as contemporary newspaper articles. Although eight gatherings were cancelled, the vast majority of events took place. There are too many episodes to discuss in this review; still, readers will likely remember more recent events, such as the 2017 cancellation by Ottawa Public Library of the controversial film, Killing Europe, which examined terrorist activities, street riots, a migrant crisis, and societal polarization. Another instance was Meghan Murphy’s 2019 presentation on gender identity at Toronto Public Library’s Palmerston branch, which sparked notable opposition from LGBTQ organizations. Her event took place with protesters outside the branch and highlighted different perspectives on TPL’s adherence to intellectual freedom (IF). Older readers likely remember Mississauga’s cancellation of its 1978 screening for the BBC film, The Naked Civil Servant, a depiction of a man’s gay lifestyle that was ‘ahead of its time,’ at least for the library board that countermanded the original decision to hold the event.

What do we learn from all these Canadian experiences? Defining neutrality in a liberal democracy is difficult—in Contested Spaces, we find references to ideas like impartiality, absence of bias, equality or equity of treatment, tolerance, even-handedness, balance, objectivity, and indifference. Since the 1960s, librarians have been particularly vocal about embracing neutrality or fostering social responsibility in a community context. There is a tension in the neutrality-advocacy debate regarding librarian proactiveness rather than passivity or indifference towards societal issues. The traditional stance supposes that the public library uncritically dispenses information or avoids inappropriate influence or improper advice. Neutrality supposes that librarians ought not to inject their views on controversial issues or actions by outspoken groups to impose their way of thinking. This philosophy was evident a century ago in March 1919 when George Locke, Toronto Public Library’s chief librarian, told the Toronto Star, “If people have enough intelligence to look on the two sides of the question, they will have enough to know how to act, and our public libraries here teach this.” But, of course, there are often more than two perspectives on an issue, and, on certain societal values, such as literacy, racism, poverty, social justice for disenfranchised minorities, indeed, the very nature of democracy, libraries cannot be value-neutral. I believe attaining neutrality is a laudable goal, but an unattainable ideal. Too often in the past, ‘neutrality by exclusion’ was a common feature of libraries.

Indeed, the author concludes that the stance of IF adopted by Canadian library associations since the 1960s can be problematic. This policy maintains the right to hold, receive, and disseminate all points of view without restrictions, but, as Kemble notes, “the values of safety, inclusion, and diversity regularly are trumped by the values of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression in libraries” (p. 130). For many librarians, a neutral stance is necessary to maintain intellectual freedom because it enables individuals to form their own ideas. The author critiques the ‘myth of neutrality’ and questions the prioritization of IF above other library core values, for example, social justice or social responsibility. For her, “community, relationships, and protecting those who are most vulnerable are the values I prioritize personally...” (p. 138).

Although the author links the main opposition to neutrality to the formation of the American Library Association (ALA) Social Responsibility Round Table (SRRT) in 1969, to be sure, library neutrality was an issue even before the ALA Council in 1939 adopted a Code of Ethics, which stressed impartiality, and the Bill of Rights, which adopted intellectual freedom. The prewar Bill emphasized unbiased book selection, a balanced collection, and the statement that “library meeting rooms should be available on equal terms to all groups.” At the time, the ALA’s short-lived Progressive Librarians’ Council (est. 1939) opposed the concept of neutrality, a challenge renewed in the 1990s when the independent Progressive Librarians’ Guild formed in the United States and opened chapters in Canada. To be truly progressive, one must believe in the need to redress social inequities and de-prioritize neutrality. Many American librarians believe the SRRT falls short in this regard because its voice is muted in a large bureaucratic organization devoted to many interests.

Also, concerning value-neutrality, it would have been helpful for Kemble to touch on the growing influence of the New Public Administration (NPA) theory that developed in the United States after the 1960s. Since then, public managers in North America at all levels of government have placed greater emphasis on social equity alongside the more traditional concept of social equality. Equity recognizes that different levels of support should be provided to persons or groups to achieve fairness in service outcomes. Equality seeks to treat people the same with respect to opportunities and rights, with less regard for their needs or differences. The two ideas overlap, but there is a difference between practising ‘fairness’ and ‘sameness.’ The NPA de-emphasized neutrality and stressed the ethical responsibility of public servants to stand against injustice and advocate for marginalized communities. Yet, this theory is rarely mentioned in the library literature.

Citizens’ Forum discussion at LPL, 1945

Fittingly, in terms of social responsibility, Kemble begins her history with the London Public Library’s 1960 decision to screen the American film, Iron Curtain Lands, in a park. London had been a leader in organizing and sponsoring events with groups since its new modernist-style library opened in 1941, featuring rooms and an auditorium for public use. Not surprisingly, at the height of the Cold War, some people objected to a post-Stalinist documentary. On this occasion, the event was postponed and rescheduled for viewing without further problems. The postwar era was an era of community based groups and clubs devoted to photography, books, National Film Board viewings, citizens’ forums, women, youth, music, fraternities or sororities, and a host of other local associations. Librarians were beginning to pay more attention to community concerns rather than focusing on individuals.

However, the 1960s would introduce new social movements on a national and even international scale, focusing on nuclear disarmament, feminism, animal rights, environmental concerns, pro-life advocacy, civil rights, and bilingualism. These organizations formed local groups and emphasized contentious issues related to identity, human rights, free expression, and broader social problems, such as poverty. The tried-and-true adoption of neutrality led many librarians to believe they were insulated from controversial subjects, much like career public servants. But in April 1962, their reticence was called out by a keen observer, J. Bascom St. John, in the Toronto Globe & Mail: “They have a mistaken idea that professional ethics in the book field requires them to preserve a discreet silence, or at any rate, a virtual inaudibility. There are a few welcome exceptions to this generalization, but what librarians need more than anything else is a new concept of dignity. Dignity is not submission; it is pride. It is not a masterful withdrawal, it is an absolute determination to be heard and respected.” It was in this societal environment that IF statements were finally adopted by library associations in Ontario (1963) and Canada (1966). These statements were primarily concerned with book selection and free expression, but the Canadian Library Association statement added the responsibility of libraries to facilitate “the right of expression by making available all facilities and services at their disposal.” IF was a step towards librarians seeing themselves as part of a social process of educating citizens by offering a wider range of resources and views.

Contested Spaces charts various issues that have challenged or bedevilled library authorities across the country for more than half a century: anti-communism, LGBTQ rights, environmental activism, Indigenous identity, anti-Muslim prejudice, drag queen story times, and anti-vaccine protestations, to name a few. Statistics for the book’s thirty-three events show that twenty-five events were allowed to proceed (76%), six were cancelled by the library (18%), and two were dropped by the organizers (6%). The twenty-five events that were held usually embraced normative library statements upholding IF and library neutrality. The rationale for cancelled events also included the contravention of library anti-discrimination policy, security issues, or arguments related to unacceptable racial or controversial views, and hate speech.

In the case of the Mississauga 1978 film cancellation, the library responded by updating its policy on film selection and use. In 1990, Ottawa Public Library cancelled a lecture on reducing immigration and withdrawal of foreign aid because it was “inappropriate” (p. 14). The 2009 cancellation of events proposing to discuss assisted suicide in Vancouver was vetoed by the library because it received legal advice that it was a potential violation of the Criminal Code of Canada (p. 41–44). The public library in Saskatoon cancelled a speaker scheduled to speak on the matter of abortion due to its controversial nature, citing logistical safety concerns in 2017. The author notes this was an interesting decision because safety concerns trumped IF (p. 58). In the 2017 case of Killing Europe, the Ottawa library cited its stance vis-à-vis its internal anti-discrimination policy. Eventually, legal challenges upheld the library’s position because it was not legally obligated to protect IF when private events were held on its premises (p. 72). Although Vancouver originally approved Megan Murphy’s session on gender identity and feminism for March 2020 based on IF and neutrality, her event was called off due to COVID-19 closures. In terms of politics, Kemble designates four of these library decisions as a progressive force and two as conservative reactions (Mississauga and Vancouver in 2009).

Contested Spaces closes by critiquing the reliance on the principle of IF and assertions of neutrality. Kemble believes that libraries too often reinforce the status quo of societal power imbalances by protecting ‘ideas over people.’ Although on occasion security and safety come to the fore in the decision-making process, too often values related to social justice are ignored or relegated to secondary consideration. This state of affairs does not align with the author’s concept of progressiveness or value neutrality: in many instances, neutrality can be a malleable concept. Nonetheless, the concept of neutrality remains a recognized value in library work because it espouses tolerance and accommodation of people and groups with different ideas and goals.

Whitney Kemble’s criticisms in her well-researched monograph stand out in a Canadian context and make us consider whether our current policies that uphold neutrality are adequate or a fruitless ethical search. Of course, progressiveness is not without its critics, but the author concludes that she is ready for these conversations (p. 39). Her publisher, Litwin Books & Library Juice, is known for its academic quality, and this book is a valuable addition to the debate on neutrality in a liberal democratic society, which no doubt will continue.

Additional sources:

My blog on the Canadian Library Association's adoption of its intellectual freedom policy at Calgary in 1966 is at this link.

A YouTube video news report on the protest in support of the transgender community against controversial speaker Meghan Murphy’s appearance at the Palmerston Branch is at this link.

Canadian Special Libraries Form a National Identity, 1945–1970

2025-08-08T11:39:00.052-04:00

Library of Parliament, Ottawa, 1940s

In the spring of 1946, Elizabeth Homer Morton, the Secretary of the Canadian Library Council, recounted her observations on special library services to the Special Libraries Toronto Chapter. In the fall of 1945, she had travelled across Canada to personally assess library services. She visited a variety of special libraries: the Oakalla Prison Farm libraries in Burnaby, British Columbia; the library of the hospital ship Lady Nelson in Halifax Harbour; the Co-operative Wheat Pool libraries on the Prairies; and the extension work of Hudson’s Bay House in Winnipeg to company posts. She concluded optimistically, “Library service in Canada owes a great debt to the special librarians past and present. Not content with building up their own collections, they have done much for Canada’s education and information services by encouraging the institution of public library services.” Indeed, more attention to special libraries due to the intensity of industry and research in the war years 1940–45 had given cause for optimism in the two Canadian chapters of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), in Montreal and Toronto. While government libraries, such as the majestic Library of Parliament, comprised the majority of special libraries, smaller technical and business libraries were proving their worth. The 1948–50 Dominion Bureau of Statistics (DBS) reported 196 total libraries, an increase from 158 in its 1942–44 survey.

In the immediate postwar years, there were three centres of special library collective action: the two established chapters of the American SLA, and, in 1949, the Research Section of the Canadian Library Association. The latter national grouping served to address issues common to college, university, research, and special libraries, and to promote their interests. The primary focus on special library work was mostly the preserve of the two chapters, which sometimes worked with the New York Chapter of SLA to organize specific conferences devoted to special librarians. These two chapters focused on special librarians’ identification of their profession and career. They fostered the development of group associations beyond their local areas and sought to clarify the role of special libraries. They ascertained collective needs and pursued goals to support members and engage with the public interest. Sharing best practices, advocating for libraries, networking with colleagues, and establishing standards of service promoted confidence within their parent organizations. Consequently, the two decades following 1950 culminated in the decision to form the Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services (CASLIS) in June 1969 as a constituent division of the Canadian Library Association (CLA).

Three Postwar Conferences, 1947–49

As a springboard to promote member involvement, three regional conferences were organized by the Toronto, Montreal, and Western New York SLA Chapters: one in Toronto on Oct. 17–18, 1947, another in Rochester on Oct. 8–9, 1948, and a third in Montreal on Sept. 23–24, 1949. Training for librarians and staff was the general focus of the first two meetings. At the King Edward Hotel in Toronto in 1947, two prominent voices, Winifred Barnstead, director of the University of Toronto Library School, and Edna Poole, longtime librarian of the Toronto Academy of Medicine, expressed the view that general university courses, not specific ones, constituted the best way for educators to advance special library work. Librarians should engage in continuing education efforts to further their careers. Beatrice Simon, from McGill University, outlined her view on the training requirements for medical, hospital, and nursing librarians. Mary Jane Henderson, the head of the Montreal Sun Life Assurance Co. library, spoke on training in the life insurance industry. A year later, at Rochester, Phyllis Foreman, librarian of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, spoke on training library assistants for circulation work and George Johnson, librarian of the Law Society of Upper Canada, addressed issues related to in-house ‘sub-professional’ training for ordering materials.

In Montreal, a new theme, communication and cooperation, formed the basis for discussion. The keynote speaker, W.K. Lamb, the Dominion Archivist, addressed the issue of creating a union catalogue for the proposed National Library at some length. It was an arduous task, but he felt special libraries could play a role in contributing to a union catalogue because “they can play a very important part. By your very name, you have specialized needs and unusual needs, and you have unusual material stored away in these libraries. I do not look upon the Union Catalogue as anything narrow.” Lillian Steers, librarian of the Dept. of Mines and Resources, outlined cooperative efforts in Ottawa amongst libraries. Mildred Turnbull, librarian at the Royal Bank of Canada in Montreal, spoke on cooperation among different types of libraries in her city.

The three regional meetings were productive efforts to connect members with peers and complemented the annual summer postwar SLA conferences held in Boston, Chicago, Washington, and Atlantic City from 1946 to 1950. When the Toronto Chapter proposed to hold the conference, the SLA set a date for 1953. The Toronto group was growing in numbers and felt confident it could manage the task. By summer 1952, Toronto had formed a local Executive and committees under the capable and energetic chairmanship of Pauline Mary Hutchison, librarian of the Canada Life Assurance Co.

The Special Libraries Conference, Toronto, June 1953

Pauline Hutchison, c.1953

The 1953 Toronto conference, at the Royal York Hotel for four days beginning on June 22nd, drew about 1,000 attendees from the United States and Canada. It was an opportunity to showcase American and Canadian library progress since the previous SLA meeting in Montreal in 1936. The April issue of Special Libraries had profiled libraries in Montreal and Toronto that SLA members could visit. A special four-day tour to Montreal and return to Toronto was offered for advance registrants. Toronto had a diverse array of library resources to explore, including the Academy of Medicine (the second-largest medical collection in Canada), libraries of the Ontario Legislature, the Osgoode Hall Law Society, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Pauline Hutchison worked tirelessly to offer a blend of speakers for an informative (and entertaining) annual meeting. Canadian speakers presented a variety of interesting topics at the opening Monday session: Marian Thompson from the Toronto Star Library spoke about handling large files of pictures. Edna F. Hunt, assistant chief librarian at the National Research Library in Ottawa, explained new developments in inter-library loan activity. Two general fora on ‘Canadian Resources’ were held on Tuesday. Dr. Robert C. Wallace, the former Principal of Queen’s University, provided a comprehensive survey of Canadian scientific research. Resource extraction was the topic J. Gerald Godsoe, vice-president of the British American Oil Co. Ltd., summarized. Earl S. Neal, an Imperial Oil Co. director, provided a succinct account of oil exploration and the expansion of Canadian oil and gas markets. Later, at the SLA banquet on Wednesday evening, A. Davidson Dunton, Chairman of the CBC Board of Governors, entertained delegates about America’s northern neighbour, even venturing to say that Canada would not be assimilated by America simply because it was different.

The Toronto SLA conference was a successful undertaking that highlighted growing expertise in special library work among Canadians. Pauline Hutchison, who garnered accolades for her work in Toronto and the SLA, would eventually be inducted into the SLA Hall of Fame, established in 1960. Peter C. Newman, an aspiring journalist with the Financial Post who covered the 1953 convention, wrote on June 27th, “Today, the business library is a common feature of almost every type of enterprise, with insurance companies, banks, public utilities, publishers, and manufacturers leading the parade. Trade associations, law firms and advertising adgencies are other important library operators.” As careers developed, some special librarians were venturing into the field of Documentation, which explored new principles and techniques for information searching, storage, and retrieval. Documentalists emphasized subject knowledge and their expertise in harnessing information sources and the storage and retrieval systems required to access knowledge. Two years after the convention, at the 1955 Canadian Library Association conference in Saskatoon, Edna Hunt outlined documentation efforts at the National Research Council, the Defence Research Board, and the Aluminium Laboratories Ltd. in Kingston. She would continue to make significant library contributions, both nationally and internationally, and be a founding member of the Canadian Association for Information Science in 1970–71. Later, in 1958, at a Documentation Seminar held at McGill University, Rodolphe Lavergne, librarian at Canadair Ltd., delivered a summary of current special library applications of machines and documentation techniques in the Montreal area that indicated conventional library methods still prevailed. He would eventually become the head librarian of the École des Hautes Études commerciales de Montréal and teach at the McGill University library school. As Documentation evolved into Information Science in the 1960s, most librarians chose to remain in the library field rather than adopt a new profession.

Growth of Special Libraries and Professionalism

Throughout the fifties and sixties, there was sustained growth in the number of scientific, technical, medical, government, and business libraries (particularly company libraries) as well as librarianship. This expansion was due to the explosion of research that placed greater emphasis on the acquisition of current periodicals and reports and on the swift delivery of information. Western special libraries were being established, especially in Alberta, for example, Imperial Oil (1950) and Shell Oil and British American Oil in 1954. Louise Lefebvre, the chief librarian at the Pulp & Paper Institute in Montreal, and one of the founders of the Quebec Library Association in 1932, signalled changing directions in her talk at CLA’s 1957 conference in Victoria. To the question, what was a special library? She said, “The special library is, in short, a particularized information service, which correlates, interprets, and utilizes the material at hand for the constant use and benefit of the organization it serves.” What about the special librarian? She said, “The Special Librarian of the future, the one for whom industry is already clamoring and ready to pay a high salary, is a specialist with a degree in library science and a reading knowledge, if possible, of languages such as French, German and even Russian. Such a combination of talents to-day is painfully scarce.” In the same year, the Librarians Group of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada issued a statement criticizing the federal government’s so-called ‘improved’ schedule of salaries and benefits for librarians after investigating its unfavourable comparison with those of other professions in the public service. Additionally, in 1956, another new section devoted to special interests formed in the CLA: the Canadian Music Library Association was organized as an official section to promote services in its field of librarianship at the annual meeting held in Niagara Falls with a membership of 35.

By the mid-1950s, there was a growing recognition for the need for professional qualifications, greater clarity of purpose regarding services, and more assertive action regarding working conditions. In fact, at the outset of 1959, the SLA revised its membership categories: new members in the active class would now have to hold a degree from a library school of recognized standing and have had three years of professional experience in a special library to qualify. The CLA Council followed suit in November 1959 when it adopted its position on a national standard for librarians:

Jack E. Brown, 1950s

“No one will be recognized by the Canadian Library Association–Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques as a fully qualified professional librarian in Canada unless he holds the equivalent of the B.A. degree as granted in Canada plus proof of library training equivalent to that required for the Bachelor of Library Science degree (B.L.S.) in Canada or Master of Library Science degree (M.L.S.) in the United States of America.” As the decade closed, in November 1959, the Canadian Library Association Bulletin featured the importance of special library work by devoting an entire issue to its progress. The issue featured important collections from across the country, along with regional synopses. It also introduced new professionals, such as Jack E. Brown, the new chief librarian of the National Research Council. He would oversee a significant era as the library officially became the National Science Library in 1966 and then assist with the development of a new building, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), which opened in 1974. He influenced the profession during the sixties and seventies with innovations such as the Canadian Selective Dissemination of Information service (CAN/SDI), a current awareness service for scientists and researchers based on centralized processing of scientific databases at the National Science Library (NSL).

Striving for a National Focus

The 1960s witnessed a dramatic period of growth for special libraries of various types—those serving parent organizations (e.g., governments), libraries developed for specific subjects (e.g., films), or libraries organized to hold different formats (e.g., maps). According to the 1964 report of the DBS, there were 580 special libraries in 1961, and subsequent contemporary reports indicate that approximately 300 more libraries were established in the sixties. General categories of service included reference, user orientation, document delivery, information retrieval, bibliographic assistance, and current awareness. Across North America some special libraries were beginning to be known as “information centres” or “documentation centres,” and librarians were starting to embrace new computerized technology to play a helpful role in a new era of information and knowledge. Local perspectives were lessening, and libraries were expanding their range of services and clientele. The NSL was leading the way in delivering documents, information, and translation services. The two Canadian chapters sought to enhance member involvement, refine leadership structures, and pursue broader goals and objectives. For example, the Toronto chapter investigated the extent of training in Canadian library schools and the value of continuing education opportunities in its schedule of 1963/64 workshops.

At the national level, two important studies touched on special library work in the early 1960s. Beatrice Simon, assistant chief librarian at McGill University, conducted a study of major universities, Library Support of Medical Education and Research in Canada (1964), that proposed a national program for improving access to Canadian medical information resources, such as improved financial support and the establishment of a National Medical Bibliographic Centre and Information Service. A second report, Science-Technology Literature Resources in Canada by George S. Bonn, the science and technology chief at the New York Public Library, included universities and major research libraries. He recommended that the NSL in Ottawa serve as the central collection in science and technology, supporting and encouraging principal regional libraries to strengthen their collections and provide better service aided by special grants. Networking among libraries and the availability of computerized databases promised to greatly expand the range of information available to special libraries.

Librarians were rearranging professional connections and forming new groups to better address their concerns. In 1963, many university and college librarians formerly in the Research Section of CLA formed their own major association, the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries. Shortly after, this action prompted a name change to the CLA’s Research and Special Libraries section. In 1962, a CLA Committee on Medical Science Libraries adopted its own constitution in Ottawa, then transitioned to a standing committee of the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges in 1967. In 1963, a group of Canadians in the American Association of Law Libraries successfully formed a national chapter affiliated with the American Association of Law Libraries, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, with Marianne Scott of McGill University as its first president. In June 1967, the Association of Canadian Map Libraries was established at the Public Archives of Canada as a separate entity from the CLA.

Mariam H. Tees, c. 1975

At this point, in 1966, the Toronto and Montreal chapters of the SLA began discussing the need to form a larger Canadian organization to coordinate activity at the national level. According to contemporary accounts, there were approximately 750 special librarians in Canada by the late 1960s. They were members of various groups: just more than 300 were members of the CLA Research and Special Libraries Section, about 350 were CLA members, and the two Canadian chapters had fewer than 200 members each. The SLA continued to be a strong influence in Canada, and the Montreal chapter hosted its second SLA conference at the beginning of June 1969, with the theme ‘Information Across Borders.’ Miriam Tees, librarian of the Royal Bank of Canada, chaired the organizational committee. She was in charge of a library of 50,000 volumes and 800 periodical subscriptions, and looked forward to library computerization to provide faster service to the company. One of the key moments of the conference was an address by Beryl Anderson on Canadian information resources. In her summary, she made an important point by stating that a strong national association could be an effective instrument for fostering greater integration into the national information network. As well, the SLA conferred its Professional Award upon Beatrice Simon, an important figure in special library work and the assistant university librarian at McGill between 1947–65. It was a successful conference that brought attention to Mariam Tees’ remarkable abilities and eventually to her presidency of the SLA in 1975–76 when she assured the membership, “As we move further and further into the information era, people with our special training and knowledge become more essential than ever.” A week after the Montreal SLA conference concluded, at St. John’s, Newfoundland, members of the CLA Research and Special Libraries agreed to dissolve and begin preparations to form a new division within the CLA specifically for special libraries.

At the June 1970 CLA meeting in Hamilton, special librarians formally adopted a name change and a new constitution for the Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services (CASLIS). This step constituted a significant milestone in establishing Canadian special librarians as a voice in national affairs within the CLA. The Canadian special libraries sector had grown in numbers and confidence in the sixties. Initial membership in CASLIS reached almost 300 at a time when there were about 1,000 special libraries, almost half of which were government. However, in the 1970s, this category would grow in number and begin to coordinate its activities through formalized group associations at the federal and provincial levels. There was less concern for nationwide undertakings.

Bank of Montreal Library, Montreal, 1969

The general proliferation of library groups and the development of ‘type of library’ membership adopted for the five divisional groupings in the CLA by 1970 indicated that national concerns or projects for librarians were giving way to provincial, regional, local, and personal professional issues, especially continuing education to further careers. As well, the activities of international affiliations remained attractive: both SLA Canadian chapters continued their connection with the SLA after 1970. In 1971, the Canadian Music Library Association of the CLA dissolved and chose to affiliate with the International Music Library Association rather than CASLIS. Instead of charting national policies, CASLIS executives spent their energies recruiting and establishing chapters in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton during the 1970s. During this time, the new association and its member chapters participated in a variety of joint programs and workshops with other library and information science groups. It was the strength of the local chapters that heightened awareness of CASLIS for years to come.

My previous blog on the organization of special libraries in Montreal and Toronto by 1940 is at this link.

My previous blog on the 1936 SLA conference held in Montreal is at this link.

My biography of Jack Ernest Brown is at the Ex Libris Association website at this link.

Three 1950s Prairie University Libraries: Rutherford, Dafoe, and Murray Memorial

2025-07-30T09:44:00.032-04:00

Before the Second World War, there was only one standalone university library building in the Canadian west. The University of British Columbia library opened in 1925 on the Point Grey campus in Vancouver under the direction of John Ridington. However, with the post-1945 increase in student numbers, including returning war veterans, overcrowding at three Prairie universities led to development plans to transfer and consolidate library collections from various academic buildings into a separate, central library. University collections had grown incrementally across each campus, and at mid-century, Manitoba held almost 250,000 volumes, Saskatchewan about 125,000, and Alberta almost 150,000. These were relatively large holdings in a Canadian context and were comparable to academic libraries of a similar size in Ontario, such as Queen’s or Western, which had erected buildings in the interwar years, the Douglas (1924) and Lawson (1934) libraries. With the increasing pressure to develop research collections and upgrade library operations, the 1950s proved to be a busy decade for university construction across Canada, marked by extensions to existing libraries and the opening of new ones.

Rutherford Memorial Library, University of Alberta, 1951

Rutherford Library, University of Alberta, 1951

Rutherford Memorial Library at the University of Alberta opened on May 15, 1951, after delays in planning and shortages of construction materials. The library was named after the former Premier of Alberta, Alexander Cameron Rutherford. It was designed by the firm Mathers and Haldenby of Toronto incorporating modified elements of the English Renaissance (also known as Georgian Revival) architectural style. This style is characterized by symmetrical lines, proportion, panel ceilings, and detailing such as window pediments, quoins, and elegant furnished interiors. Rutherford was a handsome four-storey structure of rose-colored brick with white limestone trim. The library’s exterior styling blended seamlessly with older campus buildings, which featured the Collegiate Gothic style.

The chief librarian, Marjorie Sherlock (1945–55), who actively assisted with its planning, rightfully declared, “The Rutherford Library is a beautiful building.” Indeed, Rutherford was an impressive and inviting environment for students and staff alike. The walls of the entrance halls and the main staircases were faced with polished Tyndall limestone from Manitoba and Italian marble. The staircases featured marble treads and risers, accompanied by stair rails and banisters of bronze. Painting, sculpture and art objects were an integral part of the building. The two-storey main reading room displayed oak panelling, Empire Green walls, dark walnut furniture, and red leather chairs. Its entrance was dominated by an extensive mural by Henry G. Glyde depicting his personal interpretation of Alberta’s early ‘pioneer’ colonial history near Fort Edmonton, which critics now consider demeaning in its depiction of relations between Indigenous peoples, settlers, and traders.

Henry George Glyde mural, Alberta History, 1951

Although Rutherford’s architectural style and interior decoration were retrospective, the design plans featured a relatively functional layout on each floor with separate areas and some modern features, such as an electric elevator that delivered books from the closed stacks to the main circulation desk for users. The entire design allowed for the centralization of collections, such as the law library on the first floor, and separate divisions for library services: acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation control, and reference. Marjorie Sherlock planned to reorganize the library classification using the Library of Congress system, and, for this purpose, she hired Bruce Braden Peel, who became the chief librarian after her marriage and retirement in 1955.

The chief librarian and university administrators were justly proud of the new library, which cost approximately $2,000,000 to provide about 85,000 sq. ft. on four floors. The lower level housed space for the university extension library, a reading room for applied science students, a projection room, a smoking room, and staff areas. On the ground floor, there was a law library, a reserve reading room for 120 readers, and closed reserve stacks for about 10,000 volumes for study purposes. A reading room for medical students and a staff area for processing periodicals occupied the rest of the main floor space. The second floor offered a main reading room, seating for 240 students, and a small reference desk. This floor also housed the library catalogue and periodical collection. Because the main library stack areas were only open to teaching staff, graduate and honours students, books requested by the majority of users were issued in the central area at the main circulation desk. The top floor was primarily devoted to seminar and conference rooms.

Rutherford Library main delivery desk, second floor, c. 1951

Rutherford was an outstanding addition to the University of Alberta campus. But, like all libraries, over time, increasing collections, staffing, and university enrollment led to a decision about its future. Library expansion was required in Alberta, but university growth necessitated the construction of a new library, the D.E. Cameron Library, which opened in 1964. Rutherford was reorganized to provide a larger law library on the upper floor, an undergraduate library on the second floor, and more spaces for special collections, rare books, and government documents. There were further changes, of course, notably the addition of a free-standing library built adjacent to it in 1973, Rutherford North. Half a century later, in 2025, a prominent feature of ‘Rutherford South’ (as the old library came to be known) is the Bruce Peel Special Collections. The 1951 Rutherford Library combined an engaging elegance with a utilitarian arrangement of rooms, enduring qualities which continue to fulfill the needs of Alberta’s students to this day.

University of Manitoba Library, 1953, the Elizabeth Dafoe Library

University of Manitoba Library, 1950s

When the University of Manitoba’s new campus library officially opened on September 26, 1953, it announced the arrival of Modernist architectural styling and functional planning for university libraries on the prairies. In place of the traditional collegiate-style campus buildings, the library featured an attractive exterior of Tyndall Stone, a cream coloured limestone from a Manitoba quarry, and floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Elizabeth Dafoe, the chief librarian (1937–60), helped oversee the design and construction of the new library. When she wrote about plans for the library several years later, in 1959, she said: “Every library, however, has two large areas of service: first, Public Service (Circulation and Reference), and second, Technical Service (the acquisition and preparation of materials for use).” She believed the effectiveness of the first was dependent to a considerable degree on the efficiency of the second.

Further, “Because the funds for our disposal were insufficient to erect a building ample enough to serve the university adequately for many years to come, we knew that we must have as few permanent partitions as possible and that not only the stack rooms but other areas as well must be as flexible as seemed practicable. Free-standing stacks and stack partitions between some rooms seemed to be the answer.” Indeed, the new library, costing about $900,000, was not only economically practicable but also consolidated smaller collections from across the university, thus allowing for better student and faculty use. The south end of the building provided an exhibition space and a small 80-seat theatre for films.

The Buffalo Hunt by William A. McCloy, 1953

The design architect for the library was David F. Thordarson, a young Manitoba graduate (1949) with a BA in Architecture. He had joined the Winnipeg firm, Green Blankstein Russell, which oversaw completion of the building and its Modernist rectilinear styling. The building prioritized functionality over ornamentation by utilizing glass partitions to accentuate the open floor plans and large windows that revealed interior functions from the outside. The entrance floor located at ground level featured an open lobby, a readers’ lounge, an exhibition room, a theatre, a projection room, and a small kitchen for social events. One notable feature, a colourful, dreamlike mural by William Ashby McCloy, became a prominent feature at the front entrance: it depicted three flying bison, one of which was the Great Bull Bison with his head turned back to a flying hunter who was in rapid pursuit in the sky over the Red River.

Elizabeth Dafoe plaque

The library proper spanned three floors (one below the entrance level) with separate areas for technical services, periodicals, and a bibliography room, as well as the special Icelandic collection with adjoining stack rooms. In sum, the small library was both graceful and functional, and readily accessible in the centre of campus. The main circulation desk was on the second floor, with the reserve reference desk downstairs. Honours students and graduates were assigned carrels on each of the three floors of stacks. Faculty researchers were provided with sixteen larger cubicles in a separate room. Library shelving held 160,000 volumes with special sections for maps, the valuable Icelandic collection and periodicals. Rare books were assigned their own room.

On May 25, 1961, in recognition of Elizabeth Dafoe’s long tenure, a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the renaming of the library in her honour. The former head librarian had already gained the respect of many people years before the new library opened. As the student paper, The Manitoban, expressed in March 1952: “One of the library’s first requisites, then, is a librarian who is both patient with and interested in the students. We, at the university, are especially fortunate in having Miss Dafoe. For the library is of prime importance in the student’s progress, and its management by a person who understands so well the needs of professor and student, cannot be too greatly emphasized.” In time, as student numbers grew throughout the sixties, the library became overcrowded. Plans were made to enlarge it. Finally, after a quarter century, in 1978, an addition by Green Blankenstein Russell was made to the northwest section of the library.

Murray Memorial Library, University of Saskatchewan, 1956

The third Prairie library, the Murray Memorial Library, named after the University’s first president, Walter C. Murray, was built between 1954–56 at a cost of approximately $1,500,000, including furnishings and equipment. When it officially opened on November 30, 1956, the University President, Walter P. Thompson, declared it was “Another dream come true.” The Murray Library was a central building designed to house many university collections previously dispersed among six branch libraries. The basic open design brought books and readers together in a close relationship.

Murray Memorial Library, Nov. 1956

The library was well-planned in the Mid-Century Modern architectural style by the architect Henry Kenneth Black, from Regina, and the librarian David C. Appelt, a native New Zealander who had become the head librarian in 1946. Kiyoshi Izumi, a young aspiring architect, served as Ken Black’s representative and Keyes Metcalf, Director of University Libraries at Harvard, was a consultant on the project. Murray Memorial displayed an austere, unimposing rectangular exterior with a flat roof, uniform fenestration, and a grade-level entry. Building materials included structural steel or reinforced concrete, granite at the entrance and Tyndall stone for wall cladding and window trim.

It was also an unabashed modular building, displaying a significant shift in interior planning for Canadian academic libraries. In modular planning the floor space is divided into equal rectangles: the Murray library was designed on 4 ft. x 6 in. scheme to accommodate its approximately 100,000 sq. ft. on four floors. This scheme enabled adequate floor-loading capacities, uniform ceiling heights, and provided for mechanical and electrical systems for air and lighting. Although the new building style lacked visual appeal, indeed it could be said to be boring, both H.K. Black and D.C. Appelt recognized that the international-style structure was well-suited to functional library requirements, future reorganization, and expansion. It was economical too.

Early decisions made in the planning stage determined the layout for Murray Memorial:
1. It would have open stack access with circulation control at the building exit.
2. Closed reserve collections would continue.
3. There would be no subject divisions.
4. Branch libraries would continue on a reduced scale. Research materials (except for Medicine) would be in the main library.
5. The Provincial Saskatchewan Archives would be located on the lower level.
6. There would be temporary space for the College of Law and the Law Library on the second floor.


Murray Memorial Library first floor plan, entrance at right

On the first floor, the circulation desk was situated at the entrance/exit with the catalogue adjacent to it. Further into the interior was a large, readily accessible reference room which featured a service desk that provided improved assistance. Book stacks were located on the second and third floors. The reserve reading room was on the lower level. The Murray Memorial Library served the university for two decades before undergoing extensive renovation in the 1970s, during which a six-floor south wing was added to accommodate growth.

Seven decades later, in the 21st century ‘information age’ and the era of the ‘digital library,’ the services of the Rutherford, Dafoe, and Murray libraries continue to satisfy campus needs and exemplify the diverse choices librarians and architects made in the 1950s to address contemporary issues with flexible building designs that successfully transitioned to the future.

Marion Elizabeth Gilroy (1912–1981)

2025-07-15T19:42:00.006-04:00

Marion Gilroy, BA portrait, 1932

Marion Gilroy began a promising academic career at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia during the 1930s. With the benefit of a Carnegie Fellowship award for a proposed study of adult education in the Halifax area in 1938, she earned a library degree at Columbia University. Then she returned to her native province to assume the task of directing the War Services Libraries in the Atlantic Defence Area for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Merchant Marine. After the end of the Second World War, in 1946, she became the supervisor of regional public libraries in Saskatchewan with the responsibility of promoting them across extensive rural areas populated by small towns and rural farms. Her initial energy and enthusiasm led to the creation of the North Central Regional Library in the Prince Albert-Melfort area in 1950.

Through the fifties, Gilroy helped North Central develop as a model aided by the establishment of a Provincial Library in 1953 to expand extension work, especially travelling library service and a regional bookmobile. Despite the fierce independence of local communities, she continued to promote the regional concept with numerous local organizations and municipalities. She was somewhat successful in west-central Saskatchewan, where the Wheatland Regional Library eventually formed in 1967. As well, the initial stirrings of regional work in the southeast would lead to the formation of the Southeast Regional Library in 1965. However, these events did not occur until after Gilroy had left public library work in Saskatchewan.

For almost two decades, Marion Gilroy was a tireless promoter of regional systems. In 1959, the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs requested her assistance to survey library conditions and needs in the Northwest Territories. Gilroy characteristically responded by citing the need for a regional approach: “A regional library service for the Northwest Territories should be free to borrowers, flexible and geared to meet the needs of all the people of the north. It must not stop at providing materials to meet the demands of readers at all levels; it should actively stimulate and promote reading, listening and discussion. A public library system should work in close co-operation with all educational agencies including schools and school libraries with programs concerned with health, welfare, social and economic well-being, as well as with community organizations. Radio can help. A library on wings would be an asset…” (Marion Gilroy, Down and Up North, 1960).

Gilroy’s academic career resumed after she completed graduate studies in librarianship at the University of Chicago in 1959 and resigned her supervisory position in the Provincial Library in 1963 to accept a teaching position as an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia School of Librarianship. After her retirement in 1978 and death in 1981, the Regional Library headquarters in Prince Albert was named in her honour in 1985.

I originally posted this biographical synopsis for the Ex Libris Association in 2019. The post also continues on the current ELA website. Marion Gilroy’s image is her graduate BA portrait that appeared in the Acadia University Yearbook, The Axe, in 1932.

Marion Elizabeth Gilroy

b. 20 Aug. 1912, Spring Hill, NS; d. 21 June 1981, Vancouver, BC

Education:

1932 BA Acadia University
1933 MA University of Toronto
1939 BS in LS Columbia University (Carnegie Fellowship program)
1959 MLS University of Chicago

Positions:

1933–1940 Research Librarian, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
1940–1946 Acting Director, Nova Scotia Regional Library Commission and Director, Atlantic Command Library
1946–1963 Supervisor, Regional Libraries of Saskatchewan
1963–1978 Associate Professor, University of British Columbia School of Librarianship

Publications

Gilroy, Marion (1933). The Loyalist experiment in New Brunswick. MA thesis, University of Toronto.

Gilroy, Marion (1933). “The partition of Nova Scotia,1784.” Canadian Historical Review. 14 (4): 375.

Gilroy, Marion (1936). “Customs fees in Nova Scotia.” Canadian Historical Review. 7(1): 9–22.

Gilroy, Marion (1936). “Our Need of Library Service.” Dalhousie Review 16 (3): 351–61.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). “Regional Libraries for Nova Scotia?” Maritime Library Association Bulletin 2 (3): 3–4.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). “Libraries for Nova Scotia.” Nova Scotia Journal of Education 8: 213–217.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). Loyalists and land settlement in Nova Scotia. A list compiled by Marion Gilroy under the direction of D.C. Harvey. Halifax: Published by the authority of the Board of Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

Gilroy, Marion, comp. (1938a) A catalogue of maps, plans and charts in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Compiled under the direction of D.C. Harvey, Archivist. Halifax, N.S.

Gilroy, Marion (1938b). “The imperial customs establishment in Nova Scotia, 1825–1855.“ Canadian Historical Review. 19 (3): 277–291.

Gilroy, Marion (1946). “The Buffalo Conference [A.L.A. June 16–22, 1945].” Maritime Library Institute Bulletin 10, no. 4: 3–4.

Gilroy, Marion (1951). “Saskatchewan's first regional library.” Ontario Library Review 35 (1): 87–88.

Gilroy, Marion (1952). “Taking the books to the people.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 9 (2, pt. 1): 39–43.

Gilroy, Marion (1952). “A New Prairie Crop; New Library Activity in Northern Saskatchewan.” Food for Thought 12 (7): 5–10.

Gilroy, Marion (1956). “Nora Bateson.” Food for Thought 16 (6): 242–244.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). “Down and Up North.” Food for Thought 20 (6): 276–281, 290.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). “With Parka and Sleeping Bag.” American Library Association 54 (4): 294–299.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). Library co-operation in Britain, 1950–1958. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association.

Gilroy, Marion (1963). Libraries in the Western Part of the Island of Montreal: Present and Proposed; a Report for the West Island Regional Library Council. Montreal: s..n.

Gilroy, Marion (1964). “Cat’s Cradles to Tractors; Books and Libraries for the Northwest Territories.” Canadian Geographical Journal 69 (6): 198–201.

Gilroy, Marion (1966). “Sights and Insights: Jokkmok to Yerevan. British Columbia Library Quarterly 29 (April): 8–13.

Gilroy, Marion and Samuel Rothstein, eds. (1970). As we remember it: interviews with pioneering librarians of British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia School of Librarianship with the cooperation and assistance of the Library Development Commission of British Columbia.

Gilroy, Marion (1968). “Regional Libraries in Retrospect, 1927-1967.” In Librarianship in Canada, 1946–1967; Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Homer Morton ed. by Bruce Baden Peel, 58–72. Victoria: Canadian Library Association.

Gilroy, Marion (1979). Pioneers! O pioneers: the genesis of regional libraries. [Regina]: Saskatchewan Library Association.

Associations/Committees:

Maritime Library Association; President, 1941–45
Saskatchewan Library Association, President, 1948–49
Canadian Library Association; President, 1951–52

Other Activities:

Marion Gilroy “performed surveys of library needs across Canada, in regions as diverse Montreal Island and the Northwest Territories. She also hosted many radio and television broadcasts and had a stint as a movie star in the National Film Board production Books for Beaver River.” During her teaching at UBC [University of British Columbia] she taught courses in public libraries, school libraries, readers services and book selection. In later years she traveled to exotic places including Russia and the Canadian North.
— Celebrating Women’s Achievements

One of the individuals to whom the Saskatchewan of today owes a great debt of gratitude is often referred to as “the small woman in the big hat driving the big black van.” Her name was Marion Gilroy, and her accomplishments are nothing short of heroic.
— Verne Clemence, Saskatchewan's Own, 2004

Sources:

Chan, May (2004). Marion Gilroy fonds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Archives (last revised October 2011). Accessed March 27, 2014.
Library and Archives Canada. Celebrating Women’s achievements. Marion Gilroy. Accessed December 5, 2023.
Clemence, Verne. “Books for the Regions: Marion Gilroy, 1912–1981” in Saskatchewan's Own: People Who Made a Difference. Calgary: Fifth House, 2004.
Kerr, Donald. A Book in Every Hand: Public Libraries in Saskatchewan. Regina: Coteau Books, 2005 (pp. 62-81).

School Libraries and Education for School Librarianship Workshop, Jasper Park, Alberta, 1968

2025-06-22T09:25:00.012-04:00

Education for School Librarianship in Canada; Proceedings of a Workshop, Jasper Park Lodge, Alberta on Saturday, 8 June 1968. Sponsored by the Canadian School Library Association, Alberta School Library Council, and Saskatchewan Association of School Librarians. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1970. 69 p.

Stylized 1960s media centre classroom

During the affluent 1960s, most new school buildings included a library resource centre, a term that referred to a service focusing on multimedia resources. Renovations and expansions of existing buildings modernized school libraries with enlarged, better equipped centralized spaces and resources. It was an era of progress. Schools were employing multimedia resources at both elementary and secondary levels, increasing budgets for printed resources, and improving training for professional, para-professional and clerical staff to provide services to students and teachers. In 1967, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics reported there were 16.3 million books in 5,188 centralized libraries compared to 4.3 million in 1,613 libraries in 1960. During the same period, the proportion of students with libraries almost doubled from 24.6% to 46.9%, but there were still 2,794.9 million students without centralized libraries in 1967. Many students found the use of new audio-visual resources and techniques to be more immediate and more effective than books and periodicals. At the same time, educators began to use the terminology ‘learning resource centre’ in place of the school library.

Although there was progress in forming and staffing school libraries and learning resource centres with teacher-librarians (T-Ls), surveys indicate that there were insufficient T-Ls who held a BLS or had taken courses in school librarianship offered by a library school or by provincial departments of education. In 1960, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics reported 155 professional librarians (persons with a library science degree) in schools with 281 trained teachers, either with some library qualifications or none. By 1967, the Bureau reported 365 professionals (Ontario did not report) and 1,124 trained teachers. Library educators disagreed on the need for a library degree, and provincial departmental courses often were limited to small enrollments and conducted during the summer at irregular intervals. The result was limited library training in schools and a tendency to promote the teaching of library-related content by classroom visits or individual sessions with students.

At the outset of the 1960s, printed materials in school libraries were often regarded as an auxiliary to independent learning rather than a valued asset that directly supported the school curriculum. Classroom visits by high school students to the library were often under the direction of an English teacher, and instruction in library skills was limited due to a lack of dedicated staffing. Although student instruction in library methods and the promotion of good reading continued to be staples in the broader philosophy of school librarianship, the decade also was a time of innovation. Leonard Freiser, the Chief Librarian for the Toronto Board of Education, established an Education Centre Library to order, catalogue and process resources as well as provide information searches and document delivery for teachers and librarians. He reported that more than 25,000 requests were received during one year, 1967. His critics countered that the school library ought to teach students to think critically and provide them with the skills to conduct their own self-directed learning. Beyond the school library, many new ideas infused Canadian education: collaborative student work in activity-based group work, greater attention to mathematics and science, encouragement of new technologies and resources in classrooms, more advanced qualifications for entry into teachers’ colleges or university faculties of education, open space designs for classrooms, and student demands for more practical knowledge reflecting a multicultural society.

In recognition of the need for guidance, the Canadian School Library Association (CSLA) formulated its Standards of Library Service for Canadian Schools in 1967. The standards stressed the need for an effective school library program developed collaboratively, citing three principles: (1) the provision of in-depth materials for learning following curriculum outlines, (2) each pupil should have access to a variety of materials regardless of school enrollment, and (3) each school must provide required learning materials regardless of its size. The librarian’s functions were outlined as building and organizing collections of instructional materials, assisting teachers and pupils to maximize their use of resources, training and directing clerical and student assistants, and using public relations to maintain a vital library program. The CSLA standards applied to schools of varying sizes but were not mandatory. One forceful criticism was the lack of attention to the acquisition, organization, and distribution of media resources because printed holdings were a primary concern. The standards seemed to be a retrospective vision to some professionals. Although the standards encouraged the integration of print and non-print resources, some educators believed specialist training for non-book materials was a reason for separating the school library from the media centre. When the standards were issued, many educationists hoped that every school would have a library and a trained librarian to operate it.

The Jasper Park Workshop on Education for School Librarianship, June 8, 1968

It was in this context that the CSLA examined the state of school library education in collaboration with the Saskatchewan Association of School Librarians and the Alberta School Library Council. This meeting attracted 300 educators and librarians from across Canada. The one-day session aimed to air differing viewpoints on three major issues central to school librarianship and provide attendees with future directions. Given the circumstances of changing school priorities in forming and using libraries, the discussions focused on three topics: (1) the role of the library technician in the school library, (2) the integration of new media in the school library, and (3) the status of the school librarian as a teacher. Several informative background papers describing Canadian programs for educating school librarians (printed with the workshop proceedings) appeared in Moccasin Telegraph, the newsletter of the CSLA, prior to the workshop.

The keynote speaker was Frances Henne, School of Library Service at Columbia University. She was well qualified to speak to the theme issues. As far back as 1945 she had helped formulate standards for the American Library Association (ALA) publication School Libraries for Today and Tomorrow. She was particularly interested in researching and teaching programs for children and young adults in public libraries and schools. Now, in the late 1960s, as she approached retirement, she was closely involved in the development of revised American guidelines, Standards for School Media Programs, to be published later in 1969. In her opening address, Dr. Henne expanded on the new directions that standards were slated to introduce. New ALA terminology, such as media center, media specialist, or instructional materials center, signalled the importance of non-book formats in school programs. The new standards stressed the role of the media specialist in helping students develop competence in listening, viewing, and reading skills. Media specialists should work cooperatively with teachers in designing learning activities that use a variety of formats in classrooms. Nevertheless, she concluded with a spirited message by returning to the library’s time-honoured potential: “That seemingly static space in the architect’s blueprint is alive with its tremendous actuality and potentiality ... To each young person, the responses are manifold, not only in shared, already experienced beliefs, but also in the opening, exciting vistas of the unknown.” (p. 6)

The first panel discussed the role library technicians and support staff might undertake in schools. The emerging classes of library technicians from recently formed community colleges—about 400 graduates—drew the attention of three panellists. There were concerns about their role in media instruction and the possibility that they might displace librarians. June Munro, the Supervisor of Extension Services in the Ontario Provincial Library Service, believed there was no doubt about the value of technicians in school libraries, especially in district or regional centres where they could be integrated with other library personnel. Two other panellists noted that school boards were already employing teacher aides in classrooms, and it seemed technicians would fall into a similar category within provincial educational hierarchies. They agreed that school library supervisors should clarify the distinction between technical and professional services and notify district administrators.

A variety of instructional media, such as films, videos, audio recordings, slides, and filmstrips, presented opportunities to support educational programs. The second panel addressed problems associated with the purchase, organization, storage, and distribution of these formats. Helen Donaldson, a long-time school librarian and a supervisor for school libraries in East York (Toronto), emphasized the need to have “integration of management and also materials [so] that we can improve the library resource centre service to both pupils and teachers and in this way become a strong educational force in up-grading the quality of the educational program.” (p. 21) Media required a variety of specially trained staff, of whom the librarian was only one. Clearly, it seemed media specialists should be working as part of a teaching team in schools. It was felt that media resources should be as accessible as possible and located in classrooms, laboratories, or special learning centres where they would receive maximum use. A central school library was just one possibility.

The third panel discussed “Teacher and Library Education in School Librarianship: Professional Dualism or Schizophrenia.” Panellists felt the fundamental role of the school librarian should be to work with teachers as team members directly involved in the education of students. But was teacher training and certification necessary for the school librarian with library school standing? Lawrence Wiedrick, from the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, who had extensive prior experience as a T-L, held that preparation in both education and librarianship was essential but that the emphasis in the workplace depended on local circumstances. He believed “more graduate programs in school libraries are required because extensive specialization at the undergraduate level is not desirable or usually possible ... programs should be offered by both colleges of education and library schools in order that candidates can choose a specialty within either field.” (p. 31) Another panellist pointed to a more proactive role: “School librarians are part of the educational team. They don’t serve teachers—they work with them as colleagues.” (p. 37) Generally, panellists agreed that the school librarian should be prepared first for professional teaching, which involved certification, and only secondly as a specialist.

The one-day workshop finished late in the afternoon with a summary by Frances Henne. Her thoughts, as before, emphasized that the functions of technicians should be clearly defined, that schools required staff with varying specialties, and that the school librarian could be a teacher closely involved in curriculum planning and the learning process. A systems approach, rather than independent schools, was needed to maximize resource use. The school library had a function of its own and therefore should play an essential part in making its voice heard in decisions about library/media administration.

Afterwards: School Librarians and a New Professional Vision

The 1968 Jasper workshop was designed to allow educators to hear various opinions about the changing priorities in traditional school library service and the emerging instructional media centres. No recommendations were brought forward, but the general discussions and background papers sharpened participants’ views and suggested useful options. In the following year, June 1969, at the Canadian Library Association (CLA) national meeting in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CSLA arranged to have Jean E. Lowrie, the former President of the American Association of School Libraries (1963–64) and future President of the ALA in 1973–74 speak to school librarians about the role of the administrator in media centres. She was an advocate for school libraries to fulfill an instructional role with all types of media, responsive and creative to the needs of teachers and students. Yet there was a growing realization that a significant number of Canadian schools were unable to meet the CSLA 1967 standards for personnel or facilities, although many came closer to meeting the collection guidelines.

Elizabeth Gardens Public School library, Burlington, Ontario, c. 1970

To clarify roles, the CLA approved a statement titled “Guidelines for the Training of Library Technicians” in 1973. In the mid-1970s, the CSLA and the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada collaborated on an integrated definition of the role of the school library in providing all types of learning materials. The resulting publication, Resource Services for Canadian Schools (1977), presented national guidelines for resource centre services for the learning resource teacher and T-Ls. This publication superseded the 1967 CSLA standards and provided more guidance on media integration, district services, information access, programming and personnel rather than focusing on measures of materials and their arrangement.

Library education, too, continued to evolve. By the late 1970s, the worthy role definition of the T-L as a cooperative planner and joint implementer of curriculum was at a youthful stage. As a model, the enhanced role proposed that T-Ls should actively participate with teachers in planning and implementing classroom units of study by utilizing their knowledge of resources. This fundamental shift meant that library skills could be developed in jointly planned and implemented classroom learning exercises rather than scheduled class visits to the library. In 1979, the CSLA issued “The Qualifications of School Librarians,” which reflected philosophic educational changes. This statement recommended that a teaching certificate and successful classroom teaching experience be prerequisites for entry into a school library program and that programs should only be offered at the graduate or post-baccalaureate level. Qualified school librarians were tasked with competencies in areas such as professional leadership, acquisition, organization and use of learning resources, instructional design, and production of learning resources. It was an ambitious change for school librarianship.

Although there were pressures on funding for school libraries during a period of declining enrollment, economic recession, and rapid inflation in the 1970s, expenditures on books and media remained an integral part of school budgeting. A decade later, in 1979, Statistics Canada reported that school libraries held 49,547,798 books and 5,824,726 non-print audio-visual formats. Growth was slower but continued—in 1967/68, schools had reported holdings of 16 million books (there were no comparable data for non-print materials). Personnel increases were less impressive: in 1967/68, there were 2,975 full-time staff (566 with a library degree); in 1979, there were 5,171 personnel (451 with a library degree). Educational opportunities in resource centres totalled 3,390 professional positions, i.e., teachers with certificates in school librarianship/media services but no library degree, teachers with courses in school librarianship/media services but without a certificate, teachers without courses in school librarianship/media services, and audiovisual specialists with a university degree but no teaching degree or certificate.

But a number of factors would eventually contribute to a slower growth of a larger national cohort of better trained T-Ls: (1) provincial education regulations did not insist that qualified T-Ls staff school libraries; (2) teachers found it more challenging to enroll in the revised three or four semester MLS programs after library schools eliminated the older two semester BLS program; (3) many T-Ls felt the usual three session program of university faculties of education leading to specialist qualifications in school librarianship should be bolstered with additional courses. Furthermore, individual library school course options tended to emphasize literature and reading for children or young adults as well as general school library administration. The faculties of education provided more specific courses that emphasized the role of T-Ls in media and curriculum development, but did not develop comprehensive programs of study about school libraries.

The Jasper workshop occurred just before the significant shift in thinking about the role of the T-L and the school library. The 1980s would prove even more challenging than the clarification of roles in the 1970s, which remained to be universally recognized in educational hierarchies. Educational programs were usually planned and approved at various levels by administrators and elected officials who were often unaware of the school library’s potential or what was happening within them, thus perpetuating the subordinate profile of school librarianship in the development of school curricula in many school jurisdictions across the country. As well, the financial prosperity of the sixties and early seventies was ending as inflation and an economic downturn in 1980 ushered in a rethinking of government priorities. A new philosophy of minimized state intervention and reduced expenditures was taking hold that would affect all public sectors.

Further Reading

A biography of Frances Henne is available on Wikipedia.

A biography of Jean E. Lowrie is available on Wikipedia.

A national meeting on school librarianship at Edmonton in 1959 is the subject of my earlier blog.

My subsequent blog on neoliberalism and school librarianship is at this link.

From Sigmund Samuel to the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, 1954–1973

2025-05-22T19:59:00.016-04:00

Over the course of twenty years, in the 1950s and 1960s, libraries at the University of Toronto continued to expand and improve as they became collectively the most extensive university holdings in Canada. The library system, under the leadership of Robert Blackburn, also refined its philosophy concerning the necessity for a centralized research collection to serve the needs of graduate studies. During this period, the architectural styles of the Modern Movement and new construction technologies utilizing steel, glass, and concrete also broke with past practices. In 1954, the Sigmund Samuel Library (SSL) was constructed using Queenston limestone adjacent to the original library building with the Samuel family crest above the entrance. The coat of arms in stained glass above the entrance had been granted to the Samuel family by Oliver Cromwell in 1670. When the John P. Robarts Research Library was completed in 1973, the humanities and social science collection was transferred to the new building. The original building became the Science and Medicine Library and the host of Canada’s largest academic science and medicine library.

If the sleek rectilinear lines, large airy windows, open main floor plan, and simple functionality of the International Style in architecture exhibited by the SSL comforted people, along with the Samuel family coat of arms over the doorway, the opposite was true when the massive 14-storey John P. Robarts Research Library with two basement levels opened at 130 St. George Street. At the time, it was about one million sq. ft. in size and the largest academic library building in the world. It could accommodate four thousand users and held just under three million volumes. While its scale was breathtaking, its poured concrete Brutalist style, provincial funding, and original plans for restricted stack access provoked controversy before and after the opening of ‘Fort Book.’

The Sigmund Samuel Library, 1953–54

Sigmund Samuel wing, c.1955

When Toronto’s first standalone Romanesque style University Library opened in 1892, it was designed to seat 200 readers and accommodate 120,000 books. It offered reference for students and lending privileges for faculty. Over decades, it became crowded, and by the late 1920s, the chief librarian, W. Stewart Wallace, planned an extension; however, depression era financial difficulties and the Second World War halted progress. As collections grew, the smaller college libraries slowly expanded due to limited space in the central library. Finally, in 1951, Sigmund Samuel, a prominent Toronto business leader and philanthropist, promised a donation of $500,000 towards the construction of a $3,000,000 extension. Sigmund was the son of Lewis Samuel, a very early Jewish immigrant to Canada from England. Sigmund was born in Toronto in 1867, and the family was quite prominent both in the Jewish community and in the city of Toronto. His father, Lewis, was President of the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute in 1879.

Construction on the new wing began in late 1953. This addition became an attractive five-storey ‘wing’ extension, a popular concept in academic library buildings after WWII. The circulation, reference, and periodicals departments were on the main floor with the humanities and social sciences book stacks in the three basement levels. The acquisitions and cataloguing departments were located on the second above ground floor. When W.S. Wallace decided to retire in spring 1954, the reserve book room inside the SSL was renamed in his honour and Alice Moulton, an experienced circulation librarian, placed in charge. A formal opening took place on November 26, 1954, with Sigmund Samuel and the architect Alvan Mathers of Mathers & Haldenby on hand in recognition of their contributions to the much needed project.

Sigmund Samuel and Alvan
Mathers at the opening

The next day, a colloquium on the future prospects of research libraries was held featuring W.S. Wallace, William Kaye Lamb, and notable librarians from the United States. A pamphlet, The Research Library, reporting the proceedings was published by the Canadian Library Association in 1955. The colloquium stressed the need to organize specialized collections and develop effective systems of nationwide cooperation, especially by the nascent National Library. Generally, students welcomed the new facility. The Varsity (March 9, 1955) reported, “The new library has many popular features: the open-shelf system, the attractive appearance, the good lighting (which incidentally promotes social life, as you can now see the student across the table from you). There is still some dissatisfaction, however — students have been petitioning to have closing time extended from 10.00 to 11.00.” The large windows that allowed ample lighting were particularly popular. The SSL was designed to make about one million volumes available for users. It also became a vital social centre for seminars, talks, receptions, student sales, elections, a faculty reading area, a staff room, and even a small smoking room. The Stewart Wallace Room was organized to hold 20,000 volumes and accommodated 380 users. It was often filled to capacity at critical times for student paper deadlines or examinations. When its open shelves were closed due to $8,000 book theft reported by the Globe and Mail on December 9, 1959 (“Students Petition for Return of Open-Shelf Library”), leaving students to fill in request slips to obtain books, they unsuccessfully petitioned the library to rescind its policy. However, unrest continued until 1961, when they were permitted access if they attended an instructional session.

Sigmund Samuel Library first floor plan

Robert Blackburn’s history, Evolution of the Heart (1989), provides a chapter on the genesis, design phase, and construction of the SSL. Although the extension provided necessary relief for collections and reader space, in fact, after a few years, the new wing itself became crowded. Administrators realized larger quarters would be necessary. The only major campus library built after the SSL was the E.J. Pratt Library at Victoria College, which opened in 1961. It was a plain, two-storey, granite-clad edifice with open stacks and extensive windows allowing students to view attractive landscaping. Consequently, planning for this necessity began in the late 1950s, especially when Claude T. Bissell, a promoter of libraries, became President of the University in 1958. He quickly formed an advisory committee for future library services and buildings chaired by Roland McLaughlin to recommend new directions for the entire university library system.

The McLaughlin Committee report issued in January 1959. It recommended that a policy of centralization of departmental libraries be pursued to coordinate services, that the Library of Congress classification be adopted, that a union catalogue of holdings be established, and that 75,000 sq. ft. be added to the present SSL and another 82,700 square feet erected on the site of the Engineering Building on King’s College Circle. For future expansion, an additional 60,000 sq. ft. would be necessary. With the study completed, another committee was established to report on a new central facility, but not until 1965, with the full support of Claude Bissell, were the committee's plans approved. There was an air of optimism about the project. When Claude Bissell spoke at the annual meeting of the Canadian Library Association held in Toronto in June 1965, he articulated the role of the projected research library: “The profile of the new research library in the university is that of an active scholarly headquarters with a close working relationship between professional supervisors and users. It will be a much more lively, much more heavily populated building than the old library.” His focus was on the humanities and social sciences and a new library of about 500,000 sq. ft. that the second committee had settled on. In the intervening five years, it was assumed that resources would be moved from the crowded SSL to the new central library. The SSL would continue with a duplicate collection for undergraduates, and they would not have direct access to the collections of the new building. While the second committee was doing its work, important issues were raised in a national study by Edwin Williams, Resources of Canadian University Libraries. It reported the need for increased financial support for research collections, especially at the graduate level. Also, the block of land at the corner of St. George and Harbord Streets was chosen as a new site for a grand central library. In 1966, after publication of the Spinks Report on the development of graduate education in Ontario, the Provincial government indicated that it could help finance the research library project. This report recommended that Toronto be designated as the major provincial resource centre and its holdings be available to all faculty and qualified graduate students. As such, the Province should support Toronto’s expansion to enable it to assume these new responsibilities.

The John P. Robarts Research Library, 1968–73

Robarts Library with the Rare Book wing, 1974

With the University’s acceptance of the 1965 report, serious design planning and preliminary engineering reports began and were finished in early 1967. A triangular building with fourteen levels above ground and two below was proposed. The main service floor was situated on the fourth level with circulation to closed stacks, reference, a public catalogue, and a periodicals reading area. Access to two smaller wings, one for rare books and one for the library school, allowed access to these satellite areas. The budget had ballooned to just under $42 million, a phenomenal amount for a Canadian university library devoted to the humanities and social sciences, but the Ontario government authorized $40 million in support, which cleared the way for construction to begin at the end of 1968. In July 1971, the University Board of Governors named the main library in honour of John Parmenter Robarts, the seventeenth Premier of Ontario, 1961–71. The eight-storey 100,000 sq. ft. wing for the School of Library Science was the first completed section of the library complex and was occupied in June 1971. It was renamed the Claude T. Bissell building in 1984, which became the home to the Faculty of Information. The rare book wing, which featured a warm, inviting interior, opened in December 1972 and was named the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library in honour of Thomas Fisher, whose grandsons donated valuable collections of Shakespeare and other authors to the university library. Selected campus collections, staff, and services moved into the Robarts Library during the first part of 1973. The library quietly opened in July. Alice Moulton, who had become head of circulation of the library system in the 1960s, supervised the move of books from the SSL to the new building.

Thomas Fisher Rare Books, c. 1975

The monumental scale of the concrete complex dwarfed previous library quarters and offered the prospect of vastly better quality and quantity of services. But it did not come without controversy. The initial decision to limit access to collections for undergraduates, except for fourth-year students, provoked widespread student protests at a time when the concepts of ‘student power’ and ‘stakeholders’ were prompting student activism. In early March 1972, the University Senate rejected student appeals to allow all students and the public complete access to the building, its services and collections. Shortly afterwards, police removed and arrested 18 people, mainly students, at a sit-in in Simcoe Hall on King’s College Circle, a short distance from the SSL. A lengthy Globe and Mail article on March 13 called attention to the issues: “Brutal tactics claimed: 18 charged as police end sit-in over U of T library.” By the end of March, limited access was struck down: the Senate proposed that all University members would be eligible to use the Robarts Library and apply for entry to the book stacks. In 1972, there were more than 55,000 thousand potential users. Later, when a newly structured Governing Council officially came into being in July 1972 to replace the previous Board of Governors and University Senate, it adopted this principle.

Harsh commentary turned to the monumental design of Robarts, a feature many early century Carnegie libraries had suffered with for decades. Although the use of unpainted concrete in large buildings was not unusual in Canada in this period, the magnitude of Robarts startled many observers. In “Fort Book: It’s 14 storeys of literary intimidation,” an article in the Toronto Star on Sept 28, 1974, the journalist Robert Fulford declared, “the John P. Robarts Research Library is just about the most intimidating building ever devised by the mind of man.” Many people—architects, passersby, and students— hated the library. Nonetheless, Fulford had to admit it worked with the proviso,

But the fact is that since the Robarts opened, library use on campus—borrowing, reading in the library, etc.—has increased almost 100 per cent. This means that the old facilities of the Sigmund Samuel Library were overcrowded, that new facilities were needed, and that to some extent Robarts has filled the need. Students may write nasty articles about it in The Varsity, the student daily, but they use it.

One of the more loquacious student critics of The Varsity was Linda McQuiag, who opined in its pages from time to time. On November 26, 1972 (“Take a Good Look before Books Go”), she reported that the book move from the SSL to Robarts would likely disenfranchise undergrads who would be denied access to resources they previously had. She also raised the issue of the enormous percentage of tax funding by Ontario taxpayers and the use of it by researchers from other universities. Later, she revisited funding issues when she reported in the Globe and Mail on July 10, 1973 (“Robarts Library: lavish but book-poor”) about library budget woes, inflation, and expenditures reductions that might have been trimmed costs during the construction stage, such as posh lounges in the library science wing or the front tower that made the entire structure look like a turkey (or peacock) from the Harbord Street side. Perhaps there was no formal opening of Robarts with ribbon cutting, etc., because of the controversies surrounding the library structure, its use, and its purpose.

From Sigmund Samuel to Robarts

In retrospect, the two libraries reflected the changing fortunes of 20th century Canadian post-secondary education and the growth of Toronto. The SSL was built when universities were developing with modest revenues and smaller enrollments, which denied the bold planning strokes that Robarts ostentatiously displayed. The dramatic expansion of universities and new colleges in the 1960s was due to a vast infusion of federal and provincial funding necessary to meet rapidly increasing student numbers and to develop comprehensive research resources. The Sigmund Samuel and Robarts libraries celebrated the humanities and social sciences, but gradually the SSL and its aged partner, the University Library of 1892, transitioned into a science and health complex as sketched in the McLaughlin report. Eventually, in 1997, these two libraries were renamed the Gerstein Science Information Centre in recognition of a large donation from the Frank Gerstein Charitable Foundation. The SSL undergraduate humanities and social sciences materials were integrated into other campus library collections, and the reading areas expanded to accommodate science students and faculty. The Wallace Room continued to have study carrels, tables for reading, and computer workstations. The Robarts Library grew in stature and became a world-class research institution.

As the city of Toronto grew from a regional hub to Canada’s metropolitan centre, the Brutalist Style was often evident in public buildings. The striking impression of this style symbolized a utilitarian approach to building, permanence, and a new expressive form for public gatherings. Concrete was a reliable, economical material used in other ambitious contemporary buildings that featured Brutalist elements, such as the York University central Scott Library (opened in 1971), Four Seasons Sheraton Hotel (opened in 1972), and the CN Tower (opened in 1976). Today, many people still consider the Robarts complex ugly, except for a short time in spring when the blossoms of its cherry trees planted in 2005 are in season.

A University of Toronto celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Robarts is at this link.

My blog on the reports by Edwin Williams and Robert B. Downs is at this link.

A short biography of Alice Moulton is at the Ex Libris Association at this link.

A biography of Robert H. Blackburn is at the Ex Libris Association at this link.

The Books Drive On (1948) An Ontario Bookmobile Film

2025-05-09T09:47:00.029-04:00

The Books Drive On. 16 mm film, colour and sound, 1948. Produced by Jean and Glen Eckmier, photography by Bob Henry and script by Tom Rafferty from CKNX radio.

Ontario libraries were late adopters of motorized bookmobile service. In the 19th century travelling library service by agencies in the UK and USA were innovative extension ideas to reach readers in unserved areas. In Canada, travelling libraries, boxes of books usually shipped to local communities or schools, were introduced first in British Columbia in 1898 by E.O.S, Scholefield, the Provincial Librarian and Archivist. In 1899, McGill University began serving areas in rural Quebec thanks to the sponsorship of Hugh McLennan. The Ontario Department of Education began its service to northern lumber camps in 1901. These systems proved so popular that they were expanded and continued for more than half a century before they were discontinued.

Canadian Bookmobiles Operate from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coasts

The first Canadian motorized bookmobiles, which contemporaries often called book vans, book trucks, or libraries-on-wheels, appeared in the Maritimes and British Columbia as early as 1930. In two summers, 1930 and 1931, Acadia University operated two bookmobiles, one in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and the other in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Each modified book truck carried 1,500 books and visited station stops eight times during the summer. Unfortunately, worsening economic conditions at the outset of the Great Depression forced the termination of this service. In the Fraser Valley, B.C., the Carnegie Corporation sponsored a regional library demonstration commencing in late summer 1930 that included a bookmobile service. It proved to be highly successful under the direction of notable librarians, Helen Gordon Stewart, the director and the assistant, Nora Bateson, who later championed regional services in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before 1939.

In Ontario, regional library systems developed slowly on a county basis. Improvements in transportation routes in the 1920s and 1930s enabled the delivery of book collections more easily and rapidly via motorized vehicles. The Ontario Department of Highways financed the expansion of a provincial highway network assisted by the Good Roads Association based in municipalities and counties. Major highway construction and secondary roads facilitated commercial truck traffic, inter-city bus lines, and private automobile travel. The formation of county library associations in the 1930s and then county library co-operatives after the Second World War occurred mostly in southwestern Ontario. By 1935, Lambton County trustees introduced a small two-wheeled trailer (‘book van’) with built-in shelving towed by a vehicle. Middlesex County began operating a small cabin-style book trailer carrying 1,200 books in 1940. These were not motorized bookmobiles, and wartime rationing on gasoline and rubber halted further progress by county library associations until after 1945.

The Huron County Bookmobile

The Huron County Library Association was formed in 1941. Sixteen participating libraries agreed to pay an annual fee of $25 to share books transported by car on a rotating basis. In 1945, Mrs. Jean Eckmier became the county librarian and her husband, Glen, was hired as her assistant. For a few years they delivered books using their own car, but in 1947, the Huron County Library Cooperative purchased an imported American van adapted to bookmobile standards and nicknamed “Miss Huron” for just over $3000. It was the first driven bookmobile in Ontario, an International Harvester one-ton metro van, a type frequently used to deliver milk and bakery items to homes across North America after WW II. The body was built over the engine, thus giving more room for about 1,000 books. This compact model bookmobile was used to supply each participating library with 100 books on a quarterly rotating basis.

Angus Mowat, the Inspector of Public Libraries for the Ontario Department of Education, rode in the vehicle for two days in September 1947 and made a lengthy report with interesting observations in his notebook (pp. 513–514), which now resides at the D.B. Weldon Library at Western University. A few of his excerpts follow:

The cab is built over [the] engine, thus allowing extra space in [the] rear. Front doors slide and driver's seat sets forward, giving wide entrance.
Truck is very easily handled and can turn in short space. Headroom 5' 7." Width of floor between shelving 4' 8." Shelves 8' long, six shelves high, house approximately 1000 [books]. Shelving is of wood made locally, and each edge has a 3/4" lip to keep books on. A hinged lip would be better, making it easier to remove the books when in action. Light by day is from the large windshield and windows in [the] rear doors. At night there is only a single dome lamp. Maybe they'll need more.
The general appearance of the vehicle is good. It is pained in a dark green, picked out by a lighter stripe.
Everything about the vehicle gives an impression of solidity and strength. It sides evenly and even though we went off on one or two quite rough detours the books did not offer to budge. I think, however, that dust may prove to be something of a problem. There will be heater and de-froster in winter.
Wherever we went on the two days I was out on exchange the van caused considerable interest, at least among the library people and small boys. In fact, on two occasions the small boys promptly invited themselves aboard and selected some of the books they wanted the librarian to take out.
I was surprised to see how quickly the exchanges were made [deposits and returns of 100 books per library]. The shortest one was 35 minutes and the longest about one hour. This is about twice as quickly as exchanges were made when trays were carried in a passenger automobile.

The Inspector also penned a short article about his ride through the farm fields and small county towns in the November 1947 issue of the Ontario Library Review with an enthusiastic comment, “The librarian didn’t sing, but I did.”

Late in 1947, the county library trustees and county council authorized the production of a 16 mm film featuring the new bookmobile and the work of Jean and Glen Eckmier with a grant from the county council. The energetic couple took charge of the entire production and enlisted the help of Tom Rafferty of the Wingham radio station, CKNX (known as the Farm Station), to compose the script and to provide its commentary. Bob Henry did the colour photography and Wilford T. Cruickshank, a previous library trustee and owner of CKNX, assisted in production. Shooting began in November 1947 and finished several months later in August 1948. During filming, Stanley Beacock, the chief librarian in Lambton County, drove Miss Huron to the Canadian Library Association gathering in Ottawa in June 1948 for a special session on transportation in regional and county work. The Huron bookmobile was one of three prominent exhibits at the conference.

This ‘amateur’ film was not remarkably different from other bookmobile motion pictures that featured visits to readers at stations and small libraries. Still, it had a quality of highlighting the rural features of Huron County—the dusty streets of small hamlets, busy street front stores, livestock, field crops, farm machinery, children, adults and seniors gathering their books, greenery and trees along county roadways, attractive streets of the county seat, Goderich, the sleekly designed bookmobile with its gold trimmed lettering, and the sunset at the end of the day. Libraries were popular throughout Huron, and there were five existing Carnegie buildings: Brussels, Clinton, Exeter, Goderich, and Seaforth. Other libraries were located in smaller communities, such as Auburn, Bayfield, Blyth, Dungannon, Hensall, and Kirkton, as well as township schools. During its initial years, the film grew in popularity. The National Film Board contributed $ 2,500 toward the purchase of a negative print. Later, The Books Drive On was advertised for sale in the Library Journal and the Wilson Library Bulletin. By 1951, the film had been exhibited across Canada and the United States and had left a lasting impression of county library work in a rural setting.

County library bookmobiles appeared across rural Ontario during the 1950s: in Simcoe, Lambton, Middlesex, Oxford, Peel, Kent, and other cooperative systems. These mobile units primarily refreshed collections in small local libraries and schools from a central county headquarters. In urban Ontario, the bookmobile provided an extension service, and it proved to be successful in cities such as Ottawa, Hamilton, and London. Expanding suburban municipal library boards, such as East York and North York, purchased bookmobiles to reach people directly at designated stops. Through the 1960s and 1970s, bookmobiles remained popular, although improved branch library services across the province, in cities and counties, lessened the need to reach people. After 2000, bookmobile service again picked up, and today (2025) there are about fifteen bookmobiles in operation across Ontario because it is reasonably economical and reaches many people who find it more convenient to use.

Jean Eckmier and her husband, Glen, remained with the Huron system until their retirement in 1961.

View the 35-minute film The Books Drive On on YouTube at this link.

My blog on the Library on Wheels, the 1945 Fraser Valley bookmobile film, is at this link.

My blog on two later Canadian bookmobile films is at this link.

Canadian School Libraries and Books for Youth Forum at Winnipeg, 1949

2025-04-25T19:07:00.032-04:00

Munson, Amelia H., ed. Books for Youth: Everyone’s Responsibility; School Library Institute Proceedings, June 24–25, 1949, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1949. 61 p. [The Institute was part of the fourth annual conference of the Canadian Library Association]

School Library Development in Postwar Canada, 1945–50

Attention to school library work and better cooperation between public libraries and schools increased after the Second World War. While many libraries in secondary schools were satisfactory and there were a few outstanding ones, small classroom collections prevailed in elementary schools. For example, at a rural school in Brechin just outside Nanaimo, British Columbia, each classroom featured a small library with books supplied by the Vancouver Island Union Library. Teachers frequently were in charge of these collections, although a few trained teacher-librarians supervised activities in some places. Larger public libraries, such as Toronto and Vancouver, led the way in providing collections for schools to use and promoted their services in children’s libraries or special rooms for teenagers. In the case of Vancouver, elementary schools could borrow recreational books to augment their own collections from a central collection in the public library’s school department. Schools provided library rooms and teacher-librarians, while the Vancouver public library, under the able direction of Isabel McTavish, acquired, catalogued, and distributed the books.

Children reading in a classroom library
Brechin, British Columbia, c.1944

Although the war years had stalled school library development, after the formation of the Canadian Library Association (CLA) in 1946, services for children received more consideration. The Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians (established in 1939) became a constituent section of the CLA with the ambitious goal of promoting reading on a national scale. The group established a Book of the Year Award in 1947 to highlight worthy Canadian authors or books published in Canada. Two years later, CLA launched Young Canada’s Book Week in November 1949 to encourage reading for young Canadians. In 1950, a CLA Youth Interest Group to address teenage readers became an official section of the CLA.

Because it was commonplace for public libraries to supply schools with reading materials after the war, the idea of ‘children’ or ‘youth’ was broadly construed. Elementary school children and younger teenagers were often considered collectively following the example of the American Library Association Division of Libraries for Children and Young People established in 1941 for schools, children, and public librarians. By 1940, the Ontario Library Association had already formed two separate official sections: a ‘children’s librarians’ group and a ‘school and intermediate libraries’ group for teachers and librarians engaged in high school work. These sections sometimes worked collaboratively and their members often attended sessions together at the OLA annual conference. Consequently, many school librarians readily adapted the public library concept of promoting ‘good reading’ as the alternative to series books, comics, or poor quality writers.

After the war, the CLA took the lead on the national stage. Most school libraries were often simply collections of books where keener students might find reading materials. Now, school libraries were assuming a workshop or service point role where students and classes could gather to discover resources to enrich their experiences. The new library approach attempted to further research, curriculum enrichment, independent study, and recreational reading. Many librarians felt the best way to discover what young people were reading was to make friends with them and listen carefully. Then, they could find out what they were thinking about, what they were reading, and discuss books more satisfactorily. As part of the CLA 1949 annual meeting in Manitoba, a subsequent two-day forum of ideas was planned to discuss youth services in more detail. The focus was on current practices in school librarianship, not collections or facilities.

The Institute on School Library Work was held on June 24–25 at the Manitoba Legislature under the direction of Amelia Munson, New York Public Library. She was quite experienced in working with youth and an entertaining speaker. She taught at Columbia University on the reading interests of adolescents for almost two decades and inspired a generation of students, such as Louise Riley, who earned her MA in LS at Columbia in 1942 and made children’s work in the Calgary Public Library a model for other libraries in Alberta. Although Munson was nearing the end of her career, she became widely known for her handbook on young adult services, An Ample Field: Books and Young People, published in 1950 by the American Library Association.

The Institute on School Library Work, Winnipeg, June 1949

Cover for Books for Youth

The proceedings and discussions held in four sessions at the Manitoba Legislature were published as Books for Youth: Everyone’s Responsibility; School Library Institute Proceedings, June 24-25, 1949, Winnipeg, Manitoba by the CLA in 1949. Amelia Munson addressed her audience on the subject of the pleasures of reading and the responsibilities of librarians three times:

“Growth through Reading”
“What Books? For Whom?”
“Who, Me?”

The first general address at the beginning of the meeting revealed her extensive literary background with English and American authors from Shakespeare to Robert Frost. She felt that if a person actively read compelling, cultivated literature that spanned many issues and many periods of time, then the possibility of personal growth surely existed.

If without reservation, with all that is in us, we can associate ourselves with such high matters, with such great comparisons, how can we fail to grow—in understanding, in compassion, in integrity? And it is such a simple matter, really. But we need occasionally to have our attention drawn to it. “Men need in general,” says Dr. Johnson, “not so much to be informed as to be reminded.” That is what I have been trying to do tonight.

Hélène Grenier, the head of the Teachers’ Library for the Montreal Catholic School Commission, closed the opening session by reiterating the critical roles librarians and teachers played in the lives of youngsters. The Director’s address at the second general session the next morning dealt with the demanding challenge of mastering a diverse range of reading interests and readers’ abilities.

When I think of the voracious reading of adolescents, I do not have a picture of a mass of young people steadily and single-mindedly devouring a book, as an army of grasshoppers crunches its way through a wheat field. ... Not all of them are readers, of course, as we think of readers. Some are ‘reluctant’ and some are ‘rebellious,’ but I hesitate to call any of them non-readers. I should prefer to say they are all potential non-readers, unless we do something about it.

Personal and professional responsibility was her focus: “I believe one’s first duty is to be a real person—then, perhaps, a professional one.” She insisted that librarians were important intermediaries between the world of books and reading with students and young persons.

It is for us to see to it that the vital line of communication between the great spirits of the past and the eager, questing spirits of today remains unbroken, it is our function to brush aside the obstacles that confront contemporary readers and give them direct access to the mind and heart of the writer; and it is our obligation, an obligation that rests heavily upon us for we deal with materials “too dear for our possessing,” and yet an obligation that it is a delight to fulfil, to find some way of sharing that richness.

Small discussion groups were formed during this session. Then reports were made when the groups returned to a general assembly. One concern that merited special consideration was the ‘retarded’ reader, today an outdated term which would be replaced in subsequent decades by youngsters experiencing ‘reading disorders’ or ‘reading difficulty.’ Each individual required careful consideration, and by using attractive books or story-telling techniques, and by exploring personal interests, the child might begin to like reading. Discovering the interests of ‘rebellious’ readers was another challenge requiring individual attention. Finally, ‘resourceful’ readers who read widely and were capable of finding information on their own, could be guided to resources beyond the school library and encouraged to expand their reading interest. Finding a young person’s interests and building upon them was the key to a successful relationship with students.

Lyle Evans, the supervisor of school libraries for the Saskatchewan Department of Education, led the third session. She called upon all participants to outline how they organized their collections and how students could be helped to achieve better reading levels and enjoy reading. Teachers and librarians presented a variety of current methods: Story Telling — Book Talks — Student Helpers — Library Clubs — Work with Individuals — Classroom Libraries — Audio-Visual Aids — Radio Broadcasts in Schools — Picture Collections — Exhibits. In the subsequent discussion, films, plays, puppet shows, and collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also came under consideration.

The final evening session featured presentations on responsibility in a school setting. Again, Amelia Munson offered inspiration about the merits of reading for young people:

For though changes—revolutionary changes—occur in thinking and in conduct, in science and philosophy, even in human nature, the needs and the satisfaction of the human spirit remains constant. ... There must always be heights for the aspiring spirit; whether they be in Nature, in Art, in Philosophy, in Religion is not of much concern.

Four speakers described their work at this session. Lyle Evans talked about the role of the teacher-librarian in the educational program in relation to the resources of libraries or classroom collections in schools. They might work as instructors but were managers with the difficult goal of developing a love of reading regardless of resource limitations. The role of school principals was also important as well for they chose the school library leaders, designated space(s) for collections, and provided funding within their budgets. District superintendents, such as Herbert McIntosh in Winnipeg, oversaw developments on a broader scale and liaised with educational officials across an entire province. He said schools were tax-supported institutions and the public “should know why a school needs a library and what it does with it.” In conclusion, the role of elected school board trustees was briefly touched on, and questions were raised about library plans for development in the Winnipeg school system.

In the closing appreciation, all members were urged to participate in the forthcoming Young Canada’s Book Week/Semaine du livre pour la jeunesse canadienne, which would be held for the first time. Among the 106 registrants, there were influential leaders in children’s and school library work nationwide. Almost half the participants were from Manitoba, led by Eleanor Boyce, Manitoba Inspector of Schools, and Myrtle Lewis, Manitoba Department of Education Library. A few other prominent names in school library work included Alvine Bélisle (École Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Montreal), Louise Riley (Calgary Public Library), Margaret Fraser (Galt Collegiate Institute), Kathleen Dolan (Sir Adam Beck Collegiate in London), Isabel McTavish (Vancouver Public Library), and Elizabeth Mott (Baron Byng High School in Montreal).

At mid-century, school library work was taking place in ten separate provincial education systems summarized by a 1951 Canadian Education Association report: “The increasing attention which departments of education are giving to school libraries, in the provision of expert advice and recommendations, books, and funds, and the instruction in the use of the library which is being introduced into schools are indications of the recognition of the importance of the library to the school program.” Like their counterparts in public libraries, school libraries sought to impart an appreciation of literature with the added responsibility to instruct students in library methods. It was an optimistic outlook, but at the start of the 1950s and for many years ahead, school librarianship and teacher-librarians continued to be a minority voice in public library-oriented associations and departments of education across the country.

The 1949 workshop marked a step forward in thinking about school librarianship. During the subsequent decade, library groupings devoted to youth services, children’s work, and school libraries divided librarians’ attention while educational officials, principals, and teachers struggled to cope with increasing enrollments due to the baby boom after 1945. It would be ten years before the CLA organized another successful two-day national conference on school librarianship held in Edmonton in 1959.

The Library Service in the Schools Workshop held in Edmonton in 1959 is the subject of my previous blog.

Canadian school library development at mid-century is subject of a previous post.

Forming Canadian Librarianship, 1920–1960

2025-04-06T19:09:00.033-04:00

Canadian librarianship was formed incrementally and was loosely structured in the first half of the twentieth century when it emerged as a modern professional career. The practice of Librarianship coalesced around the broader field of an emerging academic discipline, library science, an expanding range of professional specialties (e.g., children’s librarianship or special library work), increasingly technical aspects related to acquiring and organizing different types of resources, and the provision of assistance and information to readers and clients. For the most part, librarians in various settings sought to develop an intermediary role between their clientele and the world of print. They did so when library science evolved as a university-based discipline grounded in the knowledge and techniques of collecting, organizing, and managing records for public use. In 2019, I examined three significant issues on this topic in an article From Library Work to Library Science in Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 14 (1), 1–41. It is freely available and provides a more detailed discussion of the issues summarized in this blog: the primacy of a service ethic, the question of the need for acceptable library education and training, and issues surrounding the profession’s female intensity during first-wave feminism before 1960.

After 1920, Canadian librarians benefited from adopting a service philosophy, the evolution of higher educational qualifications, improved workplace methods, and the formation of associations which offered self-improvement and advancement of libraries. The aims of improving service for an expanded reading public, developing bibliographic methods, and connecting people with books were constant goals in the small, female-intensive Canadian library community. Librarians began to position themselves as educated, reliable, and unselfish professionals who fulfilled their users’ information needs. Even though they were employed in various institutional roles with a diverse clientele and administrative structures that made overarching consensus difficult, librarians believed they were achieving standing as a ‘professional librarian’ and reserving for themselves the idea of self-managed careers suited to a variety of employment settings.

Over four decades, Canadian librarianship evolved progressively from elementary library training after WWI to the career-oriented, service-minded librarian underpinned by the academic subject of library science in the early 1960s. The service orientation was tailored to suit the needs of users and communities. Accordingly, librarianship could claim a general societal role of connecting people with resources and information using trusted professional expertise. Canada’s foremost spokesperson for librarians in the first part of the 20th century, George Locke, was confident on this score. In speaking to University of Toronto students in 1932 he declared, “So long as we are a democracy we need intelligence; so long as we need intelligence in the community we need librarians; so we shall need librarians to the end of Time.”

A service profession

A service philosophy was already ingrained in library work by 1920, so its adoption by a growing number of librarians presented no difficulty. In 1919, Mary J.L. Black, chief librarian at Fort William Public Library (now Thunder Bay), prioritized her thoughts about successful contemporary librarianship: (1) the spirit of service, (2) a knowledge of people, (3) a knowledge of books, (4) an acquaintance with library technique and business training. In the same year, Mabel Dunham, chief librarian at Kitchener Public Library, encouraged young female university graduates to display “the splendid spirit of unselfish service for others” in their daily library work. In 1926, Edgar Robinson, Vancouver’s chief librarian, declared, “For freedom of activity and opportunity for expression of individuality through service, library work has no equal.” Three decades later, when the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (the Massey Commission) considered the state of local Canadian libraries, it recognized that “librarians must know their books and how to care for them; they must also know their community and how to serve it.” Public service became a keynote of librarianship as it emerged slowly as a self-directed profession in Canada before the dramatic social, educational, and cultural changes of the 1960s.

Library Science and professional training

Education and training were crucial ingredients in the development of Canadian librarianship. McGill University and the University of Toronto established graduate library degree programs in the 1920s and benefited from improved accreditation programs instituted by the American Library Association in the 1930s. By the 1960s, the Canadian Library Association (CLA) confirmed that a graduate with a two-term bachelor’s degree in library science (the BLS) was the standard requirement to gain entry into the profession. At its November meeting in 1959, the CLA Council adopted the following statement concerning a “fully qualified professional librarian:” (1) the equivalent of the BA degree as granted in Canada and (2) proof of library training equivalent to that required for the BLS in Canada or master’s (MLS) in the United States, (3) persons with less training employed in Canada may be limited in professional advancement. Of course, some ambitious students pursued library degrees in prestigious American schools, such as Columbia, which held more extensive collections. After the Carnegie Corporation of New York began funding fellowship grants for library work in 1929, 19 librarians working in Canada received $32,100 between 1931–42 to further their studies outside of Canada. When American library schools began replacing the BLS after 1948 with a one-year master’s degree as the first entry into librarianship, Toronto (1951) and McGill (1956) followed suit, although they required students to first possess a BLS. Throughout this period, library education blended a humanistic public-spirited service and print-oriented stewardship to librarianship centred around a popular slogan: “If you like people, you like books.”


McGill University Summer Library School Students, Banff, Alberta, 1941

The discipline of library science provided librarians with a core expertise combined with techniques to manage libraries and assist users, which was mostly aligned with humanistic values. Librarians were inclined to interpret ‘scientific’ in the sense of employing orderly practices and managing efficiency in the cause of public service. A nebulous ‘philosophy of librarianship’ often sufficed in place of principled statements on issues such as censorship, which was a typically muted subject. Librarianship exhibited a combination of cultural stewardship of printed resources and social service, allied with managerial efficiency, to serve a variety of clientele. As such, it emerged slowly as a self-directed profession in Canada before the dramatic social, educational, and cultural changes of the 1960s.

A Woman’s Profession

A hallmark of librarianship is its female-intensity. A British woman working at Toronto Public Library in the late 1920s noted the unmistakable gendered landscape of Canadian libraries: 2 men managed a staff of 150 women, although nearly every small town was run by a woman. Gendered perceptions obscured the steady progress libraries and librarians were making during first-wave feminism. Although men were usually chief librarians in major cities, such as Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal, almost all public libraries in small cities were headed by women. Two cities, Windsor and Hamilton, were led by women who became presidents of the CLA. The war years helped fortify the idea that women could perform equally as well as men. Accounts of library work by Elizabeth Loosley in 1945 depicting challenges at an air force station, and by Monica Hodges in 1946 describing difficulties in naval libraries, disproved the notion that women could not cope with demanding situations. After the war, women in all sectors of librarianship proved their worth as managers, belying the convention that the highest appointments should be reserved for men. In the 1950s, CLA promoted librarianship as a career for intelligent, active professionals of advanced university standing. Because societal stereotypes shaped librarianship, Roma Harris in Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman's Profession (1992) argued that the intermediary role centring on the client’s needs rather than the expertise of the librarian was not fully appreciated due to female intensity. As well, a case can be made that the small number of librarians hampered efforts to achieve enhanced status as a profession: graduate numbers were perennially low between 1931–65. The 1931 Canadian census reported 1,009 librarians as a separate professional category subdivided into 6 groupings. The 1961 census reported a tripling to 3,460 librarians subdivided by 12 subcategories. Obviously, librarianship was a small field at the outset of the 1960s. Gendered problems, especially the ‘pay gap’ and the ‘glass ceiling,’ remained low-key issues until second-wave feminism surfaced in earnest after the federal government’s Royal Commission on the Status of Women issued its report in December 1970, and societal norms began to change.

Collective Action

Before 1920, there were only two provincial library associations: Ontario (1900) and British Columbia (1911). Before the end of World War II, Québec (1932), the Maritimes (1935), Manitoba (1936), Saskatchewan (1942), and Alberta (1944) formed associations. Smaller groups were also established. Special librarians formed two chapters, one in Montreal (1932) and one in Toronto (1940). Children’s librarians launched their own national association in 1939 and l’Association canadienne des bibliothèques catholiques formed in 1943 (renamed the Association canadienne des bibliothécaires de langue française in 1948). These provided the basis for collective action, discussion of professional issues, and personal growth. Canada was known to be a country of regional diversity, and it was not until the postwar era that a national voice, the CLA, emerged. This association allowed libraries and librarians to clarify and advocate for particular issues, improve individual expertise, form groups to engage in specialist development, recognize commonalities of purpose beyond local and provincial scales, and promote the public interest in libraries. CLA was a decisive force leading to the creation of a National Library in 1953 and promoting librarianship on a national scale. As librarianship became more specialized, CLA created specific sections before the 1950s, such as circulation, reference, and research libraries. Shortly after 1960, two major divisions formed: the Canadian School Library Association (1961) and the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (1963). The Canadian Association of Law Libraries separated from its American counterpart in 1963. Thereafter, the tendency to create small, specialized or local library bodies accelerated, and national considerations lessened.

Beyond the 1960s

The achievement of status as a minor profession was gradual during the depression and war years, with an upturn in the postwar era. Canadian librarians chose to pursue informal, flexible professionalization by assuming a service philosophy, elaborating educational standards, establishing standardized workplace methods, and developing collective action in multiple associations. The postwar era featured economic growth, population increases, more intensive research, and educational and social conditions that warranted the need for libraries to supply published resources and new media. Yet, at the outset of the 1960s, the future, not the current foundation, engaged the attention of library educators, practitioners, and associations. A growing number of library science educators began introducing new subject matter into curricula related to research methods, abstracting, literature searching, and new methods of information retrieval. In January 1958, the CLA organized a successful conference on documentation techniques at McGill University. In the following decade, it became evident that the era of documentation was giving way to the emerging discipline of information science, which required librarians to consider more specialized ideas and training.

There was less reliance on library tradition, especially relationships with print resources. The characteristics of new media that impacted society, famously condensed to “the medium is the message” by Marshall McLuhan in the mid-1960s, presented challenges to the book-centred knowledge espoused by librarians. Second-wave feminism opposed gender inequality and negative stereotypes, but significant progress in libraries would have to await a sharper focus on disparities by the ‘four-fifths minority’ in the 1970s. As before, the evolution of Canadian librarianship continued professionally with the value of service at the forefront, together with newer ideas, such as intellectual freedom, and areas of concern, such as literacy. Issues would become broader, less concerned with the printed formats and their organization and more focused on computer technology. The beginning of the merger of librarianship and the information professional was underway. After 1960, as the core knowledge of librarians began to transition to library and information science, they would adopt new professional values and confront social issues in a more forthright way as the computer era and more assertive feminism took hold.

Mabel Dunham and librarianship as a profession for women is the subject of my previous blog.

My blog post on an early 1936 Canadian library textbook on library science is at this link.

The development of a library profession in Ontario is the subject of my previous blog.

The development of post-secondary libraries and librarianship after WW II is the subject of my previous blog.

The Carnegie program to finance Canadian college collections in the 1930s is the subject of my previous blog.

Two theses on Canadian academic librarianship in the 1940s are the subject of my previous blog.

Professionalization and Librarianship in Ontario, 1920–1975

2025-04-01T20:19:00.021-04:00

There is general agreement that librarianship is a profession (or semi-profession), distinct from an occupation. Throughout the 20th century, librarians have shifted from the 19th-century primacy of custodianship to an active service ethic, in which librarians have become intermediaries between their resources and the public. Over this time, librarianship has constructed ideas about its diverse character in Britain, the United States, and Canada. For five decades, until 1975, librarians in the province of Ontario sought to emulate the popular ‘trait model’ of professionalism to secure legal recognition and advance social status. I believe these attempts to achieve a distinctive professional status may be characterized as a ‘professional project,’ the process whereby an occupation seeks to institutionalize legal recognition and improve its social standing.

The Trait Theory and Professionalism

The trait theory comprises common characteristics that Ontario librarians felt were useful in the identification of a profession in the early part of the 20th century, attributes such as:

A formal education process for entry into a profession;
A base of specialized knowledge, skills, and training used in work;
Ethical principles and standards guiding practitioners;
A service commitment in the performance of duties;
Self-regulation by a recognized professional organization.

Ultimately, efforts by Ontario librarians were unsuccessful, and they had turned away from the trait features by the mid-1970s. They were able to realize some characteristics, such as advanced educational standing and a service orientation; however, the small total number of librarians, their fluctuating leadership goals for self-regulation, and the provincial government’s preference to rein in the authority of professions became decisive barriers to achieving formal professional status. I wrote at length on this period of history in a paper published in Library and Information History more than a dozen years ago, in 2012. Complete details are available as a PDF at this link: Professionalization and Librarianship in Ontario, 1920–75. A summary review of the pursuit of the trait theory after 1920 illustrates there were difficulties in establishing unity due to conflicting goals, gender issues, a relatively small cohort of participants, and institutional constraints of a ‘managed profession’ among the four groupings (schools, special and public libraries, as well as colleges and universities). These issues were major constraints in securing the collective goal of a self-regulating body of professional librarians sanctioned by provincial legislation.

There was significant progress in identity formation, to be sure, during 1920–75. In the immediate decade following the First World War, librarians loosely structured the idea of a profession. Ontario was a small library stage offering few roles outside Toronto. The most notable feature of librarianship after 1920 was the predominance of young, university-trained females, a feature Mabel Dunham addressed in her Ontario Library Association (OLA) 1921 presidential address which was the subject of my earlier blog post in 2022. After the establishment in 1928 of a one-year academic program at the University of Toronto, women were drawn in growing numbers to library positions created in Ontario, thus forming the argument that librarianship was a ‘woman’s profession’ beset by low pay and inferior prestige. Still, library science remained a comparatively small field of study compared to other disciplines. An undergraduate bachelor’s degree (BLS) and eventually by 1970 a master’s degree (MLS) became established standards for entry into the profession. After the Second World War, the Ontario Department of Education linked provincial grants to public libraries with certification of librarians to recognize higher educational standards. Certification was regarded by public librarians as a step forward in seeking professional status; however, it ceased in 1972 after the view prevailed that professional standards were maintained by the entrance requirements of graduate library schools and by accreditation reviews conducted by Canadian and American library associations.

IPLO Act 1963

As the number of university-trained graduates increased, an OLA Professional Committee was formed in 1955. This group provided the opportunity to advance the cause of professionalism. By 1960, the Institute of Professional Librarians of Ontario had incorporated as a separate entity (IPLO), attracting librarians working in all types of libraries. Its stated aims were: (1) to promote library service and increase public interest in its professional aspects; (2) to raise the standard of library services by defining and upholding standards of professional qualifications; (3) to promote the prestige, welfare, and interests of librarians; and (4) to cooperate with other organizations with similar objectives. IPLO reserved membership for qualified librarians according to its constitution. Its attempt to form a professional body with potential licensing and self-monitoring for librarians occurred during a period of tremendous expansion in Ontario’s schools, universities, and colleges. On the other hand, many new library associations began to represent the interests of librarians, thus diminishing IPLO’s membership drives on a province-wide footing. The Institute never registered more than 500 members. As interest dwindled, it eventually disbanded in 1976. Reliance on the trait theory of professionalism had run its course. Greg Linnell gives a complete account of IPLO’s history in a 2008 article at this link: IPLO.

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of major societal and economic change. For librarians, who now embraced the term ‘professional librarian,’ perhaps the most important issues were the adoption of intellectual freedom principles, gender considerations, collective bargaining, and the proliferation of library associations. As well, there was greater clarity about the roles of professionals and non-professionals in libraries. Library technician graduates from new community college programs assumed many tasks formerly undertaken by librarians. The challenge of automation and information technology would result in the formation of ‘systems’ departments and employment of IT experts within libraries. These trends absorbed the attention of librarians, resulting in declining concern about professional status.

Traditionally, librarians were conservative voices in censorship debates because they were salaried employees and decisions usually were beyond their control. They seldom spoke out in opposition to controversies related to book selection. ‘The right book for the right reader’ served as a watchword for decades. Substituting a good book for a bad book was a common rationale when controversies arose. Too often, however, the stance of neutrality shielded the common practice of using restricted shelves for objectionable (but legally published) books. These attitudes began to change after the OLA adopted a statement on intellectual freedom in 1963. By doing so, the association was confirming a new role for librarians that would eventually lead to annual campaigns promoting Freedom to Read.

When second-generation feminism began to take hold after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada published its report in 1970, female librarians began reconsidering their place in the profession. Often, women were being passed over for major positions and the phrase the ‘four-fifths majority’ gained adherents who demanded merited promotions, improved salaries equal to male counterparts, and benefits such as maternity leave. These were issues that would continue to be wrestled with for some time. The gender underpinnings of librarianship have been regarded as a significant factor contributing to the lack of recognition of librarianship as a profession in many studies. Still, its effect in transforming policies and improving working conditions in libraries after 1975 is undoubtedly more important. Librarians jettisoned their suspicion of unions and began to embrace public sector collective bargaining in public libraries, the post-secondary sector, and schools.

A New Search for Professionalism after 1975

The ‘type-of-library’ organizational preference developed in the 1960s became entrenched in the 1970s as OLA and CLA restructured to better serve members’ interests. New associations were professionally tailored towards careers in colleges and universities, public libraries, special libraries, and schools. Librarians’ interests began to centre on personal professional development in local settings instead of a more collective profession at the provincial scale that IPLO had exemplified. Librarians began to pursue individual, discretionary claims to professional status by utilizing concepts associated with other information-management professionals and integrating these ideas within librarianship. A new model with identifiable characteristics and advantages would need to be created for professionalization to prevail. Collectively, from 1920 to 1975, some achievements, such as consensus on formal educational qualifications and intellectual freedom, laid the foundation for better educational qualifications and principles that continue to resonate in librarianship.

From the 1970s to today, it is possible to discern a new ‘discretionary’ or ‘alternative’ model of professionalism and collective identity that is adaptable to individual preferences and different types of organizations where librarians are employed. The features of this type of professionalism include:

the evolution of an educational framework from library science to library and information science;
acceptance by librarians of their inherent diversity shaped by ‘type of library’ activities and variety of clientele;
the retention of collective bargaining that took hold in the 1970s;
the acknowledgement of the integration of organizational work in libraries with other professionals possessing different credentials;
a commitment to the principle of intellectual freedom;
informal, discretionary recognition of common aspirations identified by library associations;
a personal autonomy built upon knowledge, skills, and common bonds of the profession.

There has been an increasing tendency for all professionals to work in integrated, bureaucratic organizations across the public and private sectors in the late 20th century—hospitals, government, corporations, schools, libraries—instead of remaining independent. In The System of Professions in 1988, the sociologist Andrew Abbott placed librarianship within a grouping of information professions. Librarians work in conjunction with other professionals who perform different types of work within organizations that recognize multiple credentials. This flexible conceptualization turns its back on formally adopting characteristics associated with the trait theory of professions by proposing a ‘federated’ framework. Certainly, librarians share some common goals with information scientists, archivists, and records managers. It seems one constant is that librarians will continue to adjust their vision of professionalism to the expectations that arise from the tension between an individual’s perspective in an informal community devoted to librarianship and their identification with an organization.

My blog on the development of librarianship in Canada from 1920 to 1960 is at this link.

Mabel Dunham and her concept of librarianship as a profession for women in 1921 is at this link.

Special Libraries Organize in Montreal and Toronto, 1930–1945

2025-03-21T17:07:00.069-04:00

Bank of Canada Library, Ottawa, c.1944

Special Libraries in Canada

The special library was amongst the first libraries to appear in 18th century Canada with the creation of a small book collection in the l’Hôpital général de Québec in 1726. In the early 19th century, important collections were established in Montreal, such as the Advocates’ Library (1828) and libraries for the McGill College Medical Library (founded 1829) and the Natural History Society (founded 1825). Other libraries were developed for prominent legal, literary and scientific organizations in the following decades: the Quebec Literary and Historical Society (founded 1824) in Quebec City, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Royal Canadian Institute established by mid-century in Toronto. In the first decades of the 20th century, growth continued to serve more formal organizations such as the Academy of Medicine (1907) in Toronto, which came under the direction of Margaret Ridley Charlton, and the Royal Bank of Canada (1913) in Montreal. Throughout this lengthy period, of course, government libraries built significant collections in provincial legislatures and in Ottawa.

The concept of a special library—collections and staff to serve governments, businesses, professional groups, public institutions such as hospitals, and a wide variety of organizations—coalesced in the early decades of the 20th century, especially after the formation of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in 1909 in the United States and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1924) in Britain. The primary aims of the special library ‘movement’ in these countries generally focused on services to collect and evaluate current publications and research; to organize relevant written, unpublished or peripheral information; and to assemble and disseminate publications, information, and data (often in abstract or memorandum form) to advance individual or group work within organizations. In an era when most American and British librarians were concerned with public library progress, special librarians focused on the information process within their organization. They paid particular attention to the needs of their users, often employing non-traditional methods not taught in library schools.

Special librarians shared some ideas in common with an early 20th century European field of study, ‘documentation.’ Documentalists were concerned with any type of record and or evolving technology with the potential for providing pertinent information to further the aims of an organization or researchers. They were especially interested in building scientific indexes, the organization of subject literature, and the techniques of improving information retrieval. But, for the most part, special librarians remained oriented to providing typical library reference service through their usual resources. Indeed, this trend is evident from the activity in Canadian special libraries and publications of leading figures before the end of the Second World War.

In Canada, special library work was in a nascent stage. When American special librarians came to meet in Toronto with the American Library Association convention at Toronto in June 1927, William O. Carson, the Ontario Inspector of Public Libraries, wrote in the summer issue of Special Libraries, “If there is any definition of a special library which includes all that it is and excludes all that it is not, I have never heard it.” He went on to elaborate saying, “Speaking frankly the special library ideal has not taken hold in this country in a large way; that is, we have not gone far in the establishment of highly specialized, representative collections of books and related material, organized and operated according to the niceties and exactitudes of modern library science.” In the same June issue, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission in Toronto reported a typical library activity: keeping engineering staff posted on new developments, routing of government reports and technical publications to departments for circulation, and maintaining about 90 journals and the publications of 30 technical societies in a growing library that used the Dewey Decimal classification. Another contributor, an economist from the Royal Bank in Montreal, emphasized the importance of maintaining library data from current sources related to railroad earnings, freight loadings, automobile production, newsprint, steel, flour, as well as employment and building statistics, in order to make accurate assessments for banking executives.

Special Library Growth in Montreal and Toronto

In the late 1920s, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto were emerging centres where special library work was becoming more important when businesses and government were expanding. There was a marked increase in libraries serving insurance, banking, and other commercial enterprises, along with the development of legislative and departmental libraries at the provincial and federal levels. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics Statistical Survey of Canadian Libraries in 1929–30 identified 59 government and 59 special libraries each as separate categories. Special libraries were “commercial and technical libraries, which include those of business corporations as well as those belonging to historical or scientific societies, law societies, literary and art organizations or those of a similar nature,” and reported holdings of 464,885 items. The three largest special libraries reporting more than 25,000 items were the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto, the New Brunswick Provincial Museum in St. John, and the Royal Society of Canada in Ottawa. In its next survey, 1930–31, the federal department combined the two groups and reported there were 132 government, technical society, and business libraries with 2,292,899 volumes, which combined represented 31 percent more books than public libraries. The vast majority of these books, of course, were held by governments, with the Library of Parliament alone holding 400,000 volumes.

Some notable librarians in the 1930–31 survey for Montreal would reappear over the next decades: Maréchal Nantel (Advocates’ Library), Olive B. Le Boutillier (Art Association of Montreal, now the Montreal Museum of Fine Art), and Mary Jane Henderson (Sun Life Insurance). Nantel was a lawyer, writer, historian, librarian of the Bar of Montreal, and a prominent figure in the Société des Dix for many years. Olive Le Boutillier was active in Montreal art circles for many years. Mary Jane Henderson became a driving force in special library work in Montreal and a familiar face in the SLA. After earning a BA at Queen’s University in 1925, she acquired a BLS from the Library School at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in the following year. Then she gained experience as a cataloguer at Columbia University and joined SLA’s New York Chapter before returning to Montreal in 1930 to organize Sun Life’s investment library. She was inducted into the SLA Hall of Fame in 1964 in recognition of her service to the profession.

In the decade of the 1930s, despite the setback of the Great Depression, Montreal was the business and financial metropolitan centre of Canada. At this time, cooperative efforts were greatly encouraged, and at the beginning of 1932, a small committee of special librarians meeting at McGill University decided to form a special libraries chapter of the SLA. Mary Jane Henderson, the librarian of Sun Life Assurance Company, became their leader and was elected president of the Montreal chapter at its first meeting on May 9, 1932. There were 19 members at this time and the first project the chapter chose was to publish a Directory of Special Libraries in Montreal in 1933 that detailed hours of opening, personnel, volumes, periodicals, telephone, and other operational details. The chapter’s quarterly Bulletin first appeared in January 1935 edited by Beatrice V. Simon, the McGill University medical librarian. As its membership grew, the chapter requested SLA hold its annual convention in Montreal. The 28th annual conference of the Special Libraries Association was held in Montreal at the Mount Royal Hotel in June 1936. Henderson was in charge of organizing local arrangements and organized a successful program under the theme, “Putting Knowledge to Work,” for the 1936 conference, which was the subject of my earlier blog.

The Montreal chapter participated in the inter-provincial library conference in Ottawa in 1937. Members from the Ontario and Quebec library associations held a session on cooperation between public and special libraries. Beatrice Simon, McGill University Medical Library and Mildrid Turnbull, the Royal Bank of Canada librarian in Montreal, spoke about efforts to avoid duplication and to use interloan. T.V. Mounteer, from the Bell Telephone Co. in Montreal, reprised his address on cooperative opportunities between industrial libraries and educational resources of the public library, a speech he had published earlier in Special Libraries.

Although it appeared that the outbreak of war in 1939 would halt the progress of library growth, in fact, in early 1940, three librarians formed a plan to establish an SLA Toronto Chapter: Pauline Mary Hutchison, librarian of Canada Life Assurance, Peter Morgan, librarian of the Confederation Life Association, and Allan McKenzie, librarian of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. They called for a meeting in May where ten people approved a decision to request chapter status, which the SLA approved that summer. The first regular meeting of the chapter was held at the Staff House of the Toronto Public Library on September 17, 1940, with Pauline Hutchison as the chair. The organization soon attracted new members, among them George A. Johnson (Law Society of Upper Canada), Edna Poole (Academy of Medicine), Grace Pincoe (Art Gallery of Toronto, now Art Gallery of Ontario), and Allan McKenzie of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

Toronto Daily Star April 15, 1943

The chapter’s first bulletin was published in January 1941, and a wartime project, the Air Force library, began in January 1943. Members, under the direction of Mary Silverthorn and her Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division Committee, sorted and arranged books in the division depot and collected, by purchase and donation, hundreds of other books and magazines, both technical and recreational that were sorted and catalogued at the Confederation Life Association and returned at the depot for distribution. The chapter’s wartime meetings continued with some prominent speakers. Grace Pincoe spoke on the Art Gallery of Toronto collection and its activities and Margaret Avision, who later became a distinguished poet, spoke about “Everything about Something” and her work at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs Library in the later stages of the war before she accepted a position at the University of Toronto library. Marie Tremaine spoke on “Can you tell me? Please,” a thoughtful piece on typical reference work with the public she experienced at the Toronto Public Library. She would become one of the founding members of the Bibliographical Society of Canada in 1946.

The Postwar Future and Special Libraries

By the war’s end, the DBS Survey of Libraries for 1946–48 indicated the progress of all groupings of special libraries after 1930. There were now 173 in total: 83 federal and provincial, 36 business, 13 law, 22 technical and professional, and 19 ‘other’ (e.g., libraries for the blind) with a reported 110 trained staff in library science. The initiative and enthusiasm of the two Canadian chapters and their members, active forces in Canadian and Special librarianship, could reasonably be credited for some of this growth. Some members, such as Janet Saunders, a graduate of Queen’s University (BA 1918) who worked at the International Labour Office library in Montreal during the war before it returned to Geneva, pursued successful careers beyond Canada. The Montreal chapter president in 1942, Catherine Anne Pearce (BLS McGill 1936), earned her masters in library science at the University of Illinois in 1947 and began working for the Transportation Association of America in Chicago and later for the Richfield Oil Co. in Los Angeles. These two chapters also attracted members in smaller Canadian cities and in western Canada from Winnipeg as far as Victoria and Trail, BC. In the postwar period, the chapters would participate in a series of joint regional conferences with their SLA American counterparts in the Western New York Chapter in 1947–49. Several years later, in 1953, the Toronto Chapter would host the SLA annual conference in Toronto.

Further Reading:

My blog post on the 1936 Special Libraries conference at Montreal is available at this link.

In 2003, Margaret Ridley Charlton was designated as a person of national historic significance.

Some useful publications during this period include:

Marvin, Donald M. “Relationship of the Library and Research Departments to the Bank.” Special Libraries 18 (Sept. 1927): 215–219.
Nantel, Maréchal. “The Advocates’ Library and the Montreal Bar.” Law Library Journal 27 (July 1934): 75–97.
Mounteer, T.V. “The Special Library: Partner in Industrial Education.” Special Libraries 27 (Nov. 1936): 298–301.
Morgan, Peter. “On Becoming a Special Librarian.” Special Libraries 28 (March 1937): 87–90.
Le Boutillier, Olive B. “The Clipping File in an Art Library.” Special Libraries 31 (April 1940): 131–132.
Pincoe, Grace. “A Trip to Study Methods in American Art Museum Libraries.” Bulletin of the Toronto Chapter, Special Libraries Association 2 (May 1942): [3-4].
Saunders, Janet F. “Development of the International Labour Office Library.” Special Libraries 33 (Oct. 1942): 290–294.
“The Special Library in Canada.” Wilson Library Bulletin 19 (Nov. 1944): 195–197.
Saunders, Janet F. “S.L.A. International Relations.” Special Libraries 35 (Dec. 1944): 490–493.
McKenzie, Allan. “Should Fiction Be Encouraged in Special Libraries?” Special Libraries 36 (June 1945): 147–150.
Lewis, Grace S. “Library of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, Canada.” Special Libraries 36 (Oct. 1945): 358–360.
Pratt, Phebe G. “School of Social Work Library.” Special Libraries 37 (April 1946): 115–117.
Pearce, Catherine Anne. “The Development of Special Libraries in Montreal and Toronto.” MS in LS thesis, University of Illinois, 1947. She was president of the Montreal Chapter from 1941–43 and worked in the United States after the war.

Canadian Mid-Century School Libraries and Modern Education, 1945—1950

2025-03-03T16:55:00.065-05:00

School Libraries in Canada before 1945

R.H. McGregor school library, c.1944

In the 1930s, while many British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario schools continued the tradition of small classroom collections, promotion of good recreational reading, and reliance to a great extent on public libraries for book stocks and branches in schools, there were indications of change. In a few urban areas, such as R.H. McGregor in East York (Toronto), progressive reforms did include a separate room for a library. In Ontario, Margaret Fraser, an influential high school librarian at Galt (now Cambridge), outlined what she felt the mission of the secondary school library should be in 1938: “The school library should be the centre of all school activities, working with the teachers and students of all grades and departments. Its work is varied and continuous, but the librarian has three main aims: ( 1) to encourage reading, (2) to assist the teacher, (3) to teach the student to help himself.”

In British Columbia, school librarians formed their own association in 1939 under the presidency of Muriel Carruthers, a high school teacher who later headed the school libraries department of the Vancouver Public Library. The BC Public Libraries Commission issued a Manual for Small School Libraries in 1940 that recommended the American Library Association standards of a trained teacher-librarian and a separate classroom for elementary schools with more than 100 pupils and a teacher-librarian or full-time librarian for schools with more than 500 students. In Alberta, where rural school library conditions were judged to be "largely obsolescent" and many "utterly dilapidated" by a 1935 survey (see below), the trend to progressive educational reforms emphasized a child-centred, experiential teaching 'enterprise system' focusing on democratic citizenship, problem-solving, and integrated learning (e.g., social studies). This approach encouraged the development of school collections and library training; however, Canadian school library improvements came to a halt for the most part at the outset of the Second World War.

Nonetheless, interest in school libraries by two western librarians, Louise Riley and Jack Brown, did continue during the early wartime years. Their library school theses were the subject of my earlier blog at this link. They explored school-public library cooperation and the need for greater provincial support from departments of education. Riley’s thesis in particular was an important study of school services in larger cities with more than 10,000 population in several provinces. She reported the typical state of affairs: “In Canada, classroom collections are provided by the public library or the school board or both to some elementary and junior high schools in thirty-one of the fifty cities included in this report.” As for centralized libraries: “There are some centralized school libraries in elementary and junior high schools in fifteen public school and three separate school systems.“ She concluded, “The school library movement is in its infancy in Canada.” Of course, wartime was not an opportune time to implement changes.

Later, in 1945, a new set of American standards, School Libraries for Today and Tomorrow, called on school authorities to assume full responsibility for school libraries and differentiated the roles and duties of the school librarian and the public librarian. A trend toward the school library serving as a reading and information centre, as well as a place for student guidance in its own right, was taking hold. Instruction in library skills, classroom and curriculum support, and recreational reading highlighted the library's role as an important service point in schools. After 1945, a slow evolution began from the stewardship of static book collections or reliance on children’s services in public libraries towards the development of school libraries as functional workshops or laboratories for students. Nonetheless, even in larger urban centres, especially Toronto and Vancouver, school library work by public librarians remained an important factor in school children's reading.

Towards the end of WW II, the Canadian Library Council issued Canada Needs Libraries; it included provincial statements on the need for improved school services. Although the main focus was on public library development, school libraries, especially at the secondary level, received more attention in the Ontario and Saskatchewan briefs. With the formation of the Canadian Library Association (CLA) in 1946, a truly national voice emerged for library work with children, adolescents, and students. Within a year, a section of CLA was established that included librarians interested in work for children and youth. In November 1947, the Association’s journal published several articles on school library work, with a leading article that pointed to new directions and a new philosophy of service aligned with educational trends in North America. The principal author was a former teacher, Lillian Lyle Evans (BA 1940, Saskatchewan, and BLS 1942, Toronto), newly appointed as supervisor of school libraries for Saskatchewan in 1946. After working briefly at Toronto Public Library in the Kipling Room, the section for adolescents, and a Florida school library during the war, she became a dynamic force in Canadian school librarianship and eventually Canadian School Libraries Association president in 1969 –70. She set forth a new, compelling role for school libraries in the CLA Bulletin, published in November 1947.

To-day the school library is conceived as a functional unit of the school, that is as a workshop or laboratory where individuals and classes carry on desirable activities and have valuable experiences. The school library now makes possible investigation and research, curriculum enrichment, independent study and recreational reading. This new and broader concept is a direct outgrowth of recent social and educational changes.

Canadian School Library Progress after 1945

Lyle Evans was referring to the progressive child-centred concept of schooling championed by John Dewey which flourished from the 1920s to 1950s. The traditional, conservative approach in education for a long time was teacher-centred. There was an emphasis on oral instruction, reading and reciting facts from a few graded texts, taking notes, memorizing information by repetition, and studying individually or in classroom groups. Small book collections usually satisfied this concept. Progressivism meant fitting instruction to the different needs of each pupil; it meant curriculum revision and the eclipse of rote textbook learning; it meant new teaching methods focusing on real-world situations for pupil and group activities; and it meant a new emphasis on understanding social and civil affairs. For school library collections, it meant meeting the demand for wide reading and providing varied reference sources. For library staffing it meant training in teaching and librarianship in order to guide or instruct pupils in selecting appropriate material to read and helping students clarify their thinking and reaching valid conclusions. In Lyle Evans’ estimation, “the school library is an integral part of the educative process, and its objectives are actually identical with those of any modern educational program.” At mid-century, progressive education was considered to be ‘modern’ and infused ideas and methods in the United States and Canada, despite critics who preferred standardized testing and high standards, such as Hilda Neatby, who published So Little For the Mind in 1953.

The November 1947 pages of the CLA Bulletin featured prominent contemporary figures in school librarianship. Margaret E. Reid, an Ontario College of Education and Queen's University graduate, wrote on student library usage in St. Catharines. She outlined the usual types of student use: classes with a period of library science (normally grades nine and ten), classes brought to the library by teachers, and individual pupils from all grades. She believed student use of libraries could lay the foundation for a varied adulthood. The chief librarian at Trois Rivières, Claire Godbout, described how the newly established public library provided a school service for young students at six school deposits tended to on a weekly basis by visiting staff. Joseph A. Brunet, the director of school libraries for the Montreal Commission of Catholic Schools, was optimistic about progress in Quebec, especially in Montreal where books were selected, classified, and cataloged at the head office by a professional staff. Rural schools in Quebec were supplied with grants and small deposits of books for classrooms. He believed the idea of the school library was taking shape and gaining ground each year. Mary Silverthorn, a professor at the University of Toronto Library School, provided an extensive list of book selection aids. She noted there was reliance on American sources and that “school library work in Canada is hampered by the lack of catalogues and book lists designed for Canadian use.” Dorothy Cullen, the director of the Prince Edward Island Libraries regional system, reported on the various ways its branches and headquarters supplied library service to all the island schools with deposits and books-by-mail. There was also a collection of professional literature for teachers at the regional headquarters in Charlottetown.

Summaries of provincial school library developments were also provided. In British Columbia, the Department of Education offered library training in summer school courses for teachers. These teacher-librarians held library positions in graded elementary schools and some junior high schools; however, in high schools only teachers who were also fully qualified librarians were appointed to full-time library positions. The Manitoba Department of Education administered book grants and selection guides: “For the year 1946 books were selected for 1,557 one-room schools and 103 two-room schools, and orders checked for 224 graded schools, thus providing libraries for 2,790 teachers. For these schools 3,798 magazine subscriptions were placed.” A professional library for Winnipeg teachers was located in the reading room of the departmental library, but it was noted that professional training had not kept pace with book distributions. Lyle Evans reviewed her new duties in Saskatchewan and pointed to the successful initiative in a Cupar school district northeast of Regina to establish a core collection of texts, supplementary texts, and reference books for each rural school. A central pooled collection was started in the school unit's main office, staffed by a teacher acting as teacher-librarian. She felt, “The experiment has been so successful and attracted so much interest that many other units and [school] superintendents have been asking for guidance in organizing school library services in their areas.” Her work justified her enthusiasm about modernization that

The school library, then, provides material to enrich the school curriculum, develops in pupils good attitudes and habits of study, and promotes a lifelong interest in reading for information, recreation and mental stimulation. That is, the school library is an integral part of the educative process, and its objectives are actually identical with those of any modern educational program.

Despite this inspirational rhetoric, school libraries faced a difficult task implementing better conditions. When the Canadian Education Association surveyed school libraries on a province-by-province basis in 1951, it remarked on the general under developed state of affairs:

It will be noted that proportionately few elementary schools have separate libraries; classroom collections for lending and reference are more common. Libraries are found somewhat more frequently in secondary schools, but there too the classroom collection persists. The library collection as a separate and well equipped unit administered by a qualified person as an essential school service, just as gymnasium or cafeteria, has not been developed on an all-inclusive scale.

Canadian school librarians were not early advocates in supporting progressive ‘modern’ education philosophy. But after 1945, the provision of resources for critical thinking, experimental learning, the development of social skills, and other worthy features of progressive education came to the fore. Mary Mustard, a prominent school librarian from Brantford, Ontario, declared that a main goal of school library service was “to develop character through desirable book habits,” thereby escaping the dull textbook routines of the past. At the CLA School Library Institute held in Winnipeg in June 1949, participants were excited to hear Amelia Munson, an experienced American youth services exponent from the New York Public Library, speak to the issue of ‘Growth Through Reading,’ which offered students opportunities to develop personally through the medium of books. In the following year, 1950, a Young People’s Section of CLA was formed, distinct from Children’s Librarians. The new section included public and school library work for teens, and in August 1953, it organized a successful thematic session in Ottawa during CLA’s annual meeting titled ‘Effective School Library Service.’ Participants learned that the effectiveness of any school library was determined by four factors: library accommodation, an adequate collection, a trained librarian, and an appropriate program of activities. Subsequently, in June 1958, the section sponsored a Workshop on Education of School Librarians at Quebec City, where Lyle Evans reported on the current state of affairs for teacher-librarian training: “Six provinces regularly offer courses, two offer courses occasionally, and two do not offer any courses.” The workshop registrants concluded that national standards were needed to improve training for school library staffing, a task that would take several more years to complete.

From the outset of the decade and throughout the 1950s, the varied administrative arrangements and school finances set by Canadian departments of education and school boards absorbed the attention of librarians, teachers, and administrators. There were thousands of school boards across the country, and the progressive nature of the reforms varied widely. Traditional pedagogic methods and the 3 R’s were still important. Library proponents were grappling with the organization, staffing, facilities, and collections of school libraries in large bureaucratic provincial structures that were steadily reducing the number of school districts. Although improvements in services would continue to be gradual during the postwar period, nonetheless, after 1950 a national consensus was developing to support better libraries in schools, for formal education programs, and services based on child-centred learning. Many of these issues would result from a successful two-day national conference on school librarianship held in Edmonton in 1959, as discussed in my previous blog. After 1960, advances in school librarianship would accelerate even as the influence of progressive education itself would begin to face challenges from conservative educators, competing educational issues such as the whole language philosophy of reading, new media, rapid technological change, and a resurgent progressivism most evident in Ontario's controversial Hall-Dennis Report, Living and Learning, released in 1968.

References

My blog on the School Library Institute held in Winnipeg in June 1949 is at this link.

Margaret Fraser, “High School Libraries in Ontario.” The School [Secondary Ed.]; A Magazine Devoted to Elementary and Secondary Education 27 (Oct. 1938): 148–151.

British Columbia Public Library Commission. Manual for Small School Libraries. Victoria: The Commission, rev. ed., 1947 at this link at Hathi Trust.

A survey of 60 rural Alberta school libraries in 1935 by a prominent educator, A.J.H. Powell, is at this link on the Internet Archive.

My blog on Canada Needs Libraries is at this link.

Lyle Evans, “The School Library in Modern Education.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 3 (Nov. 1947): 29–30.

Mary Mustard, “Freedom from Textbooks.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 6 (Sept. 1949): 35, 87.

My blog on the early history of Canadian school libraries by John Whitehall Emery is at this link.

Canadian School Librarians Meet in Edmonton, 1959

2025-02-14T14:41:00.045-05:00

Proceedings of the Library Service in the Schools Workshop, University of Alberta, Edmonton, June 26–27, 1959. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association/Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques, September 1959. 59 p.

Canadian School Libraries before 1950

Although there were hundreds of Canadian school libraries by the mid-19th century, the vast majority were primarily small, informal classroom collections managed by busy one-room teachers in rural areas. As they developed in the first decades of the 20th century, larger elementary school libraries remained underfunded and continued to rely on access to small classroom collections. Students often used children’s services supplied by public libraries (notably Toronto Public Library) or bookmobile services from regional or county libraries, a system patterned on British practice which offered the advantage of recreational reading. Separate centralized libraries in schools, distinct from public libraries, began to appear first in the secondary school sector, a model influenced by American experience that emphasized direct connections with school authorities and formal educational programs. In the 1930s, the efforts of energetic librarians, such as Joseph A. Brunet, the director of school libraries for the Montreal Catholic School Commission, Arthur Slyfield (Oshawa), Margaret Fraser (Galt, now Cambridge), Mary Mustard (Brantford), and Isabel McTavish (Vancouver), began to spur development by advocating better facilities and collections, encouraging student use of libraries, initiating regional surveys, and publishing handbooks for students,

In the immediate postwar period following 1945, there was greater government emphasis on improving services, with the appointment of supervisors in departments of education, including prominent librarians such as Lillian Evelyn (Lyle) Evans in Saskatchewan in 1946 and Hélène Grenier in the Montreal Catholic School Commission in 1952. During this period, the Young People’s Section of the Canadian Library Association (CLA) addressed many problems related to school libraries after its formation in 1950; nonetheless, progress seemed to unfold at a snail’s pace. When the Canadian Education Association surveyed the nation’s school libraries in 1951, it revealed their underdeveloped state; for example, in Nova Scotia, “most of the schools in the province have book collections, but more than half of the 554,187 volumes in individual schools are felt by the Department [of Education] to be of little value.” Several years later, in 1958, when the Dominion Bureau of Statistics published a major survey of elementary and secondary schools in communities of 10,000 and over, it received responses from 200 school boards in 123 centres representing 2,951 schools. The survey revealed that only 1,058 schools (about a third), with a total pupil enrollment of 668,680, operated centralized libraries. Total stock amounted to 2,898,780 volumes or 4.5 volumes per pupil. Fully trained staff, with teacher training and library training to a degree level, were concentrated in intermediate or junior high schools and secondary schools, where 129 professionals supervised 270 libraries.

Canadian Library Association Meeting on School Libraries in 1959

To spur activity, CLA initiated action to plan a national workshop on schools to bring together leaders from seven national associations: the Canadian Association of School Inspectors & Superintendents, Canadian Book Publishers Association, Canadian Education Association, Canadian Home and School and Parent-Teacher Federation, Canadian School Trustees Association, and the Canadian Teachers Federation. CLA aimed to prompt discussion on problems of mutual interest and to allow participants to become acquainted personally. It was hoped that specific ideas arising from this first national workshop would encourage the sponsoring organizations to hold future sessions on specific subjects. The two-day workshop was held at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, in June 1959. The 195 registered delegates included school superintendents, principals, school board and public library board trustees, and public and school librarians. Formal presentations and separate discussion groups dealt with different topics. In general, the entire workshop was themed around providing resources, training librarians to deliver services, and how services could best be organized.

Nancy Day, the Supervisor of Library Services in the South Carolina State Department of Education and former President of the American Association of School Libraries in 1954–55, addressed a general session on Friday morning with her topic, “The Place of School Library Service in Education.” She emphasized the importance of recognizing the library as part of the curriculum where learning and learning skills occur. Librarians should select materials, provide reading guidance, and encourage the use of the collection. It is imperative to have someone who knew the collection, the curriculum, and how to work with both children and teachers. Several freewheeling discussions on various issues took place in Friday afternoon breakout groups. There was a sharp division of opinion between school superintendents and librarians about how best to develop libraries initially. The former believed there was a more urgent need to get more books into the schools, their view being expressed as ‘books before librarians.’ The public library’s role in providing student resources also came under scrutiny. Many delegates felt the responsibility for libraries in schools should fall under a Department of Education. Public library activities should encourage school libraries but not directly provide the services, even though some school officials tended to expect such assistance. There was a shift in thinking towards supporting the need for education officials to direct and fund libraries distinct from public libraries. Although cooperation was stressed, there was skepticism that public and school libraries could be combined successfully. There was general agreement that a certified teacher with some professional library training would be the ideal staff for a school library; but for larger schools, a professional librarian with a BEd could best work with teachers. Generally, delegates favoured the centralized library, a dedicated space available to all students which could also supply and refresh classroom collections and support provincial curricula.

On Saturday, Dr. Marion Jenkinson of the University of Alberta Faculty of Education gave an excellent summary of four topics that every group wrestled with. First, the approach librarians used with students' reading was essential: the librarian viewed children individually, not as part of a classroom pattern. Second, improvements in teacher training were necessary. Thirdly, although there was an air of prestige bestowed on reading, often readers were derided as ‘eggheads’ or ‘squares.’ The Alberta professor declared, “We have to turn the TV image into the feeling that the reader is the ‘best sort of guy to be.’” Fourth, the issue of teacher training was paramount:

Teacher training is not adequate. Elementary teachers frequently receive only seven months training. Here librarians can help in advising in the training. Librarianship is a graduate profession; in the elementary schools there is need for a graduate teaching profession. In a graduate programme for teachers, there should be courses in children's literature. (p. 51)

Dr. Jenkinson stated that teachers, interested groups, and parents should work cooperatively with librarians and education officials in their local communities. She concluded by stressing the need to clarify important issues. There should be more concise definitions about school library work: (1) identify the function of the teacher-librarian as opposed to the children’s librarian; (2) clarify the purposes of different branches of library services; (3) articulate the basis for the selection of books; and (4) establish priorities in school library service. At the end of the workshop, delegates adopted two resolutions: they requested that the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (DBS) conduct a representative survey of libraries in publicly operated schools, and they asked that the Wilson Education Index include the periodical The Reading Teacher in its indexing service.

It is difficult to assess the impact of the 1959 national workshop, but there is no doubt that the pace of school library progress quickened in the 1960s when provincial governments reduced the number of school districts and strengthened financial revenues. The DBS began surveying school libraries on an annual basis and by 1964 the Bureau reported that there were 2,595 centralized libraries staffed by 263 full-time professional school librarians. When Leonard Freiser was hired as chief librarian by the Toronto Board of Education in 1960, he began developing a centralized education center to provide resources for teachers and students in separate libraries in schools, independent from the Toronto Public Library. In Quebec, Alvine Bélisle became the provincial director of school libraries within the Department of Public Instruction in 1961. During 1961 the Canadian School Library Association (CSLA) was formed as a separate CLA division. The Association soon began publishing a lively quarterly newsletter, the Moccasin Telegraph. It also launched a national award in partnership with Encyclopaedia Britannica for elementary school libraries in 1967. School librarians also organized a Workshop on School Library Standards at the annual CLA conference held in Toronto in June 1965. Two years later, in 1967, Standards of Library Service for Canadian Schools was published. After this time, the expansion of facilities, collections, and personnel laid the foundation for school library programs to the end of the century. However, success was not universal. By the early 1970s, it was evident that many school libraries were unable to meet the 1967 standards and that the promotion of new guidelines would be necessary.

The meeting in Edmonton also allowed school librarians to network and develop professionally. Laurence Wiedrick, a teacher-librarian at Eastglen Composite High School in Edmonton, began teaching library studies at the University of Alberta in 1964. Another attendee, John Wright, librarian at the Aden Bowman Collegiate in Saskatoon, was appointed Supervisor of School Libraries for the Saskatchewan Department of Education in 1963 and later became president of CSLA in 1967. His colleague, Lyle Evans, followed him as CSLA president in 1969. Many other teachers, librarians, and administrators returned home to continue improving reading, teaching, and learning in elementary and secondary schools. A national consciousness and community of interest had been created on an inter-provincial scale. The delineation of fundamental issues was an essential ingredient in fostering progress in the subsequent decade. The recognition of the need for better-quality, modernized school libraries more closely linked to the curriculum was an important (and lasting) outcome of the workshop.

My blog on Canadian school library development shortly after WW II is at this link.

My blog on the 1968 Jasper Park Workshop for school library education is at this link.

Edwin Williams and Robert Downs Report on Canadian Academic Libraries, 1962—1967

2025-02-07T10:38:00.032-05:00

Resources of Canadian University Libraries for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Report of a Survey for the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges, by Edwin E. Williams. Ottawa: National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges, November 1962. 87 p.

Resources of Canadian Academic and Research Libraries/Ressources des Bibliothèques d’Université et de Recherche au Canada by Robert B. Downs. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1967. 301 p.

By the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the number of full-time undergraduate and graduate university students across Canada was increasing dramatically, and provincial governments were granting new charters to several universities, such as Victoria, Calgary, Waterloo, York, Guelph, Brock, and Carleton. Additional funding for faculty, teaching staff, and buildings came from federal and provincial governments to accommodate this growth. Consequently, the expansion of libraries, especially collections, formed part of ambitious educational plans, a library phase which might appropriately be termed ‘mid-century modernization.’ The two reports were significant catalysts for vastly improved academic library buildings, staffing, and services. They highlighted the need for significant increases in provincial and federal funding for collections, library construction, and the vital necessity for cooperative resource sharing and development of a national interlibrary network.

Edwin E. Williams Reports on Canadian Academic Libraries, 1962

During this period, library concerns were noted by the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges (NCCUC), which represented university presidents. The genesis of national planning for university libraries grew out of a recommendation by a library committee (chaired by W. K. Lamb, the National Librarian) appointed by the NCCUC to survey academic libraries and evaluate their research capabilities, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Fourteen of Canada’s largest academic libraries, which collectively held almost six million volumes, were selected for the survey. As with many Canadian studies, financing for the study came from the United States. Funds from the Council on Library Resources were secured, and Edwin E. Williams, the Counsellor to the Director of Collections of Harvard University Library, was chosen to conduct the survey. Edwin Williams held many senior positions at the Harvard University library from 1940 until his retirement in 1980. More importantly, he was quite familiar with the Farmington Plan, a national project organized by American libraries to develop a cooperative acquisitions program for foreign materials. His study was conducted through conversations with 211 faculty members, the distribution of a questionnaire to professors on the strength of collections, the compilation of a checklist of 10 periodicals in each of 24 fields in the humanities and social sciences, and personal visits to each university. Williams published his findings late in 1962.

The findings of Williams’ six-week survey were not surprising to informed observers.

Any recapitulation of strong points in Canadian research collections soon makes it evident that, except in Canadian subjects and in mediaeval studies, there are no collections in major fields that are outstanding as a whole — assuming that an outstanding collection is one strong enough to attract scholars from other countries. The collections that have reached this level are devoted to individuals or to comparatively narrow fields — Soviet church-state relations and D. H. Lawrence at Alberta; South China gazetteers and Robert Burns at British Columbia; Kipling at Dalhousie; the psychomechanics of language at Laval; Urdu, Thomas Browne, Noel Buxton, Viscount Hardinge, and Hume at McGill; Icelandic at Manitoba; Bonar Law at New Brunswick; and certain fields of Italian and Spanish drama, plus Coleridge, Dickens, Petronius, Tennyson, and Yeats at Toronto. (p 48)

Williams discovered universities were enthusiastic about the potential of inter-library loan even for undergraduates, a practice he cautioned against because it was not a substitute for strong campus collections. To further serious research, he recommended that the National Library’s Union Catalogue project move ahead more rapidly along with the publication of a union list of serials in the humanities and social sciences. This latter task began in 1963 and was completed in 1968 with publication of Periodicals in the Social Sciences and Humanities Currently Received by Canadian Libraries. He discussed the advantages of strengthening research collections through an undertaking similar to the Farmington Plan, but felt libraries were not adequate to embark on this expenditure on their own. Instead, he suggested it would be more desirable to use “special funds” for specialization that could make inter-lending more effective for postgraduate programs. An extension of existing Canada Council grants would benefit the entire country and allow universities to build their resources using local revenue. To spur cooperation in the development of research collections, the surveyor advised the creation of an Office of Canadian Library Resources in the National Library. The work of this office would allow universities to build substantial collections locally and ultimately serve national research activity. Another benefit would be the ability to compete more effectively in second-hand book markets for significant publications.

Williams declared that it would be expensive to strengthen university library collections, nevertheless, it was a necessary step to further national and regional educational goals. He concluded:

Yet, while foundations are being laid across the country, the National Library ought to move ahead rapidly, and the existing strong collections at Toronto and other Canadian universities should be improved; failure to develop the National Library and to make great collections out of good ones would demonstrate that Canada aspires to be no more than a dependency of other countries in graduate study and research in the humanities and social sciences. (p. 60)

Resources of Canadian University Libraries was enthusiastically received and served as a catalyst for transformative change. When the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (CACUL) became a constituent part of the Canadian Library Association in June 1963, it assumed a leadership role in representing library concerns. CACUL immediately realized the importance of Williams’ findings and began to liaise with the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges (NCCUC), representing university presidents dealing with the Williams’ recommendations. The new library group advocated for the establishment of an Office of Library Resources, a proposal the NCCUC agreed to support later in the year. Eventually, in 1968, this office came into existence and became part of the collection development branch in the 1970s.

Later, in the fall 1963, when the NCCUC annual conference was held, CACUL successfully secured support for a more extensive national survey of academic libraries to expand and amplify the briefer work of Edwin Williams, which had been limited to library resources for graduate study in the humanities and social sciences. Subsequently, the NCCUC (reconstituted as the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, AUCC) commissioned Professor Vincent Bladen to conduct a study of financing higher education in 1964 to which CACUL made a presentation on the need for greatly increased library funding, especially from the federal government. Also, the CACUL submission advised that 10% of a university operating budget be regarded as a minimum standard for collection purposes. The Bladen Commission adopted the federal proposal for funding in its final report, Financing Higher Education in Canada, in 1965. A year later, in 1966, the Canada Council announced annual funding for university libraries for acquiring research collections which totalled more than $3,000,000 before it concluded in 1969.

Robert B. Downs Reports on Canadian Academic Libraries, 1967

The AUCC also agreed to launch a more extensive national survey with grants from the Canada Council and the Council on Library Resources in Washington, D.C. Robert B. Downs, the Dean of Library Administration at the University of Illinois, was invited to lead a survey which included three Canadians. Downs had pursued an illustrious academic career and served as President of the American Library Association in 1953–53. His mandate was quite broad: he was charged with assessing library administrative and technical organization, staffing, buildings, collections, and financing to maintain expected growth in the following decade. The Downs report was published in 1967 entitled Resources of Canadian Academic and Research Libraries.

Robert Downs submitted his report with a wealth of information on the current conditions of university libraries. There were 35 tables of data on 43 institutions that revealed marked progress had been made just a few years after the Williams report had landed on many desks; for example, 17 libraries reported adding an annual average of more than 20,000 volumes between 1961–66, a noticeable improvement with immediate postwar conditions, 1945–60. Indeed, 1963–64 marked the first time university libraries collectively began to add more than a million volumes per year to their holdings. Resources studied eleven major areas including administration, technical services, buildings, reader services (reference, instruction, and circulation), mechanization and automation, finances to sustain growth, cooperative activities, collections, special research holdings, and faculty and student views of the library. Downs’ investigation was accomplished by conducting interviews, questionnaires, checklists, and personal observation. Downs took a broad brush approach to the idea of resources in his survey: he included general and special collections, finances, technical services, librarians and staff, library facilities, programs related to instruction, and a number of other services. A total of 41 recommendations were made, many of which became standard guidelines for professional decision-making for a generation of administrators and librarians. The array of information Downs produced included input from faculty and influenced university administrators because they also believed in the value of higher education and the need for accessibility to satisfactory library resources and services.

Many of Downs’ recommendations seem rudimentary by today’s standards; for example, “for economy, efficiency, and effective service, library administration should be centralized” (p. 2), but the prevalence of 1960s campus departmental libraries and diffused authority warranted this type of review. In the area of automation, which libraries were only beginning to experiment with, Downs could only hint at future directions: “Developments in data processing have made feasible the concept of national and international library networks, offering new approaches to problems of gathering and retrieving certain types of information” (p. 5). The provision of photocopying services, established building standards, the recognition of professional librarians as key members of the academic community, the separation of clerical and professional duties in staffing, the exercise of leadership on the part of the National Library and the National Science Library in fostering cooperation, special grants from the Canada Council, and sharing of library resources on a local, regional, and national basis were all flagged as necessary to encourage growth. The report supported work on the national union catalogue and its conversion to machine-readable form and creation of a national communication network of research libraries. Downs reiterated William’s proposal that 10% of an institutional budget should be earmarked for library collections. Especially concerning collections, the report was explicit: “In no case should a college or university provide less than $150 per year for library maintenance for each full-time student. (p. 7). Further, Downs proposed that

Sustained financial support over a period of years is essential to the growth of strong libraries in Canadian universities; additional appropriations totaling $150,000,000 for collection development will be required over the next decade, beyond present budget allotments and the current rate of annual increases, for retrospective collecting, if these libraries are to reach a stage of development comparable to the leading American university libraries. (p. 6)

One interesting section of Resources that sparks interest now reveals student attitudes to 1960s libraries. Students did not prefer study halls and often brought their own books for study purposes. They indicated more reserve books were needed, assistance from staff was inadequate, and material was in another library elsewhere on campus. For their part, faculty suggested stronger research collections, staff specialists for collection development and reference, speedier processing and access to acquired materials, duplicate copies of books in frequent demand, improved inter-library loans, more efficient circulation systems, and, in a direct conflict with Down’s recommendation, more departmental libraries, especially in the sciences.

The Down’s report was well received. It became the subject of a conference—“Libraries for Tomorrow”—held in Montreal in April 1968 that the AUCC and CACUL convened to discuss the future of Canadian academic libraries. About seventy librarians attended, and papers were presented on future financing by Robert Blackburn (Toronto) and general trends in higher education by Basil Stuart-Stubbs (British Columbia). Although this meeting, subsequent discussions, and library reports on standardization and financing by the AUCC did not constitute a comprehensive review and working plan for the implementation of the Downs Report, many of its recommendations were taken to heart across Canada’s burgeoning university sector. In 1967, Downs concluded that “despite their rapid progress, the Canadian university libraries, on the whole, will require years of concentrated effort to bring their collections up to a high point of excellence.” (p. 224), and by 1971, there were six libraries with more than a million volumes: Toronto, McGill, British Columbia, Western, Montreal, and Laval.

For CACUL members, the report highlighted an area of significance that Downs was known for his support for academic recognition of librarians. “In the case of college and university libraries, the institutions that will be most successful in attracting and holding able staff members are those where librarians are recognized as an integral part of the academic ranks, a vital group in the educational process, with high qualifications for appointment, and all the rights and privileges of other academic employees (p. 110).” When Downs compiled his survey, academic librarians were subject to various terms of service and methods of appointment. He suggested enlisting the support of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to improve and standardize the status of university professional librarians, an approach adopted by CACUL that was to prove beneficial in gaining status for librarians and creating a common community of interest with faculty during the 1970s.

However, future economic conditions in the 1970s, namely, rising costs and slower growth, often referred to as ‘stagflation,’ would curb the rapid development of university libraries. Along with increasing rates of inflation, administrators faced new challenges, such as providing resources to support Canadian studies, automated bibliographic control, computerized searching, and sharing information through networking on a national scale. Libraries had to contend with the ‘information explosion’ as books and journals flooded the scholarly marketplace. New university programs were launched that often lacked adequate library resources. New faculty appointments were made, although it was difficult to support their specializations. The advent of cross-disciplinary programs required new library resource fields and services. The 1970s would be just as challenging as the 1960s, because expectations exceeded eroded revenues. Observers of retrenchment in the decade following the Downs report often refer to a ‘golden age’ of university growth in the 1960s that had passed.

The two reports by Edwin Williams and Robert Down were valuable reviews of current conditions and helpful guides to future action. As well, the reports heightened awareness and visibility concerning library needs in Canadian higher education. The two authors provided an astonishing wealth of information about collections, contemporary conditions, and potential costs of funding improved services. But there was no master national plan envisaged. Together, the two reports highlighted the needs of libraries in the post-secondary sector and outlined the stunning financial implications. Administrators across the country were left to deal with the level of implementation and coordination with provincial educational authorities. While CACUL and CAUT assumed leadership for professional librarian concerns, the AUCC and senior university officials, together with library directors, were ultimately responsible for encouraging and implementing local progress. For the most part, the efforts of these groups and individuals were successful for several years until the economic recession of 1973–75 introduced organizational retrenchment and fiscal restraint.

The Williams Report is available on the Internet Archive.

The Downs Report is available on the Internet Archive.

A New History of the English Public Library: Intellectual and Social Contexts, 1850–1914 by Alistair Black (1996)

2024-11-19T19:40:00.009-05:00

A New History of the English Public Library: Intellectual and Social Contexts, 1850–1914 by Alistair Black. London: Leicester University Press, 1996. 353 p.

This blog is a condensed version of my review that appeared originally as “In review: the new history for public libraries,” Epilogue; Canadian Bulletin for the History of Books, Libraries, and Archives 11, 2 (1996): 27–35 published by Dalhousie University.

-------------------------------------------------

Alistair Black recently published an important book on public library history in England. His timing is apt because it appears when speculation and pessimism about the prospect for library history exists. To distinguish his new history, Black has used a theoretical perspective and model for public library development in the Victorian-Edwardian period and presented his ideas using a non-narrative historical mode. As well, this New History explores the dimensions of the two library histories: history-as-event (the actual past) and history-as-account (past recorded by historians). His valuable work merits a critical review and it invites a short discussion about the study of library history from a Canadian context and a general historiographic perspective.

Black’s publication encompasses the period from the mid-Victorian years to the onset of the Great War. His main arguments are as follows. Beginning in the last part of the nineteenth century the public library as a social institution inspired and promoted an agenda of societal progress and individual self-realization that incorporated intellectual, aesthetic ideas, and material, practical concerns. Black contends that libraries were considered to be a stabilizing force because they were part of an overall civilizing process and because they incorporated existing elements of social control along class lines between 1850–1914. To organize his arguments, the author introduces a model composed of idealist and utilitarian “flywheels.” At the societal-structural level, each of these revolving, conceptual movements were a source of aesthetic and practical arguments to encourage access to resources in municipal rate-supported public libraries.

The cultural uplift and stabilizing missions that libraries undertook are historical reconstructions that are relatively familiar and less controversial territory for library historians today than more than two decades ago when Michael H. Harris published a thought-provoking revisionist article on social control concerning the origin of the Boston Public Library in the 15th September 1973 issue of Library Journal. What is new is Black’s over-arching interpretation of library growth and the non-narrative basis of his work. He provides convincing deductive, theoretical statements about the general nature of culture and the relevance of social stability. In addition, he deliberately eschews the methodology that library historians have traditionally employed: various chapters of the New History focus on questions or issues rather than chronology, description, and narration of events. It is intellectual history at work, the viewpoint that ideas are major factors in shaping historical events.

I would encourage readers to explore the New History, for many stimulating ideas can be found. However, for the purpose of this review, I must be content with a brief summary.

In chapters 1–2, Black’s definitions of culture and social stability are discussed. As well, the public library goal of free service and tax-based funding is viewed from the different outlooks of the English social classes. In this context, the public library’s role in easing social tensions becomes a central part of its early development during a period of class conflict and the extension of political rights to the working class. The first part of Black’s book provides essential structural and theoretical information for the reader.

Next, the utilitarian promotion of public libraries by philosophic thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill, William Ewart, Edward Edwards, and the 1849 Select Committee parliamentary inquiry, is investigated in chapters 3–5. Material issues—the library’s contribution to the value of useful knowledge, the achievement of economic well-being by individuals through lifelong learning, and the demonstration of political economic benefits (e.g., the growth of a skilled workforce for labour markets)-are covered in chapter 6. Obviously, the utilitarian flywheel helped generate library development during the birth of the public library movement at mid-century.

In chapter 7, the idealist flywheel, particularly reform liberalism that encouraged state intervention, a more informed citizenship, and equality, is introduced. The influential idealist philosophy of Thomas Hill Green is especially relevant here. In the following chapter, Black argues that many idealist elements became the principal concerns of an assertive middle class which endorsed the concept of cultural advancement associated with free libraries. This process included support for ideas related to social control and emulation of many worthy Victorian virtues, such as success, that harmonized social relations in the later part of the nineteenth century.

Black proceeds in chapters 9–10 to analyze and describe an emerging profession of librarians and public library design. As librarians gradually adopted an expanded public service ethic, they also advanced scientific claims for their own profession. These developments are discussed in terms of power and status and their properties in society. As well, the design of social space in libraries exhibited changing architectural styles and plans; for example, open access to collections recognized democratic reforms and monumental, decorative exteriors reflected the public’s preference for expressing civic prominence and dignity. By 1914, Black deems that the major phases of development in the New History had evolved fully.

In his concluding chapter, Black discusses his main arguments about the public library’s important stabilizing societal role before 1914 in dispensing humanistic and scientific education that satisfied the aesthetic and material concerns of all classes. Here, and throughout New History, I find his arguments informative, balanced, and convincing in terms of an historical account for England. The reader is not at a loss for definitions and relationships between variables. Within each chapter, Black identifies social terms (e.g., hegemony, status) and conducts an extensive examination of the connections that library promoters had with the two main conceptual flywheels. As he notes at an early stage, this can be a “heavyweight treatment” (p. 4), and, in the case of how much idealist philosophy the public library promoters read, he acknowledges that the evidence is slight in chapter 7 (p. 157). Akin to other British and American library history colleagues who have recently developed new research fronts, Black has launched a fresh approach and navigated his subject with vigour and candour.

Other library historians also believe the use of theory and hypotheses may serve us well. Clearly, Black favours using rigorous historical methodology common to the social sciences. He feels, for many reasons, that traditional event-based historical works lack a focus or do not effectively serve contemporary librarianship. Conceptual frameworks, structural inquiries, and non-chronological presentations can be difficult to read, but they have merits that appear in New History. First, there is a more explicit approach to historical assumptions about chronological periods and the social structure within which library development occurred. This approach allows a theory of library development to be elaborated without the interruption of any [hi]story. Second, ideas about library growth and progress are set out as theses to be tested from the available evidence rather than sequences of events to be followed step-by-step. Third, terminology from the social sciences, e.g., social hegemony (how the domination of a group or groups is achieved by political and ideological means) or culture (the beliefs, customs, and way of life of groups), are presented in a more precise way. Finally, the use of models, the energizing, methodically revolving flywheels in this case, is introduced for specific purposes to represent the real world.

The use of theory and models in the New History requires some examination. It is not theory on a grand scale: its role is more humble. We are not dealing with the Frontier, Staple, Laurentian, or Metropolitan-Hinterland Theses that Canadian history students study from a national perspective to explain Canada’s development. Black’s use of theory provides a conceptual framework for historical inquiry, a means to describe and to understand library development by testing evidence for the utilitarian-idealist model. This application allows for a certain coherent, structured analysis throughout. After the evidence has been interpreted, analyzed, and presented, the reader should give some thought to the overall hypothesis of the “why” of development. Of course, the place of theory in history is a matter of continuing debate. Some historians, especially in Britain, would reject the use of theories in their inquiries because they believe that people and events have a uniqueness and singular importance each of their own.

Black’s modelling effort for the 1850–1914 period also presents an opportunity to be creative. Historical models can be helpful frameworks that set out the major components involved and indicate their importance. In this way, unconscious assumptions cannot impose upon the “facts” (judgements on the past which historians usually agree upon), the historian of libraries must focus upon how components relate to one another in the historical process. The reader profits from a more systematic presentation of issues. Of course, any model is not an actual replica of a process: one important criticism of structuralism is that it discounts the struggles that individuals and groups engage in to achieve their goals. Models should act as a link between theory, hypotheses, and observations and the historical field of study. They should not displace people and events in historical reconstructions.

At a more general historical level we could ask: what are historians attempting to do, and what is history about? After all, Alistair Black refers to the present unrest in library history (pp. 16-19), and, in his concluding chapter, entices his readers (myself at least) to explore the interrelationships between history-as-event and history-as-account by discovering how contemporary late twentieth-century public library viewpoints of service may be invigorated by observing more proactive Victorian and Edwardian precedents. He is especially concerned that today’s libraries and librarians make modest societal claims; indeed, they appear to have lost the ability to stake out valuable positions that would attract widespread support and actively promote further library growth. But we must understand that introspection is not limited to the field of library studies. The entire historical profession has been engaged in serious self-analysis for some time. Today there are numerous historical schools of thought, but, in general, there are four main groupings. There are those who continue to narrate the events of history and use a chronological format for their presentations. Typically, this is the “old history,” but there have been new converts to narration in the last twenty years. There are social-scientific oriented historians who employ a broad range of analyses and quantitative techniques. There are Marxists. And there are many followers of the French Annales school, a very diverse group which explores all aspects of history, the events of everyday life and the subconscious. In fact, these four groupings have existed for decades and it is difficult to say what is old or new about their approaches or selection of subject matter. The old history is not a monolithic edifice by any means because it is continually refreshed by new ideas and methods.

Increasingly, postmodern concerns intrude on the study of history. Postmodernism presents a challenge to the historical profession at the same time that, in its own way, it provides fresh historical insights. Generally, postmodernists dismiss history: they declare it is empty of meaning for individuals, groups, or nations; or conversely, say that “everyone is his/her own historian” in the search for past meanings. There are many arguments to be presented against the linearity of time, the objectivity of historians, and the conventional, narrative explanations frequently presented in history books. The “end of-history” is a phrase now often raised by contemporaries; it seems to signal the end of identifiable historical directions; the rejection of progress or evolutionary historical explanations; and skepticism about the value of historical narratives, theory, models, and explanation.

Postmodern critics challenge the very basis of historical inquiry. They reject the view that historians should or can be objective; they scoff at the idea that history-as-account can help interpret or transmit our cultural heritage to future generations; they deny that reason can be used to explain history-as-event, the past we all view from different perspectives; and, further, they deny that there is a real, knowable past. History for many postmoderns is a very limited, personal inquiry with mostly contemporary time frames; discontinuous events; and stories drawn from memory, interpreted texts, as well as a great variety of non-traditional documentary sources. It is as important to feel history as it is to understand it. These redefinitions have serious consequences. Without the concept of linear time and the status of scientific objectivity, historians find the creation of causal explanations an impossible task. Theory making at any level, on a meta- or micro-scale, becomes a transient activity with relatively few definite consequences.

What then can we be sure of? Library historians deal with what has taken place. In my view, historical knowledge cannot be an exact set of true statements, completely accurate descriptions, or definitive representations of the past. We must acknowledge limits to our understanding and the potential for different interpretations of events, facts, and evidence. Historical knowledge, like the science of physics or chemistry, must rest on understanding existing evidence. Because we cannot be certain that all relevant evidence is available to us in our present, there can be no closure on historical explanations, cause and effect relationships, structural analysis, or chronicle of past deeds and events. The dimension of time is always with us, and within it, we will constantly change our perspectives between the present and points in the past. The pursuit of new possibilities seems limitless.

Black’s New History should be viewed in this light. In the past half-century, a number of classic histories on public library development in the United States and Britain have focused on the “why” of public library growth. However, I believe library historians should not be too preoccupied with explaining why things have happened. Instead, they should also explain the how, what, when, who, and where of library history. These explanations require different questions: “What restrictions should be placed on the contents of a public library?”; “How did the practice of open access to public library collections come about?”; “Who was responsible for promoting public library growth?”; or “When did classification systems become standardized in public libraries?” The events and agents of change are as important as the concept of causation in history, and depending on the question or audience the historian is addressing, different forms of presentation will be employed.

At times, it is very difficult to separate history-as-account from history-as-event. The past shapes much of the present. What is written about the past and the way it is presented can influence contemporary historical events. Exactly how the past affects the present can be a historical and even a philosophical problem. Perhaps it is best to view the past as an open book, with many pages and many possibilities for additional pages. Historians have many procedures and methods which help us explore the past. Alistair Black’s New History has a lasting value. His book offers us new perspectives and explanations about the development of public libraries, and at the same time he encourages us to attempt to use different historical methods which lead to new discoveries about past and contemporary libraries and librarians.

The old history will always be with us, ready to be infused with the new history. In time, the new history itself will be challenged by even newer historical perspectives and methodologies and face the prospect of change. In many ways, the past is before us and the history of public libraries is ripe for (re)exploration, (re) interpretation, and, ultimately, revitalization.