Canadian Library History Blog

 The Revival of School Libraries before 1920 In the mid-19th century four eastern Canadian provinces—Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick—established district school libraries which, like their American counterparts, eventually fell into disuse. One principal cause of their failure was that they were not sufficiently geared towards the educational needs of students. In the United States, municipal public libraries took the lead in providing reading resources for children, leaving schools to rely on small, inadequate classroom collections and standard textbooks. Of course, the issue of appropriate libraries for students continued to be discussed among educators. In 1902, the Ontario Department of Education introduced a matching provincial grant for rural school library books, allowing participating schools to receive up to $10 in matching funds based on local purchases. Two years later, the Deputy Minister of Education, John Millar, reported at the Ontario E...

Hugh Hornby Langton was the Registrar of the University of Toronto from 1887 to 1892 and served as its University Librarian from 1892 to 1923. He was also an accomplished editor, translator, and historian. His most important contribution to the University was his reestablishment of the collections, staffing, and services after a fire on Valentine's Day in 1890 destroyed the original library in the east wing of University College. Langton took charge of a new standalone library which opened on King's College Circle in 1892. This building featured new innovations such as electric lighting, steam heating, and a fireproof bookstack. In 1911, he oversaw the completion of a new wing to provide more space for the library.   Hugh Langton became a mainstay in campus academic life for three decades in his role as librarian and the main editor of the university's scholarly publishing program from 1897 to 1923 and the launch of the Canadian Historical Review in 1920. He contributed hi...

Marie Tremaine, c.1949 Marie Tremaine's work on Canadian bibliography remains unparalleled. According to her obituary, she "personally searched the shelves of some 200 libraries across Canada and the United States to find 1204 monographs and pamphlets" published between 1751 and 1800. Her largest work was the Arctic Bibliography encompassing 16 volumes, 14 of which Tremaine worked on personally. The massive work includes more than 20,000 titles of works related to the Arctic, focusing on scientific and explorers' texts. She authored A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 1751–1800 , a monumental text published in 1952 that is considered the cornerstone of book history studies in Canada. It meticulously detailed more than 1,200 books, pamphlets, and broadsides produced across early Canadian provinces. In 1970, Marie Tremaine was elected honorary life president of the Bibliographic Society of Canada. Also, to honour the corpus of her bibliographic work, the Bibliograph...

Jack Brown, n.d. Jack Brown had a remarkable career in librarianship. He worked in public, university, and special libraries. Some measure of his influence can be gauged from the many organizations he was involved with over three decades in Canada and the United States. He was a Councillor for the Canadian Library Association (1961–64), a Director of the Association of College & Research Libraries (1961–64), an ongoing Secretary for the National Research Council Association Committee on Scientific Information, the VIce-President of the International federation for Documentation (1965–67), a longtime member of the Special Libraries Association, and also the Ontario Library Association.  Jack Brown was mostly responsible for spearheading the building of CISTI, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, which opened on the National Research Council's Montreal Road campus in 1974 (now known as Building M-55). Under his leadership, CISTI became one of the wo...

Charles Henry Gould is a significant figure in Canadian library history. From the time of his appointment as University Librarian at McGill University in 1892 until his death in 1919, he made valuable contributions to the emerging vocation of librarianship. He was instrumental in persuading the American Library Association to convene its annual conference in Montreal in 1900, during which he invited librarians to a meeting to form a Canadian library association that eventually became the Ontario Library Association in 1901. Gould developed McGill's collection in the Redpath Library, which became Canada's largest academic library in the early 20th century. In the field of library education, he initiated a summer course for librarians in 1904 that evolved into the McGill Library School, accredited by the American Library Association in 1927, shortly after his death. While he served as ALA President from 1908–09, the organization moved its headquarters to Chicago and revised its...

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 was 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 entailed the promotion of a general model program based on the role of...