Library History Today Blog

Karen and I have just reissued a revised edition of our older Public Library Boards in Postwar Ontario , 1945-1985 . It was originally published in 1988 as an occasional paper by the University of Dalhousie School of Library and Information Science. Long out of print. But now its back in print again with updated information for the original text and references plus a new chapter to continue the story from 1985 to just before 2010. Most of the original text has been retained. Contemporary library boards in Ontario are mostly administrative entities, but this was not always the case. Local government today is very different from the pre-1945 era. Over the years, accountability has trumped representation (a political concept) in local government and provincial statutes controlling local agencies. The municipal government has overtaken many local bodies--clearly, elected local officials in larger government entities created after the 1960s in restructuring exercises now hold powerful pos...

This monograph is a follow up from my previous history of public library growth in Ontario, Free Books for All: the Public Library Movement in Ontario, 1850-1930 , published by Dundurn Press in 1994. I have recently updated Places in 2020 with additional materials—references, tables, images, and a revised index. You can read the updated version of  Places to Grow for free at the following link at the Internet Archive or a preview edition on Google Books . Most of the revisions and additions relate to issues and developments after 1985. The book unfolds in a narrative, chronological manner with the use of primary sources, such as government correspondence, library inspector diaries, and board memoranda, as well as many secondary sources to explore how libraries integrated into Ontario's social and political fabric. Researches will find 1,200 footnotes to guide them to further sources of information they may be pursuing in the 500 pages of this book. Places to Grow covers...

In the midst of the Great Depression a Carnegie funded project to study Canadian libraries appeared. In a hundred and fifty pages this report, authored by John Ridington, George H. Locke, and Mary J.L. Black, surveyed the landscape of library service across the country. Its two chapters on government libraries still make sober reading today. The surveyors reported there was “very little enthusiasm for either a scholarly or a democratic book service in most of the libraries of the various government of Canada.” Indifference and neglect continued to prevail in government circles on the topic of a national library. Libraries in Canada (1933) did not issue a rallying cry for a national library—it was content with offering advice that a national librarian should be appointed and put in charge of all the libraries maintained by the Dominion government. In this way, all their activities could be coordinated, their holdings catalogued and made available nationally over a period of time. A s...

Just over a century ago, in 1911, Lawrence Burpee published an article entitled “A Plea for a National Library” in Andrew Mac Phail’s February issue of the University Magazine , an influential literary magazine to which many leading Canadian academics, politicians, and authors contributed. Burpee came up with a great idea: he suggested that the Dominion government create a national library in Ottawa close to Parliament Hill. His essay looked at models, such as European national libraries and especially the Library of Congress in the United States, to argue that a national institution was essential for Canada's intellectual and cultural development. Burpee obviously was dissatisfied that Canada lagged behind other nations. He asked: “Are we Canadians either so inferior, or so superior, to the rest of the world, that we cannot use, or do not need, such an institution?” Obviously, Burpee was a progressive thinker! Lawrence Burpee, nd You can read his entire article on the Internet A...