Library History Today Blog

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...