NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA EXPANSION FROM 1967 TO THE MID-1970S

Canada's centennial, 1967, was not just a time to reflect on the country's past but a time to look forward as well. After the $13 million Public Archives and National Library Building on Wellington Street opened in June, both archivists and librarians had better facilities and more staff to provide their services. The National Library had grown to more than 200 workers. When Dr. W.K. Lamb, the Dominion Archivist and National Librarian, retired in 1968, a decision was made to appoint separate directors for the two institutions. The new National Librarian was Guy Sylvestre, an author, civil servant, and Associate Director of the Library of Parliament from 1956-68. Dr. Sylvestre had worked in Ottawa for a quarter of a century and possessed a good knowledge of library activity across Canada. Now he was in a position to exploit his contacts in the nation's capital and develop ideas about the National Library (NLC) that would make it more relevant in the expanding Canadian information environment.

The first major development on Dr. Sylvestre's watch was a revised National Library Act, which came into force in September 1969. The National Librarian was charged with coordinating the library services of departments, branches, and agencies of the Government and authorized to enter into agreements with libraries, associations, and institutions "in and outside Canada." One positive result from this was the eventual exchange of MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) magnetic tape records with the Library of Congress and other national libraries. Automation projects and standards became essential building blocks for library progress after 1970. 'Systems' became a library catchword, spawning many acronyms and a Research and Planning Branch at the NLC staffed by programmers and analysts. Standards were also a priority; thus, the CAN/MARC format was developed for English and French language records and international cataloging activities coordinated by a new Office of Library Standards established in 1973.

 While the NLC explored and developed computerized systems and standards, it also began a fundamental reorganization of its collections and introduced new services for Canadian libraries, the federal government, and the public. Some notable highlights were:

•  creation of a Music Division in 1970 under the leadership of Dr. Helmut Kallmann, who built an impressive collection of Canadian manuscripts, printed materials, and audio recordings. When he retired in 1987, the NLC's music collection was internationally recognized. Kallmann received the Order of Canada in 1986.
• establishment of a Library Documentation Centre to capture information on library development for use of Canadian librarians and libraries. The Centre began publishing an annual Directory of Library Associations in Canada in 1974.
• formation of Canadian Book Exchange Centre (1973) to acquire and distribute government publications to Canada a few foreign countries. By 1975, the Centre was handling a million items annually.
• beginning of historical bibliographic work on pre-1900 Canadiana emanating from a new Retrospective National Bibliography Division.
• establishment of a Division for the Visually and Physically Handicapped, which initially attempted to provide reference services and cooperate with libraries and organizations on various projects.
• start of work by the Federal Libraries Liaison Office (est. 1970) to improve the coordination of Government of Canada library services. After an extensive survey of almost 200 federal libraries, this office recommended formation of a Council of Federal Libraries which came into being in 1976. The Office and Council were key elements in allowing the NLC to coordinate federal library activities and in offering its constituent government members to work on problems on a cooperative basis.
•  forming of a Rare Books and Manuscripts Division with a reading room in 1973 to organize rare materials, offer reference, develop policies on acquisitions, and preserve collections.
• initiating a Children's Literature Service to coordinate national activities. It began issuing supplements to Sheila Egoff and Alvine Bélisle's  Notable Canadian Children's Books in 1977.
• inauguration of a Multilingual Biblioservice in 1973: this multicultural project acquired, cataloged, and loaned books in languages other than French and English to Canadian libraries (mostly public) for two decades.
• commencement in 1973 of Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) services concentrating on the humanities and social sciences. SDI was designed to offer timely information through the use of burgeoning computerized databases, e.g. Psychological Abstracts and ERIC.
• establishment of a Collections Development Branch with responsibility to systematize selections for the NLC, collect information on policies of major libraries, and offer assistance in resource development of Canadian libraries.
• implementation of Canadian Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) a cooperative project which provided publishers with basic cataloging information and reduced original cataloging costs.
• assignment of standard numbers for serials and books -- ISSN and ISBN -- to register and identify Canadian publications in an international publishing environment.
•  expansion of its own interlending activities and locational service for libraries

It was a busy and exciting period at the NLC. Legal deposit was expanded, important exhibitions held, international conferences hosted, and many studies published, such as Roll Back the Years, a history of Canadian recorded sound. Staffing expanded dramatically, from about 200 in 1967 to more than 450 by the mid-1970s. Likewise, the operating budget rose from just less than $1.5 million to almost $10 million. However, there were challenges on the horizon. The main building was no longer adequate to house collections and staff. The Public Archives was similarly faced with space problems. Automation of the Union Catalogue was only just beginning. The NLC continued to share its Canadian mandate with the newly formed Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, a creation of the National Research Council, which opened its own building in 1974 for more than a million items and a staff of more than 100. Federal government initiatives were now more explicit about the need for long-range plans and multi-year financing; as a result, incremental change was becoming more difficult to implement in budget requests.

Consequently, Dr. Sylvestre launched a comprehensive review of the NLC's mandate and activities in 1976. He was hoping to develop a consensus about the future of the NLC with broad-based input from the Canadian library community and to provide an appropriate plan of action for the 1980s. Regional initiatives by other library agencies, like UNICAT/TELECAT, a bilingual automated cataloguing system used by libraries in Quebec and Ontario, were in development. The NLC had grown dramatically, but could it sustain its services and continue to expand? A certain amount of skepticism had arisen in the early 1970s about cooperative library projects--these efforts often did not deliver the same benefits to all participants and could engender divisive debates.

In the developing funding climate of governments and public administrators at all levels 'financial restraint' was becoming a byword and 'cutback management' would soon enter the administrative lexicon. Annual inflation rates of 7-11% rapidly eroded revenue increases. Dr. Sylvestre was known on occasion (e.g., at the Canadian Library Association's Edmonton conference in 1978) to lament that NLC funding was inadequate to the many tasks at hand. Was the NLC's glass to be "half full or half empty;" would there be a "silver lining" in the clouds? Much was riding on the results of its consultative assessment and resultant report, The Future of the National Library of Canada which is the subject of another post here in Library History Today.