Library History Today Blog

Canada Needs Libraries . Published by Canadian Library Council, 1945. 45 p. Includes briefs and articles by the CLC, librarians, and seven provinces regarding library needs of Canadians in the postwar period. Reprinted from Ontario Library Review , November, 1944. Towards the end of the Second World War, efforts began across Canada to return to a peacetime economy and society. The federal government established a Department of Reconstruction in 1944 under the direction of a powerful cabinet minister, Clarence Decator Howe, to provide general direction. Provincial governments also established agencies to examine reconstruction or rehabilitation activities. Both levels of government conducted hearings and encouraged public participation in this process. It was an opportunity for library associations and libraries to recommend a way forward to better serve the public after years of depression and wartime conditions. The most energetic group in this regard was the Canadian Library Counci...

Dorothy I. Hamilton, The Libraries of the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. A Report . (Ann Arbor: Department of Library Science, University of Michigan, 1942). 2, 2, 137 leaves with tables. Winifred H. Snider, Extramural Library Service in Libraries and Extension Departments of Canadian Universities . MA thesis (New York: Columbia University Library School, 1948). 64 p. with tables. Until the Second World War, it could be said with a measure of assurance that librarianship in Canada was dominated by interest in public library development. Libraries in higher education were mostly the reserve of an educated minority of Canadians. It was the public library that was known by the popular notion, the ‘people’s university.’ There were, of course, occasions when academic librarians, such as Stewart Wallace, Gerhard Lomer, and Kaye Lamb, rose to prominence in provincial organizations during the Depression. And, in the early 1930s, the Commission of En...