Ontario’s Landmark Public Libraries Act, 1920
A century ago, in June 1920, the Farmer-Labour government in Ontario introduced a new public libraries act, mostly through the work of the Education Department's provincial library Inspector, William O. Carson. He had been London's chief librarian for a decade before moving to Toronto in 1916 to undertake the task of vitalizing Ontario's libraries during the difficult years of the First World War. The contemporary act he inherited dated back as far as 1882, with major revisions issued in 1895 and 1909. But, with the appearance of Carnegie buildings (125 in Ontario), better training for library assistants and librarians, and far different economic conditions facing municipalities after four decades of population growth, the provisions of the older act (which had at one time included mechanics' institutes) no longer suited a province that had suffered rural depopulation and was becoming increasingly urbanized after the 1911 census. William O. Carson and the Ontario Publ...