Library History Today Blog

Library Service in New Brunswick: A Report and Recommendations by Peter Grossman. Fredericton: New Brunswick Department of Education, 1953. 62 p., maps, illus. Peter Grossman, c.1953 For many years in the first part of the 20th-century, public library service lagged in the province of New Brunswick; however, in 1951 a provincial Library Association was established with Maurice Boone, the chief librarian of the Legislative Library and formerly librarian of Acadia University, elected as President. The Association pressed government officials to improve public library services, and in the following year the Department of Education invited Peter Grossman, the Director of Libraries for Nova Scotia, to conduct a survey throughout the province and devise a plan for future library development. Peter Grossman, a native British Columbian who had experience in regional libraries in the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island, spent five weeks in the summer of 1952 investigating school, government...

St John, (Francis R.) Library Consultants, Inc. Ontario Libraries: A Province-Wide Survey and Plan , 1965 . Toronto: Ontario Library Association, 1965. 182 p. At the beginning of the 1960s, Ontario’s public, school, university, government, and special libraries were trying to cope with a rapidly growing population, changing technology, and staff shortages. The Department of Education had made a few incremental improvements after the Wallace Report of 1957, but leaders in the library sector expected more effective planning and financial support from Queen’s Park. When William Davis, the Conservative M.P. from Peel County, was appointed Minister of Education in 1962, the Ontario Library Association (OLA) invited him to speak at its 1963 conference. The new Minister did not disappoint: he spoke about the importance of libraries as community agents and stressed better planning was necessary to achieve their service goals. Most importantly, he offered to finance studies sponsored by th...