Special Libraries Organize in Montreal and Toronto, 1930–1945

Bank of Canada Library, Research Dept., Ottawa, c.1944

 Special Libraries in Canada

The special library was amongst the first libraries to appear in 18th century Canada with the creation of a small book collection in the l’Hôpital général de Québec in 1726. In the early 19th century, important collections were established in Montreal, such as the Advocates’ Library (1828) and libraries for the McGill College Medical Library (founded 1829) and the Natural History Society (founded 1825). Other libraries were developed for prominent legal, literary and scientific organizations in the following decades: the Quebec Literary and Historical Society (founded 1824) in Quebec City, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Royal Canadian Institute established by mid-century in Toronto. In the first decades of the 20th century, growth continued to serve more formal organizations such as the Academy of Medicine (1907) in Toronto, which came under the direction of Margaret Ridley Charlton, and the Royal Bank of Canada (1913) in Montreal. Throughout this lengthy period, of course, government libraries built significant collections in provincial legislatures and in Ottawa.

The concept of a special library—collections and staff to serve governments, businesses, professional groups, public institutions such as hospitals, and a wide variety of organizations—coalesced in the early decades of the 20th century, especially after the formation of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in 1909 in the United States and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1924) in Britain. The primary aims of the special library ‘movement’ in these countries generally focused on services to collect and evaluate current publications and research; to organize relevant written, unpublished or peripheral information; and to assemble and disseminate publications, information, and data (often in abstract or memorandum form) to advance individual or group work within organizations. In an era when most American and British librarians were concerned with public library progress, special librarians focused on the information process within their organization. They paid particular attention to the needs of their users, often employing non-traditional methods not taught in library schools.

Special librarians shared some ideas in common with an early 20th century European field of study, ‘documentation.’ Documentalists were concerned with any type of record and or evolving technology with the potential for providing pertinent information to further the aims of an organization or researchers. They were especially interested in building scientific indexes, the organization of subject literature, and the techniques of improving information retrieval. But, for the most part, special librarians remained oriented to providing typical library reference service through their usual resources. Indeed, this trend is evident from the activity in Canadian special libraries and publications of leading figures before the end of the Second World War.

In Canada, special library work was in a nascent stage. When American special librarians came to meet in Toronto with the American Library Association convention at Toronto in June 1927, William O. Carson, the Ontario Inspector of Public Libraries, wrote in the summer issue of Special Libraries, “If there is any definition of a special library which includes all that it is and excludes all that it is not, I have never heard it.” He went on to elaborate saying, “Speaking frankly the special library ideal has not taken hold in this country in a large way; that is, we have not gone far in the establishment of highly specialized, representative collections of books and related material, organized and operated according to the niceties and exactitudes of modern library science.” In the same June issue, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission in Toronto reported a typical library activity: keeping engineering staff posted on new developments, routing of government reports and technical publications to departments for circulation, and maintaining about 90 journals and the publications of 30 technical societies in a growing library that used the Dewey Decimal classification. Another contributor, an economist from the Royal Bank in Montreal, emphasized the importance of maintaining library data from current sources related to railroad earnings, freight loadings, automobile production, newsprint, steel, flour, as well as employment and building statistics, in order to make accurate assessments for banking executives.

Special Library Growth in Montreal and Toronto

In the late 1920s, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto were emerging centres where special library work was becoming more important when businesses and government were expanding. There was a marked increase in libraries serving insurance, banking, and other commercial enterprises, along with the development of legislative and departmental libraries at the provincial and federal levels. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics Statistical Survey of Canadian Libraries in 1929–30 identified 59 government and 59 special libraries each as separate categories. Special libraries were “commercial and technical libraries, which include those of business corporations as well as those belonging to historical or scientific societies, law societies, literary and art organizations or those of a similar nature,” and reported holdings of 464,885 items. The three largest special libraries reporting more than 25,000 items were the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto, the New Brunswick Provincial Museum in St. John, and the Royal Society of Canada in Ottawa. In its next survey, 1930–31, the federal department combined the two groups and reported there were 132 government, technical society, and business libraries with 2,292,899 volumes, which combined represented 31 percent more books than public libraries. The vast majority of these books, of course, were held by governments, with the Library of Parliament alone holding 400,000 volumes.

Some notable librarians in the 1930–31 survey for Montreal would reappear over the next decades: Maréchal Nantel (Advocates’ Library), Olive B. Le Boutillier (Art Association of Montreal, now the Montreal Museum of Fine Art), and Mary Jane Henderson (Sun Life Insurance). Nantel was a lawyer, writer, historian, librarian of the Bar of Montreal, and a prominent figure in the Société des Dix for many years. Olive Le Boutillier was active in Montreal art circles for many years. Mary Jane Henderson became a driving force in special library work in Montreal and a familiar face in the SLA. After earning a BA at Queen’s University in 1925, she acquired a BLS from the Library School at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in the following year. Then she gained experience as a cataloguer at Columbia University and joined SLA’s New York Chapter before returning to Montreal in 1930 to organize Sun Life’s investment library. She was inducted into the SLA Hall of Fame in 1964 in recognition of her service to the profession.

In the decade of the 1930s, despite the setback of the Great Depression, Montreal was the business and financial metropolitan centre of Canada. At this time, cooperative efforts were greatly encouraged, and at the beginning of 1932, a small committee of special librarians meeting at McGill University decided to form a special libraries chapter of the SLA. Mary Jane Henderson, the librarian of Sun Life Assurance Company, became their leader and was elected president of the Montreal chapter at its first meeting on May 9, 1932. There were 19 members at this time and the first project the chapter chose was to publish a Directory of Special Libraries in Montreal in 1933 that detailed hours of opening, personnel, volumes, periodicals, telephone, and other operational details. The chapter’s quarterly Bulletin first appeared in January 1935 edited by Beatrice V. Simon, the McGill University medical librarian. As its membership grew, the chapter requested SLA hold its annual convention in Montreal. The 28th annual conference of the Special Libraries Association was held in Montreal at the Mount Royal Hotel in June 1936. Henderson was in charge of organizing local arrangements and organized a successful program under the theme, “Putting Knowledge to Work,” for the 1936 conference, which was the subject of my earlier blog.

The Montreal chapter participated in the inter-provincial library conference in Ottawa in 1937. Members from the Ontario and Quebec library associations held a session on cooperation between public and special libraries. Beatrice Simon, McGill University Medical Library and Mildrid Turnbull, the Royal Bank of Canada librarian in Montreal, spoke about efforts to avoid duplication and to use interloan. T.V. Mounteer, from the Bell Telephone Co. in Montreal, reprised his address on cooperative opportunities between industrial libraries and educational resources of the public library, a speech later published earlier in Special Libraries.

Although it appeared that the outbreak of war in 1939 would halt the progress of library growth, in fact, in early 1940, three librarians formed a plan to establish an SLA Toronto Chapter: Pauline Mary Hutchison, librarian of Canada Life Assurance, Peter Morgan, librarian of the Confederation Life Association, and Allan McKenzie, librarian of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. They called for a meeting in May where ten people approved a decision to request chapter status, which the SLA approved that summer. The first regular meeting of the chapter was held at the Staff House of the Toronto Public Library on September 17, 1940, with Pauline Hutchison as the chair. The organization soon attracted new members, among them George A. Johnson (Law Society of Upper Canada), Edna Poole (Academy of Medicine), Grace Pincoe (Art Gallery of Toronto, now Art Gallery of Ontario), and Allan McKenzie of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

Toronto Daily Star April 15, 1943

 The chapter’s first bulletin was published in January 1941, and a wartime project, the Air Force library, began in January 1943. Members, under the direction of Mary Silverthorn and her Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division Committee, sorted and arranged books in the division depot and collected, by purchase and donation, hundreds of other books and magazines, both technical and recreational that were sorted and catalogued at the Confederation Life Association and returned at the depot for distribution. The chapter’s wartime meetings continued with some prominent speakers. Grace Pincoe spoke on the Art Gallery of Toronto collection and its activities and Margaret Avision, who later became a distinguished poet, spoke about “Everything about Something” and her work at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs Library in the later stages of the war before she accepted a position at the University of Toronto library. Marie Tremaine spoke on “Can you tell me? Please,” a thoughtful piece on typical reference work with the public she experienced at the Toronto Public Library. She would become one of the founding members of the Bibliographical Society of Canada in 1946.

By the war’s end, the DBS Survey of Libraries for 1946–48 indicated the progress of all groupings of special libraries after 1930. There were now 173 in total: 83 federal and provincial, 36 business, 13 law, 22 technical and professional, and 19 ‘other’ (e.g., libraries for the blind) with a reported 110 trained staff in library science. The initiative and enthusiasm of the two Canadian chapters, active forces in Canadian librarianship, could reasonably be credited for some of this growth. These chapters attracted members in smaller Canadian cities and in western Canada from Winnipeg as far as Victoria and Trail, BC. In the postwar period, they would participate in a series of joint regional conferences with the SLA’s Western New York Chapter in 1947–49. Several years later, in 1953, the Toronto Chapter would host the SLA annual conference in Toronto.

My blog post on the 1936 Special Libraries conference at Montreal is available at this link.

In 2003, Margaret Ridley Charlton was designated as a person of national historic significance.

Some useful publications during this period include:

Marvin, Donald M. “Relationship of the Library and Research Departments to the Bank.” Special Libraries 18 (Sept. 1927): 215–219.
Nantel, Maréchal. “The Advocates’ Library and the Montreal Bar.” Law Library Journal 27 (July 1934): 75–97.
Mounteer, T.V. “The Special Library: Partner in Industrial Education.” Special Libraries 27 (Nov. 1936): 298–301.
Morgan, Peter. “On Becoming a Special Librarian.” Special Libraries 28 (March 1937): 87–90.
Le Boutillier, Olive B. “The Clipping File in an Art Library.” Special Libraries 31 (April 1940): 131–132.
Pincoe, Grace. “A Trip to Study Methods in American Art Museum Libraries.” Bulletin of the Toronto Chapter, Special Libraries Association 2 (May 1942): [3-4].
Saunders, Janet F. “Development of the International Labour Office Library.” Special Libraries 33 (Oct. 1942): 290–294.
“The Special Library in Canada.” Wilson Library Bulletin 19 (Nov. 1944): 195–197.
Saunders, Janet F. “S.L.A. International Relations.” Special Libraries 35 (Dec. 1944): 490–493.
McKenzie, Allan. “Should Fiction Be Encouraged in Special Libraries?” Special Libraries 36 (June 1945): 147–150.
Lewis, Grace S. “Library of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, Canada.” Special Libraries 36 (Oct. 1945): 358–360.
Pratt, Phebe G. “School of Social Work Library.” Special Libraries 37 (April 1946): 115–117.
Pearce, Catherine Anne. “The Development of Special Libraries in Montreal and Toronto.” MS in LS thesis, University of Illinois, 1947. She was president of the Montreal Chapter from 1941–43 and worked in the United States after the war.

 

Canadian Mid-century School Libraries and Modern Education, 1945—1950

School Libraries in Canada before 1945

Although Canadian school libraries exhibited signs of progress during the 1930s, this work came to a halt for the most part at the outset of the Second World War. In the thirties, while British Columbia and Ontario schools continued the tradition of small classroom collections, promotion of recreational reading, and reliance to a great extent on public libraries for book stocks and branches in schools, there were indications of change. In Ontario, Margaret Fraser, an influential high school librarian at Galt (now Cambridge), outlined what she felt the mission of the school library should be in 1938: “The school library should be the centre of all school activities, working with the teachers and students of all grades and departments. Its work is varied and continuous, but the librarian has three main aims: ( 1) to encourage reading, (2) to assist the teacher, (3) to teach the student to help himself.” In British Columbia, a Manual for Small School Libraries was issued in 1940 that recommended the American Library Association standards of a trained teacher-librarian and separate classroom for elementary schools with more than 100 pupils and a teacher-librarian or full-time librarian for schools with more than 500 students.

 Interest in school libraries did continue during the wartime years, the subject of my earlier blog on Louise Riley and Jack Brown at this link. They explored school-public library cooperation and the need for greater provincial support from departments of education. Riley’s thesis in particular was an important study of school services in larger cities with more than 10,000 population in several provinces. She reported the typical state of affairs: “In Canada, classroom collections are provided by the public library or the school board or both to some elementary and junior high schools in thirty-one of the fifty cities included in this report.” As for centralized libraries: “There are some centralized school libraries in elementary and junior high schools in fifteen public school and three separate school systems.“ She concluded, “The school library movement is in its infancy in Canada.”

Towards the end of WW II, the Canadian Library Council issued Canada Needs Libraries; it included provincial statements on the needs for improved school services. Although the main focus was on public library development, school libraries, especially at the secondary level, received more attention in the Ontario and Saskatchewan briefs. With the formation of the Canadian Library Association (CLA) in 1946, a truly national voice came into being for library work with children, adolescents, and students. Within a year, a section of CLA was established that included librarians interested in work for children and youth. In November 1947, the Association's journal published several articles on school library work, with a leading article that pointed to new directions and a new philosophy of service related to educational trends in North America. The principal author was a former teacher, Lillian Lyle Evans (BA 1940, Saskatchewan, and BLS 1942, Toronto), newly appointed as supervisor of school libraries for Saskatchewan in 1946. After working briefly at Toronto Public Library in the Kipling Room, the section for adolescents, and a Florida school library during the war, she became a dynamic force in Canadian school librarianship and eventually Canadian School Libraries Association president in 1969 –70. She set forth a new compelling role for school libraries that was being cultivated in the United States in the CLA Bulletin published in November 1947.

To-day the school library is conceived as a functional unit of the school, that is as a workshop or laboratory where individuals and classes carry on desirable activities and have valuable experiences. The school library now makes possible investigation and research, curriculum enrichment, independent study and recreational reading. This new and broader concept is a direct outgrowth of recent social and educational changes.

Canadian School Library Progress after 1945

Lyle Evans was referring to the progressive child-centred concept of schooling championed by John Dewey which flourished from the 1920s to 1950s. The traditional, conservative approach in education for a long time was teacher-centred. There was an emphasis on oral instruction, reading and reciting facts from a few graded texts, taking notes, memorizing information by repetition, and studying individually or in classroom groups. Small book collections usually satisfied this concept. Progressivism meant fitting instruction to the different needs of each pupil; it meant curriculum revision and the eclipse of rote textbook learning; it meant new teaching methods focusing on real-world situations for pupil and group activities; and it meant a new emphasis on understanding social and civil affairs. For school library collections it meant supplying demands for wide reading and provision of varied reference sources. For library staffing it meant training in teaching and librarianship in order to guide or instruct pupils in selecting appropriate material to read and helping students clarify their thinking and reaching valid conclusions. In Lyle Evans' estimation, “the school library is an integral part of the educative process, and its objectives are actually identical with those of any modern educational program.” At mid-century, progressive education was considered to be ‘modern’ and infused ideas and methods in the United States and Canada despite critics who preferred standardized testing and high standards, such as Hilda Neatby, who published So Little For the Mind in 1953.

    The November 1947 pages of the CLA Bulletin featured prominent contemporary figures in school librarianship. Margaret E. Reid, an Ontario College of Education and Queen's University graduate, wrote on student library usage in St. Catharines. She outlined the usual types of student use: classes with a period of library science (normally grades nine and ten), classes brought to the library by teachers, and individual pupils from all grades. She believed student use of libraries could lay the foundation for a varied adulthood. The chief librarian at Trois Rivières, Claire Godbout, described how the newly established public library provided a school service for young students at six school deposits tended to on a weekly basis by visiting staff. Joseph A. Brunet, the director of school libraries for the Montreal Commission of Catholic Schools, was optimistic about progress in Quebec, especially in Montreal where books were selected, classified, and cataloged at the head office by a professional staff. Rural schools in Quebec were supplied with grants and small deposits of books for classrooms. He believed the idea of the school library was taking shape and gaining ground each year. Mary Silverthorn, a University of Toronto Library School professor, provided an extensive list of book selection aids. She noted there was reliance on American sources and that “school library work in Canada is hampered by the lack of catalogues and book lists designed for Canadian use.” Dorothy Cullen, the director of the Prince Edward Island Libraries regional system, reported on the various ways its branches and headquarters supplied library service to all the island schools with deposits and books-by-mail. There was also a collection of professional literature for teachers at the regional  headquarters in Charlottetown.

    Summaries of provincial school library developments were also provided. In British Columbia, the Department of Education offered library training in summer school courses for teachers. These teacher-librarians held library positions in graded elementary schools and some junior high schools; however, in high schools only teachers who were also fully qualified librarians were appointed to full-time library positions. The Manitoba Department of Education administered book grants and selection guides: “For the year 1946 books were selected for 1,557 one-room schools and 103 two-room schools, and orders checked for 224 graded schools, thus providing libraries for 2,790 teachers. For these schools 3,798 magazine subscriptions were placed.” A professional library for Winnipeg teachers was located in the reading room of the departmental library, but it was noted that professional training had not kept pace with book distributions. Lyle Evans reviewed her new duties in Saskatchewan and pointed to the successful initiative in a Cupar school district northeast of Regina to establish a core collection of texts, supplementary texts, and reference books for each rural school. A central pooled collection was started in the school unit main office staffed by a teacher acting as teacher-librarian. She felt, “The experiment has been so successful and attracted so much interest that many other units and [school] superintendents have been asking for guidance in organizing school library services in their areas.” Her work justified her enthusiasm about modernization that

The school library, then, provides material to enrich the school curriculum, develops in pupils good attitudes and habits of study, and promotes a lifelong interest in reading for information, recreation and mental stimulation. That is, the school library is an integral part of the educative process, and its objectives are actually identical with those of any modern educational program.

Despite this inspirational rhetoric, school libraries faced a difficult task implementing better conditions. When the Canadian Education Association surveyed school libraries on a province-by-province basis in 1951, it remarked on the general under developed state of affairs:

It will be noted that proportionately few elementary schools have separate libraries; classroom collections for lending and reference are more common. Libraries are found somewhat more frequently in secondary schools, but there too the classroom collection persists. The library collection as a separate and well equipped unit administered by a qualified person as an essential school service, just as gymnasium or cafeteria, has not been developed on an all-inclusive scale.

    Canadian school librarians were not early advocates in supporting progressive ‘modern’ education philosophy. But after 1945, the provision of resources for critical thinking, experimental learning, developing social skills and other worthy features of progressive education came to the fore. Mary Mustard, a prominent school librarian from Brantford, Ontario, declared that a main goal of school library service was “to develop character through desirable book habits” thereby escaping the dull textbook routines of the past. At the CLA School Library Institute held in Winnipeg in June 1949, participants were excited to hear Amelia Munson, an experienced American youth services exponent from New York Library, speak to the issue of ‘Growth Through Reading,’ which offered students opportunities to experience develop personally through the medium of books. In the following year, 1950, a Young People’s Section of CLA was formed, distinct from Children’s Librarians. The new section included public and school library work for teens, and in August 1953 it organized a successful thematic session in Ottawa during CLA’s annual meeting—‘Effective School Library Service.’ Participants learned the effectiveness of any school library was determined by four factors: library accommodation, an adequate collection, a trained librarian, and an appropriate program of activities. Subsequently, in June 1958, the section sponsored a Workshop on Education of School Librarians at Quebec City where Lyle Evans reported on the current state of affairs for teacher-librarian training: “Six provinces regularly offer courses, two offer courses occasionally, and two do not offer any courses.” The workshop registrants concluded national standards were needed to improve training for school library staffing, a task that would take several more years to complete.

    From the outset of the decade and throughout the 1950s, the varied administrative arrangements and finances for schools determined by Canadian departments of education and school boards absorbed the attention of librarians, teachers, and administrators. There were thousands of school boards across the country and the progressive nature of reforms varied a great deal. Traditional pedagogic methods and the 3 R’s were still important. Library proponents were grappling with the organization, staffing, facilities, and collections of school libraries in large bureaucratic provincial structures that were steadily reducing the number of school districts. Although improvements in services would continue to be gradual during the postwar period, nonetheless, after 1950 a national consensus was developing to support better libraries in schools, for formal education programs, and services based on child-centred learning. Many of these issues would be the result in a successful two-day national conference on school librarianship held in Edmonton in 1959 discussed in my previous blog. After 1960, advances in school librarianship would accelerate even as the influence of progressive education itself would begin to face challenges from conservative educators, competing philosophies of education, new media, and rapid technological change.

References

Margaret Fraser, “High School Libraries in Ontario.” The School [Secondary Ed.]; A Magazine Devoted to Elementary and Secondary Education 27 (Oct. 1938): 148–151.

British Columbia Public Library Commission. Manual for Small School Libraries. Victoria: The Commission, 1940.

My blog on Canada Needs Libraries is at this link. 

Lyle Evans, “The School Library in Modern Education.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 3  (Nov. 1947): 29–30.

Mary Mustard,  “Freedom from Textbooks.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 6 (Sept. 1949): 35, 87.

Books for Youth: Everyone’s Responsibility; School Library Institute Proceedings, June 24-25, 1949, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1949.