Canada was a pioneer in the development of radio. As early as May 1920, the Montreal station XWA (later CFCF) went on the air delivering a short concert broadcast to an audience as far away as Ottawa. Listeners initially utilized crystal sets, simple radio receivers. Eventually, these devices were superseded by many types of vacuum tube receivers that became standard for consumers to purchase as less expensive tabletop models by the 1930s.
Even so, Canadian audiences were limited in scope to major cities before the electrification of rural areas.For most of the 1920s, there were few Canadian stations and radio enthusiasts along the southern border, especially in Ontario, who often listened to American stations, such as KDKA in Pittsburgh, which began operating at the end of 1920. This station offered library storytelling for children, such as popular short fairy tales and animal stories.
The Golden Age of Radio and Libraries
In 2008, at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference, I presented a paper on the early broadcasts by Canadian libraries and librarians spanning the era of old-time radio from the 1920s to the ascendancy of television in the 1950s. It is mostly an overlooked subject in library history, but it has some parallels with the challenges presented by the advent of movies, television, and later, the Internet, Web 2.0, and social networking. Radio presented an opportunity to reach a mass audience beyond local registered users because it entered people’s homes from all cultures and educational backgrounds across a broader geographic region.
At first, libraries began participating with local stations operated by newspapers and other commercial establishments before the rise of national networks. It was an innovative era for librarians that demonstrated their readiness to embrace new technology. However, the role of broadcasting was comparatively small and limited to major libraries like Toronto or Vancouver. Radio was often viewed as an external ‘extension service’ rather than a mainstream activity. There was usually no provision for specialized broadcast sections or dedicated staffing as administrators sought to develop a range of other new services, such as a readers’ advisory service. In response to the new medium, librarians used radio in a sporadic way before expansion commenced after 1945 when libraries turned to ‘outreach’ and programming on a more systematic basis.
During this formative period, there was a gradual evolution from a local focus to national programming. Small independent local commercial stations secured broadcast licenses from the federal government at the outset and provided a flurry of programs featuring news, concerts, sports, advertising, discussion groups, and short segments with local groups willing to participate. After the Canadian National Railway (CNR) established a network of stations between 1923–33 that eventually became part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national network in 1936, ‘library programs’ were developed for a national audience. The CNR radio was initially used as entertainment for passengers and railway hotel guests. Radio headsets and radio receivers in parlour cars of transcontinental passenger trains were linked with a network of transmitting radio stations from coast to coast. The CNR controlled the network content, usually from Toronto.
The CNR recognized the potential for educational programming along with educational authorities. This type of broadcasting began in the 1920s with the University of Alberta’s station, CKUA, and the Nova Scotia Department of Education’s use of station CHNS. A few years after the Aird Commission report in 1929, which recommended a national, publicly-owned radio system to foster Canadian culture and national identity, the federal government crated Radio-Canada to replace the older CNR network. It offered programming in two separate networks, one French and one English.
The interviewer strolled through the Central Library building chatting with various members of the staff and collecting items of interest in the Circulation Department, the Reference Library, the Microphotography Room, and the Boys and Girls House where a story was in progress, and several boys and girls were ‘interviewed.’ The visit ended in the chief librarian’s office when Mr. Sanderson told of other library activities, aims and ideals, which couldn’t be covered in the actual tour.
Charles Sanderson followed in the autumn of 1944 with a lengthy weekly series of talks, “Books and Us,” on CJBC. These were educational in nature by encouraging reading through and discussing the content of books, library services, literary topics, and trends in reading rather than presenting reviews or promoting certain genres or authors. Attractive posters to announce the series and book lists in the form of book marks relating to each talk were made available to the public after broadcasts.
Library Leadership in Types of Programming
Radio use by libraries varied over the interwar period and WW II. Canadian librarians did not develop specific plans for the new medium. Leadership on broadcasting came from the American Library Association, which established a radio committee in 1926, mostly to link it with adult education and literacy work. Librarians often relied on early publications to develop their own ideas and discover successful efforts elsewhere. Three books in particular were helpful: (1) Francis W.K. Dury, The Broadcaster and the Librarian (1931), which emphasized educational aspects of melding discussions and library events on local airwaves; (2) Faith Holmes Hyers, The Library and the Radio (1938), a practical guide for promotion and community outreach; and (3) Julia Sauer, Radio Roads to Reading: Library Book Talks Broadcast to Girls and Boys (1939) which reprinted transcripts of radio book talks presented by the Rochester Public Library where she was in charge of children’s services for more than three decades.
In the course of her work with ALA and preparation of her book, Julia Sauer solicited scripts from libraries and received replies from Toronto and Vancouver. The Library and the Radio explored cooperation with educational authorities and the kinds of broadcasts that children’s librarians were conducting. In general, Canadian libraries pursued several types of radio programs: children’s story hours, book talks, library publicity and programs, novel readings, and question and answers sessions by patrons.
Children’s story hours — Storytelling was the predominant program format in the early days of radio. Children’s librarians were used to story hours for various ages and locales, such as schools. Also, this developing subset of librarianship deeply believed in the power of stories to inspire youngsters and inform them about becoming the best they can be. Through the 1930s, Louise Riley, a Calgary librarian who would later rise to prominence across Canada after 1945, often presented stories on local stations, such as CJCJ, CFCN, and CFCA. In Saskatoon, Dorothy Clancy began reading stories on Saturday and Monday mornings on CFQC in the early 1930s. There were many other instances across the country. Eventually, librarians began supplying radio with subjects for dramatization by professional announcers, a development leading to popular CBC Dominion Network programs in the 1950s, Cuckoo Clock House on radio and Hidden Pages on television.
Library publicity and programs — On the occasion of ALA’s 56th annual conference held in Montreal in 1934, John Ridington, chief librarian of the University of British Columbia, broadcast a national address on Thursday evening, June 28th, on “Libraries as Public Safety Insurance.” He stressed the important role of libraries in communities and the need to finance these educational institutions properly. However, there were skeptics about the success of library publicity via radio. Mary Duncan Carter, the Director of the School of Library Science at the University of Southern California, told delegates at the Pacific Northwest Library Association meeting at Victoria in August 1941 that surveys suggested radio publicity for library work had comparatively limited appeal. She believed in concentrating on promoting the reading interest of various groups of listeners.
Book talks and novels — Using the airwaves for discussions about new books, important authors, or trends in reading were always comfortable topics for librarians. Alerting audiences to popular Canadian authors, such as Grace Campbell, was considered another essential duty. The quality of the TPL program “Books and Us” prompted the Globe and Mail to editorialize on March 9, 1945, that stations beyond Toronto should include it in their Sunday evening programming schedules. By this time, book talks were well established. In Hamilton, Freda Waldon, who later became the first President of the Canadian Library Association, hosted weekly Saturday afternoon chats about new books and Canadian issues on CHML. Similarly, Alexander Calhoun, the chief librarian in Calgary, arranged a series of talks starting in October 1936 that touched on foreign affairs and issues of the day. However, Calhoun and his library staff also took another step by inviting guest speakers to make the presentations, a measure that became more frequent. Local libraries were also helpful by supplying materials to producers and professional radio announcers for their own book programs. The “Library Shelf” program on Toronto’s CFRB in the 1930s was particularly successful.
Promoting Library Services — Of course, as librarians became more adept at programming of all sorts, not just radio, the idea of public relations crept into the minds of administrators. Creating a favourable image of the library became an important aspect of broadcasting. The most notable instance came in June 1936, when the Special Libraries Association met in Montreal. American special librarians used a series of radio addresses to inform and promote the public about type library work, an event I documented in an earlier blog at this link. Through the 1930s and 1940s, librarians often suggested a visit to the library would open new vistas. In early 1946, the Montreal Children's Library (a privately funded library) used radio to advertise its services. On one segment, Ted Miller, an announcer on CBM, interviewed a boy and girl who were library users. They explained their experiences and enjoyed their adventure over the airwaves. By the mid-1940s, as librarianship developed, a few librarians, such as Elizabeth Dafoe, chief librarian of the University of Manitoba, began to use radio to promote regional systems and to entice students to pursue a library career.
Conclusion
Although some librarians were reluctant to participate in radio broadcasting because they feared it might reduce the popularity of reading and the use of libraries, many successful experimental efforts emerged. Ultimately, despite generally enthusiastic support for radio, librarians shared the fate of others who advocated for educational programs. Commercial programs, especially American ones, proliferated, and as radio programming became more segmented and competitive, and television achieved its primary, local library efforts were given less time on the air. However, they continued to provide support for broadcasters by supplying information and materials for programs. There were other difficult factors as well, such as the allocation of less popular or irregular hours, the lack of direct public response, and the absence of reliable survey data on audience size. Nonetheless, librarian broadcasters, especially children’s librarians, were determined to use radio to promote reading and library use through book talks, storytelling, and promotional programs.
Dorothy Cullen, a Prince Edward Island librarian who had earned her BLS at the Pratt Institute Library School in 1936, and who had experience with radio book talks, summed up this period astutely in a 1946 article on broadcasting published in the Maritimes and Ontario: “If the question were put to a group of librarians — ‘Are radio programs worthwhile as publicity’ — you would find considerable difference of opinion about them; but probably most of the people who have given this medium a tryout would say that they found broadcasting worth the time and effort. It does take a good deal of time preparing radio broadcasts ... but radio publicity can compare favorably with projects undertaken within the library - displays, booklists, etc. because it has possibilities of reaching people who are not library patrons.”
Further suggestions:
My 2008 Canadian Library Association radio presentation on Reaching Listeners and Users is at this link.
An audio and transcription of my interview by Mr. Rex Murphy on the CBC network in March 1995 about the future of libraries and books is the subject of an earlier blog at this link.
Use of radio at the Special Libraries Association conference in Montreal in 1936 is the subject of an earlier blog at this link.
