School Libraries in Interwar Canada, 1920 to1940

The Revival of School Libraries before 1920

In the mid-19th century four eastern Canadian provinces—Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick—established district school libraries which, like their American counterparts, eventually fell into disuse. One principal cause of their failure was that they were not sufficiently geared towards the educational needs of students. In the United States, municipal public libraries took the lead in providing reading resources for children, leaving schools to rely on small, inadequate classroom collections and standard textbooks. Of course, the issue of appropriate libraries for students continued to be discussed among educators. In 1902, the Ontario Department of Education introduced a matching provincial grant for rural school library books, allowing participating schools to receive up to $10 in matching funds based on local purchases. Two years later, the Deputy Minister of Education, John Millar, reported at the Ontario Educational Association meeting that 320 libraries had been supplied and that the Department had appropriated $7,000 for book expenditures. In 1904, the provincial inspector of schools in British Columbia, David Wilson, reviewed the slow development of school libraries. He suggested intensified local efforts by trustees and teachers and cooperation with public libraries in large cities as remedies. Later, in 1908, Wilson took charge of the Free Text-Book Branch which helped schools acquire reference books for student use.

The concept of public libraries cooperating with schools was a forceful, practical one that would prevail well into the first half of the 20th century. When the Ontario Library Association (OLA) met in 1904, James P. Hoag, a school inspector in Brantford and later director of continuation schools in the province, addressed the problem by summarizing work in the USA and the need for reliance on public libraries: "The [public] library is in no sense an adjunct to the school system but an important independent force cooperating with it. ... If the library can not send sets of books to the schools, let it issue special cards to teachers so that they may secure plenty of books for their rooms." Subsequently, Edwin A. Hardy, a prominent figure in education and library circles, advocated for public library work with schools in his 1912 publication, The Public Library.

When these cooperative ideas were introduced in early 20th-century Ontario, schools were undergoing a gradual pedagogical shift away from strict discipline, rote learning, and standard texts toward child-centred learning and practical skills. Prominent educators in this "new education movement,’ such as Clarence B. Edwards, recognized the need for reading resources and sought to improve conditions through cooperation with public libraries. In 1913, Edwards delivered a paper at the Ontario Educational Association that recommended a scheme introduced in London: "The plan adopted in London is for the library to go to the school by means of the books on supplementary reading bearing the label of the public library. Books are our servants, not our masters. In our schools we have in the hands of the pupils of the fifth to the eighth grade suitable dictionaries and in the Principal's room a six- volume encyclopaedia in order to train pupils how to use books as a source of information. This should lead to an intelligent and appreciative use of the library." His colleague at the Windsor Collegiate Institute, Frederick P. Gavin, recommended a similar course for temporary book deposits in high schools at the OLA meeting in 1914, as well as assigning topics that required the use of public library resources. Another school inspector in Bruce County, William I. Chisholm, also advocated for selective book deposits and argued that every teacher-in-training at normal schools should receive instruction in the systematic use of libraries, in an address to the Ontario Educational Association in 1916. When J.W. Emery surveyed developments in his 1917 book, The Library, The School, and the Child, public library assistance to schools was considered the de facto means of encouraging student reading.

Ottawa Collegiate library c.1910

Nevertheless, a few school boards initiated separate library rooms, especially in high schools. The Ottawa Collegiate Institute was a fine example of this viewpoint and had reached a substantial size before WWI. Ontario teachers could follow library development in monthly issues of The School. This publication provided book reviews, suggestions, and articles of note that emphasized library and cooperation with public libraries. For example, the April 1917 issue reprinted a classic Library Journal article by Mary E. Hall, the influential librarian of the Girls' High School in Brooklyn, who promoted the separate modern high school library concept that offered books for curriculum support, instruction in research and reference, audio-visual resources, and encouragement for reading. In the same issue, Kate Stewart, a Toronto teacher at Humberside Collegiate, described the value of a high school room set up at Toronto Public Library's Western branch (now known as the Annette branch), a short walk from her school. George Locke, the chief librarian, believed the best solution for students was a visit to local branches, and it was not until 1926 that TPL began to provide regular school deposits.

Although the ALA published guidelines for high school library organization and equipment in the United States in 1920, its influence was muted because provincial educational authorities were unwilling to prescribe comprehensive library regulations. Canadian library standards for schools would not appear until 1967. There was some optimism for believing in library growth by the end of WWI: some educators, such as George M. Jones at the University of Toronto, expanded the idea of the "laboratory method" in schools to include library work, especially for English and History, in a short 1918 article in The School.

The 1920s

The decade of the 1920s in Canada was a dynamic decade of economic growth, optimism, and social and cultural change. Canadian nationalism was on the rise even as American economic influence grew and British political ties faded. Schools fell within provincial authority, but local school boards retained a degree of autonomy in management, thus hampering library development on a national basis. By the early 1920s, the cases for local cooperative action with public libraries and building school collections with modest grants had only partially succeeded. Education departments had issued catalogues to aid book selection in elementary and secondary schools for many years, but many outdated titles crowded out more recent works because shelves were not culled regularly. Provinces were issuing small grants to local schools for purchases on a matching basis or by establishing specific requirements for use of funds. In Quebec there were two sources of funding. The Protestant Council of Public Instruction offered small grants of $5 as well as books to qualifying elementary and secondary schools. The Catholic Council provided books for the private, fee-paying collèges classiques that emphasized classical philosophy, theology, and literature. These were well-provisioned libraries compared to their public counterparts in other provinces; e.g., in 1931 the prestigious Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf reported holding 12,175 volumes and spending $600/year on resources for 534 students. However, elementary schools, especially in the countryside, lagged far behind secondary school progress in towns and cities. Writing in 1922, Adrian Macdonald of the Normal School of Peterborough, remarked, "Anyone who has had the opportunity of visiting rural schools will know perfectly well that generally the library is of such an uninviting character as to exert no influence whatever."

School libraries lacked both an organized system and trained leadership within provinces and across the nation. In the two largest Canadian cities, school library work was developing along separate lines. At the High School of Montreal, the busy librarian Charlotte Houston oversaw class visits, preparation of lists for students, circulation control, and administrative functions encompassing another school, the High School for Girls, and junior departments ranging from kindergarten. She was a prominent figure in Montreal librarianship, having worked at McGill University library before taking on her school position in 1914. She described her work at length in a September 1930 Library Journal article, noting that there was no time for formal instruction in library use. In Toronto, Lillian Smith and librarians in the Boys and Girls Division of the Toronto Public Library were operating book deposits in assigned school rooms, which had expanded to six by 1930. TPL children's librarians visited schools on designated days to offer assistance and organize book deposits. For the most part, TPL funded this work and many book selections were based on TPL's famous Books for Boys and Girls (1927) which listed 2,000 books of "definite and permanent interest" and current choices from new publications.

In Vancouver, authorities were rectifying a major criticism of the extensive 1925 Putman-Weir Survey of city schools concerning staffing: "The outstanding feature in library work in the schools of Vancouver today is the complete absence of trained people who are qualified to do library work." (p. 547). The 1927-28 survey by British Columbia Public Library Commission did not find conditions satisfactory across the province either. It recommended: "Library service for schools should be developed under the direction of a qualified supervisor of school libraries. Locally maintained library collections within the schools are but a part of the material necessary for an effective library service for children and teachers. Use must be made of all other available library facilities and trained assistance." (p 11) In response, a small band of teachers and librarians formed the Vancouver School Librarians’ Association to promote the growth of school libraries. Three teachers in particular, Muriel Carruthers at the Point Grey Junior High School, Walter Lanning at the Vancouver Technical School, and Mary Coleman at Lord Tennyson School, helped promote and publicize services for schools. Another librarian, Margaret Cowie at Aberdeen Public School, was building a classroom library of Canadian literature and promoted national authors.

However, teacher training in librarianship continued to lag. Students had to rely on readings installed in the Vancouver Normal School or professional publications circulated from the BC Open Shelf service operated by the Public Library Commission. But at the end of the decade there remained much work to be done outside Vancouver and Victoria. In 1928 the BC Teachers' Federation surveyed 216 graded (multi-classroom) schools, of which 30 were high schools. Conditions in one-room rural schools were deemed to be "deplorable." Only the largest schools reported trained librarians: one full-time librarian and four part-time librarians. Classroom libraries predominated throughout. Fewer than a dozen schools had a separate reading room.

Teacher librarian training was on a better footing in Ontario during the 1920s. In 1919, Ontario began to appoint librarians at all its Normal Schools. Jean Merchant, in Toronto, and Effie Munro, in Peterborough, became prominent in teacher-librarian training in the 1920s. At the American Library Association (ALA) conference held in Toronto in 1927, Munro gave a talk on Canadian Normal School Libraries, noting that for the most part students made good use of library resources but there was minimal time for instruction in selection and library use. When the University of Toronto Library School opened in 1927, Jean Merchant was selected to teach an elective course on school libraries for students intending to get a one-year post-graduate professional degree, the Bachelor of Library Science. But this course attracted few students. Most of her work was focused on the library she managed in the College of Education.

Although public library cooperation remained a realistic approach in many communities, some teachers supported libraries and separate reading rooms within the school. One such advocate, Arthur I. Ogilvie, instituted reforms in London and later in St. Catharines, which he reported at length in 1925 in The School. First, he sought good advice—he corresponded with Mary E. Hall who replied: "The English master of St. Catharines Collegiate is quite right in thinking that the school library should not be used as a study hall. All our best school librarians believe that text-book work, pure and simple, should not be done in the library." Ogilvie and his trained librarian assistant kept the new library open throughout school hours and provided basic instruction in library use and materials. They aimed to provide useful supplemental materials and instill an enjoyment of reading that would extend to public library use after graduation. However, it was a challenging model to emulate across Ontario. Space for a single room, an organized collection, adequate revenue for acquisitions, assistance from students, and training in librarianship for teachers were all vital elements in a ‘modern program’ requiring untiring enthusiasm and tenacity.

Oshawa College library, c.1930

At the end of the 1920s, another high school librarian in Oshawa, Arthur Slyfield, conducted a thorough survey of 194 secondary schools, receiving replies from 32 collegiate institutes, 41 high schools, and 2 technical schools in Ontario. He published his results in 1929, concluding: "Anyone who is at all familiar with the standards which have been set up for measuring school libraries elsewhere will realize, after reading this Survey, that Ontario has a long way to go in the direction of school libraries." Not all schools reported a separate library room, but more than half did: 23 collegiates, 23 high schools, and 2 technical schools. A few schools relied on public library facilities, and there was a smattering of full-time librarians and teacher-librarians, enough to convene a gathering by Jean Merchant at the 1929 OLA annual meeting to form a group interested in the reading and use of books by high school students. This session proved to be a success, and the group became a formal section of the OLA in 1935. In the 1920s, public schools and public libraries had begun to forge cooperative arrangements for library services for students, but development was uneven. High schools were leading the way in creating the idea of a centralized library under the guidance of a teacher-librarian.

The 1930s

The decade of the 1930s in Canada was an era of economic hardship and political unrest. Government intervention occurred at all levels, and the educational field began a more earnest embrace of progressive ideas. For the first part of the decade, school libraries struggled to maintain the moderate gains made in the 1920s. When the Dominion Bureau of Statistics surveyed high school libraries for 1931, it reported these national figures:
Public High School Libraries: 295
Student Enrollment per School: 169-500
Volumes per School: 339-1,598
Library Expenditure per School: $24-$171

Private School Libraries: 377 (includes 250 college classiques in Quebec)
Student Enrollment per School: 90-217
Volumes per School: 500-1,795
Library Expenditures per School: $35-$123

The DBS did not report statistics for elementary schools due to their vast number, but summarized conditions by reporting "library conditions are in the greatest need of improvement” in rural schools. Nonetheless, in the depth of the Great Depression, in 1932, even Ontario decided to eliminate its rural school library grant, thus saving about $25,000 in expenses. Throughout the 1930s, school librarians usually found their ideas constrained by relationships with their principals, fellow teachers, and inspectors, as well as a lack of provincial regulations, established standards, or uniform library policy for schools. But there were further impediments: (1) inadequate financial support at the local level; (2) the lack of trained teacher-librarians; (3) the constant turnover of teachers and lack of staffing for specialist work in small rural schools; and (4) provincial assistance usually depended on the amount spent by the local schools.

Even with the difficulties of the depression years, there were some positive developments, notably the ascendance of determined individuals in the school library field who would continue as familiar faces after WWII. In British Columbia, Mary Coleman was always ready to supply teachers with helpful information on ‘running’ a library, even a small one in the corner of a classroom. In Ontario, Arthur Slyfield and Margaret Fraser in Galt Collegiate (now Cambridge) led the way in promoting high school libraries. Slyfield published his The Library Primer: Elements of Library Science for Students in Canadian Secondary Schools in 1932 which would be revised three times in expanded editions before 1944. Shortly before her retirement, Fraser reflected on changes in an article in the American journal School Libraries: "Budgets have come a long way since the pennypinching days of the depression. The Department is recommending $2 per pupil per year, and $3 in new schools." In Montreal, Joseph Brunet and Hélène Grenier teamed together to invigorate libraries for the Montreal Catholic School Commission. They organized a centralized system to select, sort, and professionally catalogue and classify books for distribution to schools. In Prince Edward Island (a regional system), Dorothy Cullen supervised collections selected for more than 20 schools, taking into account the number of pupils in each grade. In Manitoba, Myrtle Taylor Lewis headed the School Library Department in Winnipeg, an operation that acquired and distributed books for hundreds of small schools and provided book lists to assist teacher selections. She helped organize the School Library Section of the Manitoba Library Association in 1938. Louise Riley, who began her career in 1930 as a children's librarian in Calgary, would develop an outstanding public library children's department and extend services to rural Alberta schools for more than two decades.

Hélène Grenier c.1946

By the mid-point of the 1930s it was evident to many observers that the best solution for rural school libraries lay with cooperative public libraries. Beginning with the Fraser Valley Library and Prince Edward Island regional experiments, schools were being supplied with books through public library systems. The 1936-38 DBS survey of libraries summarized the new approach: "...it becomes increasingly apparent year by year that the problem of school libraries is an integral part of the broader problem of public library service. School authorities show increasing signs of the conviction that it will be extremely difficult, if indeed at all possible, to have a satisfactory supply of books at the service of the schools so long as each small school is an administrative unit unto itself, entirely responsible for its own book-equipment.” Donald Cameron, the University of Alberta chief librarian, proposed a provincial experiment based on new districting in The Alberta School Trustee in September 1937: "larger units give every promise of offering the opportunity for a library organization that so far has not existed." A subsequent DBS report for 1940-42 reported PEI was serving 347 rural schools, Fraser Valley 59, Okanagan Union 24, and Vancouver Island Union 31. The most successful Ontario county system, Middlesex operating from London, supplied 150 rural schools. But like their city counterparts, these new systems seldom examined provincial educational goals in detail—their primary focus was on public services as a whole and providing 'good reading' for children.

However, these improvements in regional services and professional staffing were overshadowed by the implementation of progressive curriculum changes after the mid-1930s, the ‘new programmes’ authorized by provincial departments of education. These changes emphasized social studies, group work, active classroom projects, supplementary reading lists, and teacher guidance rather than instruction. Of course, multiple copies of books were often required for assignments, and many pupils visited libraries for the first time. Public librarians, especially in Ontario, were surprised by the reforms, sparking controversy among librarians in 1938-39. Kathleen Crosby, responsible for Orillia’s new children’s department, asked, “Can you imagine the despair of a librarian, asked for a ‘book of po'ms’ when there isn't even one poetry book left on the shelves?" But incremental changes occurred across the province as libraries began to work through logistical problems of supply and demand. In Kingston, the chief librarian offered some humour: "We learned the new jargon, were introduced to ‘projects,' discovered the scope of 'Social Studies,' and learned that the biggest bugbear of the three R's, arithmetic, had been hypnotized and was now an adjunct to shop-keeping-buying and selling in the corner store of the school room. We were no longer stunned when Marco Polo arose from his long sleep.” Generally, in Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, public libraries rose to the challenge of the new curriculum child-centred approach which hastened the use of supplementary reading, the registration of school-age children, and closer ties with schools.

Shortly before WWII, eastern librarians met in a joint conference at Montreal to discuss library issues on a ‘national’ basis. The idea of a National Library in Ottawa was revived. Children's librarians formed a national association suited to their needs. The conference applauded the federal government's decision to implement a national ‘postal book rate’ to lessen costs for interlibrary lending. Regional library development was addressed. Cooperation between schools and public libraries was discussed and speakers addressed school library issues and current progress in the Maritimes, Quebec, and Ontario. However, participants realized institutional support and professional personnel were unsystematic. Louise Riley briefly summarized these conditions in her Columbia University thesis on public library and school cooperation in 1942: “The school library movement is in its infancy in Canada.” Librarians were too often focused on operational details and remained outside the contemporary educational program of progressive education. But wartime mobilization and post-reconstruction forecasts inspired librarians to form a national association and consider the need to identify more closely with the specific sectors they worked within. School librarians moved towards accepting the school library in its own right as a reading and information centre, as well as a place for student guidance.

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