Four Library Development Reports in British Columbia, 1945 to 1956

Programme for Library Development in British Columbia. Victoria, B.C.: Joint Committee on Library Policy, 1945. 36 p. maps

Programme for Library Development in British Columbia, 1950: Being a Condensation and Revision of the “Programme for Library Development in British Columbia,” 1945. Victoria, B.C: Joint Committee of the British Columbia Library Association and the Public Library Commission, 1950. 10 p.

Survey of Union Libraries in British Columbia. Victoria, B.C.: British Columbia Public Library Commission, 1950. 59 p.

Programme for Library Development in British Columbia, 1956. Victoria: British Columbia Public Library Commission, 1957. 15 p. (cover illustration below)

Over the course of a decade following the Second World War, British Columbia trustees, officials, and librarians sought to improve library services across the province. The provincial Public Library Commission (PLC, est. 1919), in conjunction with financing from the Carnegie Corporation, had issued two previous surveys, one in 1927–28 and another in 1940, that had led to the geographic extension of services through the formation of three union libraries (officially re-titled regional libraries in 1951): Fraser Valley, Okanagan Vally, and Vancouver Island.

However, the wartime and postwar scene began to reveal new issues beyond simple extension: the need to serve a growing population, the need for improvement in the quality of library service, the need to address technological developments, and the need for increased provincial financial support to reach people living in smaller, isolated communities beyond the south-west corner of the province.

British Columbia Public Library Commission Reports

Under the able chairmanship of William Kaye Lamb, chief librarian of the University of British Columbia, a 1945 report by a Joint Committee of the BC Library Association and the Public Library Commission sounded the alarm that public library service was inadequate, even in the major cities, Vancouver and Victoria which were housed in decades-old Carnegie libraries. “The pages that follow amply establish the shocking fact that not one community in British Columbia at present enjoys adequate public library service. Furthermore, they show that, for practical purposes, the majority of the people in the Province have no public library service at all.” (p. 1)

The 1945 report unveiled an ambitious program to remedy the situation. The report stated that with expanded services from seven existing libraries, the addition of one new union library district in West Kootenay, and one new Commission branch in the Peace River area at Dawson Creek, about 80% of British Columbians could be served. A revitalized public library map would include:
■ three proposed metropolitan districts serviced from Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria
■ four union systems organized in the Fraser Valley, Okanagan Valley, Vancouver Island, and West Kootenay (proposed)
■ two Commission branches at Prince George (already in service in a North-Central district) and Dawson Creek (proposed for the Peace River district)
The remaining population, about 20%, could be better served by converting existing public library associations (e.g., in Kamloops) into free municipal public libraries. The Open Shelf and Travelling Libraries operated by the PLC could supply rural towns, villages, and settlements. To implement its plan, the report called for improved provincial library aid and legislation to authorize the formation of metropolitan districts, an innovative approach by Canadian standards.

A subsequent brief report by the Joint Committee in 1950 complained that very few bold strokes had happened since 1945. Library service remained inadequate, in part due to low public expectations. Committee members repeated the call for increased general provincial aid (a meagre $25,000 in 1948–49), especially for the start of grants for city libraries. More importantly, in the same year the PLC issued a Survey of Union Libraries under the chairmanship of Edgar Robinson, chief librarian of the city of Vancouver.  By 1950, the three regional libraries were serving about one-fifth of the total population of British Columbia, and their progress demonstrated an efficient, cost-effective way to provide library service. Like many cooperative public libraries in Canada, school library service was one of these libraries’ strong suits.

Overall, the union libraries report aimed to improve rural services, strengthen existing union libraries, provide the provincial government with information to justify its expenditures and establish a future program for regional development. Various elements of union library operations were studied — governance, book collections, buildings, finances, personnel, bookmobiles, library objectives, standards and public relations. The report reiterated the importance of regional library work but noted the lack of trained personnel, substandard provincial support, and the need for additional regional development:

Gratifying as the record is, there is still obvious need for improvement in almost all phases of regional library work, and it is to this end that the present survey is pointed. Additional rural areas need service, some now being without a vestige of libraries, while existing libraries need additional and substantial financial aid from both local and provincial sources. (forward)

Six years later, in 1956, the third “programme for development” was more optimistic about the services provided by municipal and regional library systems:

The number of municipal public libraries has doubled, and five of the present ten have embarked on expansion programmes, including four new buildings. Financial support by municipalities has risen 60 per cent, though it is still well below the minimum required for services expected of a public library. Provincial aid has been extended to municipal libraries and has gradually increased over the five-year period. Three municipal libraries are now operating bookmobile service, and have mechanized their internal procedures.
The three regional libraries have acquired, with Provincial Government assistance, new headquarters buildings, which have helped immeasurably to improve the service. Local support has improved by 50 per cent or more ... .  (p. 7)

Generally, the better financed libraries were operating from a position of strength rather than weakness. There was a repeated call for the formation of metropolitan systems around Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster and new regional systems in the Kootenay and Kamloops districts. School libraries were deficient and depended too much on services provided by public libraries. The report emphasized the need to establish a graduate library school at the University of British Columbia. 

Postwar Library Planning in British Columbia

The series of British Columbia reports of the 1940s and 1950s were unique statements in Canadian library planning. With the growth of the national economy, rising levels of employment, and the improvement in the standard of living, there was also an increased interest in the development of libraries. Cultural and social changes were taking place with the arrival of television and the popularity of sporting events. When the four library reports were published, the encouragement of metropolitan library planning was in its infancy and regional library service was not firmly established in other parts of Canada. British Columbia trustees and librarians had pioneered library extension work and, coupled with the PLC’s intention to publish up-to-date library surveys, they provided straightforward statements for efficient services, better grants, and improved standards.

By the mid-1950s, British Columbia libraries had reached reasonable levels of achievement and gained better provincial support. On a per capita basis, libraries in BC persistently ranked high in Canadian public library service levels. They were spending an overall $1.28 per capita expenditure compared to the Canadian average of 91 cents in 1957, as the following table summarizes.

Dominion Bureau of Statistics Public Library Receipts and Expenditures per person, 1957
local     prov.     total        book    salary
taxes    grants    receipts   exp.     exp.         
$1.04   $0.19     $1.28      $0.23    $0.83  BC
$0.71   $0.14     $0.92      $0.15    $0.54  Canada

The 1940s and 1950s had been marked by slow progress; nonetheless, BC libraries had profited from the repeated efforts of library planners to upgrade service on a provincial scale.

Two earlier Library History Today posts on British Columbia’s libraries are at:
BC public library reports 1927 to 1941
Two iconic films on the Fraser Valley Library

Helen Gordon Stewart (1879–1971)

Helen Gordon Stewart was an early, important influential leader in Canadian librarianship, especially in western Canada. She had an ongoing relationship with the Carnegie Corporation of New York which saw her famously promote and administer the formation of the Fraser Valley Library in the early 1930s. As well, she was a recognized expert in regional library development in the southern United States where she taught at the Louisiana State Library School and worked as a consultant in South Carolina. No less important was her work with the Carnegie Corporation and British Council in Trinidad Tobago. There is an international quality to her accomplishments that is matched only by Toronto’s chief librarian, George Herbert Locke in the first half of the 20th century.

I created this bio in 2018 for the Ex Libris Association website. The image is taken from As We Remember It; Interviews with Pioneering Librarians of British Columbia (p.16).

Helen Gordon Stewart

Born Dec. 19, 1879, Fletcher (Chatham-Kent) ON; Died April 5, 1971, Vancouver, BC

Education:
????-1908 Teacher training (Central Normal School, Winnipeg, Manitoba)
1908-1909 Library training diploma (New York Public Library School)
1926 BSc (Teachers College, Columbia University)
1927 AM (Columbia University, Social Science)
1928 PhD (Columbia University, Social Science)

Positions:
????-1908 School teacher in Carman, Manitoba
1909-1910 Children’s librarian, New York Public Library
1911-1912 Assistant Librarian, Victoria Public Library
1912-1924 Chief Librarian, Victoria Public Library
1916-1917 Medical war service in London, England, and France
1927-1928 Acting Head, Department of Sociology, Wells College, New York
1930-1934 Director for the Carnegie sponsored Fraser Valley Regional Library Demonstration
1934-1936 Director for the Carnegie British Columbia Public Library extension program
1936-1938 Acting Associate Director and Professor, Graduate School of Library Science, Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge
1939 Consultant, South Carolina large county and unit development
1940-1948 Director, Trinidad and Tobago Central Library Service and British Council regional library development for the British West Indies

Publications:
Stewart, Helen G. (1911). “Cooperation among the libraries of the northwest.” In Proceedings of the third annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Library Association, Victoria, British Columbia, September 4, 5, and 6, p. 61–64. Seattle, Wash.: Dearborn Press.
Stewart, Helen G. (1920). “Regional and county libraries.” Public Libraries 25 (10): 387–388. [synopsis]
Stewart, Helen G. (1927). Adult education and the library. MA thesis, New York: Columbia University. Social Science.
Stewart, Helen Gordon (1934). “A dramatic moment?” Library Journal 59 (1 April): 306–307.
Stewart, Helen G. (1934). “Advantages and difficulties in the administration of a regional library unit.” American Library Association Bulletin 28 (9): 604–608.
Stewart, Helen G. (1934). “Fraser Valley demonstration.” American Library Association Bulletin 28 (9): 637–638.
Stewart, Helen G. 1934). “Fraser Valley library.” Ontario Library Review 18 (4): 146–149.
Stewart, Helen Gordon (1934). “Social trends.” Bulletin of the American Library Association 28 (9): 484–489.
Stewart, Helen G. (1936). “British Columbia and tax-supported regional units.” Bulletin of the American Library Association 30 (8): 692–694. [abridged address]
Stewart, Helen Gordon (1936). “Uniting a rural region.” Bulletin of the American Library Association 30 (8): 748–750.
Stewart, Helen G. (1936). “Vote for regional libraries.” Bulletin of the American Library Association 30 (3): 194.
Stewart, Helen G. (1936). “Regional libraries in British Columbia.” Library Journal 61 (20): 876–878.
Stewart, Helen G. (1936). “Schools and the regional library.” Bulletin of the American Library Association 30 (10): 927–934.
Stewart, Helen Gordon (1936). “What regionalism means.” In Papers and proceedings of the Southwestern Library Association, eighth biennial meeting, October 21, 22, 23, 24, 1936, Houston, Texas, p. 59–65. Houston, Texas: [The Association].
Stewart, Helen Gordon (1937). “Regional library development.” In Library trends; papers presented before the Library Institute at the University of Chicago, August 3-15, 1936, ed. by Louis R. Wilson, p. 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Stewart, Helen G. (1940). “Regions in perspective.” American Library Association Bulletin 34 (2): 95–96, 147–148.
Stewart Helen G. (1949). “The regional library of the eastern Caribbean.” Pacific Northwest Library Quarterly 14 (1): 27–30.

Associations/Committees:
1917-1919 and 1932 President, British Columbia Library Association
1919-1922 Member, British Columbia Public Library Commission
1920-1921 President, Pacific Northwest Library Association

Accomplishments:
When she was approaching the age of ninety, Helen Gordon Stewart was asked about using a power mower to cut her lawn. “I supply the power” she responded, a statement that sums up her entire career. She was a dynamic factor in British Columbia for three decades: the 1919 Public Libraries Act, formation of the Public Library Commission, as well as regional and union library systems were very much the results of her hard work. She was the second woman to hold the presidency of a library association in Canada, being nominated in September 1917 only a few months after Mary Black in Ontario. In the late 1920s, she furthered her education by working her way through university while acquiring a doctorate in sociology at Columbia. Subsequently, the Carnegie Corporation (New York) and British Columbia Public Library Commission selected her to head a successful project in the Fraser Valley region. After she ‘retired’ to Saanich near Victoria at the outset of the Second World War to do volunteer war work, she was enticed by the Carnegie Corporation to repeat her earlier regional successes in the Caribbean islands of the British West Indies, especially Trinidad and Tobago. Because most of her work was completed by the end of the Second World War, she is truly recognized as a pioneer whose accomplishments in Canadian librarianship laid the foundation for others to build upon.

Honours:
1954 Honourary member of Pacific Northwest Library Association
1963 Honourary member of the Canadian Library Association
The British Columbia Library Association adjudicates the Helen Gordon Stewart Award. This award recognizes an outstanding career in librarianship involving achievements that brings honour to the entire profession. It also confers Honourary Life Membership in the BCLA.

Comments:
Howard Overend summarized Dr. Gordon’s career by stating: “Her work was a seminal force in the ruralisation of public library service in Canada and abroad, showing that a large tax-supported unit of service (a single purpose authority) was the most effective way to serve the library needs of people in several autonomous communities at the lowest cost.”

Sources:
Morrison, Charles Keith. (1950). “Helen Gordon Stewart, library pioneer.” Food for Thought 9 (6): 11–16 and 20.
“B.C. Woman pioneered libraries in many lands.” Toronto Globe and Mail, April 9, 1960: 10.
Gilroy, Marion and Sam Rothstein, eds. (1970). As we remember it; Interviews with pioneering librarians of British Columbia, p. 16–48. Vancouver: University of British Columbia School of Librarianship.

Two Canadian films about bookmobiles: Roads to Reading and Journey from Zero

Roads to Reading. 16 mm film, colour, sound, 14 minutes, 1958. Produced by the Nova Scotia Film Bureau for the Nova Scotia Provincial Library. Directed by Margaret Perry with Alberta Letts as technical advisor.
Journey from Zero = La Longue Randonnée. 16 mm film, sound, colour, 13 minutes, 1961. National Film Board of Canada, Directed by Roger Blais.

By 1960, regional libraries were fairly well established in Canada. The sight of a bookmobile on Canada’s rural roadways was by now means novel anymore. In Nova Scotia, where regional services had begun in earnest in the late 1940s, there were five regional systems: Cape Breton (headquarters in Sydney), Annapolis Valley, Pictou County (headquarters in New Glasgow), Colchester-East Hants (headquarters in Truro), and the Halifax City Regional Library. In 1952, the province adopted a new library act that provided a comprehensive plan for a centralized direction and regional libraries to cover the entire province financed to the amount of more than 50 percent by the provincial treasury. A Provincial Library Service was established to encourage and assist the formation and operation of new regions. Despite the progress of the 1950s, there were still many areas, e.g., the area surrounding Halifax and Dartmouth, that remained outside regional services. Regions served about half the population of the province through 31 branches, schools, and bookmobiles.

Alberta Letts, the Director of the Provincial Library centred at Halifax, was an energetic leader who was not reluctant to try any measure to promote and form new regions. In concert with the Nova Scotia Film Bureau, a short documentary of how regional services could benefit Nova Scotians was introduced in 1958. It became a beneficial aid at local meetings and indeed gained some prominence across Canada, in part due to the remarkable efforts of two librarians. Alberta Letts was finishing her 1957–58 term as President of the Canadian Library Association, and another regional director at Cape Breton, Ruby Wallace, would assume the presidency of CLA in 1962–63.

Roads to Reading a Film on Public Libraries in Nova Scotia 1958

Roads to Reading was a short feature designed to offer a glimpse of everyday regional library work. At the outset, viewers see an Annapolis Valley bookmobile stop where people exchange books and pick up popular reading. The bookmobile serves fishing villages and farms alike with 1,500 books. Its services radiate out from a central staging point where books are sorted and selected for distribution. The film gives an overview of all the regional operations including branches at Glace Bay, Tatamagouche, and Reserve Mines where the branch memorializes Father Jimmy Tompkins’ efforts to introduce library services and promote adult education starting in the 1930s. Smaller places, such as the Air Force Station Greenwood, a post office, and even a bank vault, give a sense of community resourcefulness in supplying reading materials for all ages. The city of Halifax was an interesting case that served a single municipality through its well-resourced central library. Even the Legislative Library was part of the network of libraries serving Nova Scotians. The film’s concluding minutes provide a “how to” synopsis about forming a regional system from local committees, municipalities, and the final authorization by the provincial government. “Reading is always in season,” explains the narrator as the bookmobile disappears down a sunny roadway.

Journey from Zero a Film about Bookmobile Service in British Columbia 1961

Journey from Zero is less didactic and its quality ensured by the NFB production standards. In many ways, this film is a travelogue—a visit to Canada’s northern areas in British Columbia where books and reading are a welcome commodity to miners, forest workers, aboriginals, military personnel, seasonal tourists, and maintenance workers living along the Alaska Highway. JFZ’s director, Roger Blais, was an experienced NFB filmmaker who would later become the head of audiovisual production for Expo 67. The film begins at the Dawson Creek library, which is mile zero. Here a small book van is stocked with books for delivery to remote communities. These books are a free service from the British Columbia Library Commission operating from the Peace River Co-operative Library formed in 1952. Over the course of two weeks, the journey will take the van about 900 miles north as far as Whitehorse.

The librarian, Howard Overend, wrote about his experience in his book published in 2001, The Book Guy: A Librarian in the Peace: “The acting for Journey from Zero was minimal and without speaking parts. There was to be, Roger said, a voice-over in the film so all we had to do was to simulate our usual mobile library work: driving, carrying in the books, meeting the teachers and pupils, showing books to community librarians and so on.” The first stop came at mile 295—a military fire hall station in Muskwa, a now decommissioned armed forces garrison. Then on to Fort Nelson to a library located in a motel office manned by a volunteer. At mile 392, the small van reached Summit Lake, the highest point on the Alaska Highway, where a school housed a small collection of books. At the Liard River, miles 496, the van takes a short side trip for a swim in the hot springs, offering a welcome relief from the tedium of driving and traversing narrow roadways. Then on to Cassiar, a small settlement which is today a ghost town due to closure of an asbestos mine, and finally, Atlin, a small community created during the gold rush era. At this point, the van moves into the Yukon to visit Whitehorse, where a proposed regional library system was in development. The van has travelled about 900 miles and it is time to return home. The film closes with the idea that the world of literature is available to the world of mountains and forests in the farthest reaches of British Columbia, the Peace and Northern Rockies districts.

During the 1960s, these two films publicized the idea of bringing books to people through organized regional services. Alberta Letts went on to form five new regional library systems in Nova Scotia during the 1960s. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident in 1973. Howard Overend continued in the Peace district until the early 1970s until he left to become director of the Fraser Valley Regional Library and for a short time the Territorial Director for Yukon in the early 1980s. He passed away in 2017. Roger Blais was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2000.

 Roads to Reading can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBhmrRFG7CY

Journey from Zero can be viewed at the National Film Board site: https://www.nfb.ca/film/journey-from-zero/

Howard Overend’s personal account is in The Book Guy (Victoria, B.C: TouchWood Editions, 2001), pp. 202–207.

 

Two Fraser Valley films: The Fraser Valley Public Library (c. 1932) and The Library on Wheels (1945)

Fraser Valley Public Library, 16 mm., b & w., 12 minutes, c. 1932. British Columbia Public Library Commission. Photographed and produced by H. Norman Lidster.

The Library on Wheels, 16 mm., b & w, 14 minutes, 1945. National Film Board of Canada. Produced by Gudrun Parker and directed by Bill MacDonald.

The use of 16 mm. films for the promotion of Canadian library services began in earnest with Hugh Norman Lidster during the Great Depression. He was a practicing lawyer, a councillor, and a library board member in New Westminster, BC. In 1929, Lidster was appointed to the British Columbia Public Library Commission, a position to which he made many contributions until his retirement in 1966. In addition to his local and provincial contributions, he was active on the national level and received an Award of Merit from the Canadian Library Trustees’ Association in 1962. Lidster became an avid “home movie” enthusiast in the twenties and bought his first movie camera in 1930. Within a few years, he began to document local events and to promote the new Fraser Valley library regional demonstration (FVRL) funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1930-34. At some point, likely in 1932, Lidster decided to film the library’s new book van on its travels. Fortunately, his work has been preserved; consequently, we can view many of this region’s early community libraries, deposit stations, schools, its rural landscape and mountains, gravel roads, and even the old Agassiz-Rosedale ferry, which was replaced by a bridge in 1956.
 

The Norman Lidster Film of the Fraser Valley book van in 1932

Norman Lidster’s film is essentially a promotional film to showcase the Carnegie demonstration. It shows library service in the Fraser Valley and follows the book van on its routes from community to community. The film depicts various aspects of the library service and perhaps shows a brief closeup of the energetic director-librarian, Helen Gordon Stewart, at the outset. For today’s viewers, the smaller Canadian communities of the Fraser in the early 1930s appear by 21st century standards to be underdeveloped in terms of technology and economics. Even a decade and a half later, when the Library on Wheels was produced, this same impression prevails. Still, we must consider that Canada was less urbanized at this time: the valley’s principal towns were Abbotsford and Chilliwack, each with about 1,000 population or less. Forestry and farming were major sectors in a resource-based economy. Canada’s economy was growing on an international basis, and its gross domestic product ranked with countries such as Argentina, Poland, and Spain. Postwar economic growth in commercial industry, trade, services, and tourism would, of course, introduce many changes. Today the FVRL serves about 700,000 people.

Fraser Valley book van exiting ferry, ca 1932

 

Serving the rural population in BC was a key goal of the Provincial Public Library Commission Lidster served on. An important BC survey conducted in 1927 recommended that larger administrative library districts based on cooperation between municipalities and school districts would best serve rural communities that could not afford to fund local libraries for improving standards. Fortunately, the Carnegie Corporation of New York awarded a grant of $100,000 to operate a multi-year library project, which commenced in 1930. A notable feature of this project was its book van that traversed an area of approximately 1,000 square miles. The van made regular stops at small community association libraries, filling stations, grocery stores, and country corners. At each stop, it displayed books on its exterior covered shelves for people, young and old, to browse.

 
The experiment in regional library service proved to be quite successful. At its conclusion each community voted whether to continue the regional library with local taxes. Twenty municipalities agreed to do so, and in autumn 1934, a union library was formally established at a ceremony held in Chilliwack. The provincial government provided additional funding to encourage growth.

Eager readers at bookmobile in Fraser Valley, 1945

 

The National Film Board film The Library on Wheels 1945

The FVRL was a successful model. Two more regional libraries were formed in BC, one on Vancouver Island and another in the Okanagan Valley, before Gudrun Parker, a Winnipeg born film producer who began her career with the National Film Board (NFB) during the Second World War, teamed up with the NFB director Bill MacDonald. He was a talented writer with a particular interest in conservation and outdoor sports, especially fishing. Together, they made an enjoyable reprise of the book van’s travels in the Fraser throughout four weeks in 1944. The NFB crew interacted with many residents during filming. Later, MacDonald recounted: “They took us into their confidence and they told us what they thought of the library and showed us the books they liked to read.” With sound, of course, the Library on Wheels is entertaining because it is also professionally edited. Gudrun Parker, who eventually would receive the Order of Canada for her body of work in 2005, credited one source of inspiration as Richard Crouch, the chief librarian of London, Ont. Crouch travelled across Canada on a Carnegie grant administered by the Canadian Library Council during the war. He was noted for his advocacy for the role of the “library in the community.” Two years later, in 1947, Parker and Crouch collaborated again, this time to produce the NFB short film, New Chapters, which documented the London library’s cultural and leisure activities in the Forest City. The later film received less promotion and was eclipsed in popularity by yet another bookmobile film of the same year, The Books Drive On, which highlighted libraries and communities in the Ontario county of Huron.

The Library on Wheels proved to be an influential asset for library promoters after WWII. Proponents of regional libraries in the west, especially in Saskatchewan, used the film to establish better rural services linked by newer bookmobiles rather than truck vans. Today, both films still resonate with the spirit of our open country and Canadians’ love of books.

Norman Lidster’s film can be viewed on YouTube here.

 

Watch the NFB’s Library on Wheels on YouTube here (part 1) and here (part 2).

THE BRITISH COLUMBIA FREE LIBRARIES ACT, 1891

British Columbia became the second province to pass an act allowing local governments to establish free libraries in 1891. Generally, municipal conditions were different in B.C. compared to its eastern counterpart, Ontario. There were only a handful of cities and towns able to fund and maintain libraries adequately: the total population of the province in 1891 was 98,173 and Vancouver, with 13,709 people, was the largest city. But libraries in a variety of forms--subscription, mechanics' institutes, literary societies, and commercial circulating libraries--had existed for many years in different localities such as Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster.

Consequently, legislation was introduced in March 1891 that enabled a local council that had received a petition from 100 electors to submit the issue to be voted upon by ratepayers and, if successful, for council to pass a bylaw establishing a free library which might also include a free news-room, or museum, branches, as well as evening classes for artisans, mechanics and workingmen to promote mechanical and manufacturing arts. Essential features of this Act (54 Vic. chap 20) were similar to Ontario's 1882 legislation:

• a board of management composed of the mayor or reeve of a municipality, and three other persons appointed by the council, and three by the public school board (or the board of education) governed the operations of the library;
•  councils were mandated to levy a "Free Library Rate," a special annual rate not to exceed one half a mill upon the assessed value of all rateable real property to furnish the estimated budget submitted by the library board each year.;
• all libraries, news-rooms, and museums were to be open to the public, free of all charge;
•  mechanics' institute and library associations were authorized to transfer property and assets to a municipality for the purpose of the Act;
• municipal councils were authorized to raise by a special issue of debentures (termed the "Free Library Debentures") amounts required for purchasing and erecting buildings and, in the first instance, for obtaining books and other things required to establish a library.

For the most part, British Columbia's legislation followed Ontario's law; however, one distinctive clause included in the B.C. Act permitted boards to conduct evening classes and to appoint and dismiss salaried teachers or instructors.

B.C.'s library act was primarily aimed at larger urban centres in a developing province. There was no provision for establishing libraries in the rural districts and no provincial financial or organizational assistance provided to undertake such work. The beneficiaries of the 1891 legislation were communities that had previously struggled to establish a public library by various means: Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. In Victoria, for example, a public referendum had been held in 1887 to transfer the assets of the Mechanics' Literary Institute to the city for the purposes of establishing a public library. Vancouver's city council had begun granting small amounts for a public library earlier in 1889. New Westminster had provided accommodation in a central building for its library in 1890. Now these communities were eligible for an annual library rate. As well, there was a major unanticipated benefit to the 1891 legislation. A decade later, when Carnegie money became available for free public libraries, all three communities automatically were eligible for a grant to erect a new building.

The 1891 Act marked another late Victorian Canadian milestone in the recognition of free libraries--how to establish and administer a library, what services would be provided, and how operations would be financed. The Act would remain in place until a complete revision was undertaken in 1919.

Further reading on B.C.'s Carnegie library heritage:

Vancouver, 1903:  now the Carnegie Centre
Victoria, 1906:  opened at the at the corner of Yates and Blanshard Streets

Three British Columbia Public Library Commission reports, 1927–1941

British Columbia Public Library Commission. British Columbia Library Survey 1927-28, Conducted Under the Auspices of British Columbia Public Library Commission. Victoria:  Printed by C. F. Banfield, Printer to the King, 1929.

British Columbia Public Library Commission. Libraries in British Columbia 1940; a Reconsideration of the Library Survey of 1927-28. Victoria:  Printed by C. F. Banfield, Printer to the King, 1941.

British Columbia Public Library Commission. A Preliminary Study of Adult Education in British Columbia, 1941.  A Contribution to the Problem. Prepared  by a Special Committee of the Public Library Commission: H. Norman Lidster, C. K. Morison, John  Ridington, E. S. Robinson, Chairman. Victoria: 1942.

While I have concentrated on national and regional library surveys during the Great Depression in the past few blogs, it would be gross omission if the efforts of the British Columbia Public Library Commission throughout this period was not highlighted. In 1919, a revision of the BC Public Libraries Act provided for a three-member commission to supervise public library services and to administer the Province's library grant to libraries. The relatively independent commission form of library oversight was not uncommon in the United States, but in Canada, where the Ontario Library Association had failed to develop a similar scheme before WWI, it was unique. The Commission conduced a travelling library service and a books by mail (open shelf) service to individuals. By the 1920s the Commission was operating a small budget of about $20,000. It was at this point that the commissioners, led by Dr. Norman F. Black, set out to discover the state of province-wide library service. With a generous $6,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the commission employed Clarence B. Lester, from the Wisconsin library commission, as an adviser for a thorough study--the first of its kind in twentieth century Canada.

The British Columbia Library Survey 1927-28 provided a detailed report of more than 100 pages on library conditions and responses from residents. More than twenty appendices recorded information on issues such as sea-coast libraries, the open shelf system, services for the blind, school libraries, vocational services, and library training. The key recommendations focused on direct services, namely (a) the use of library districts, created specially for this purpose, in rural communities and (b) the provision of school library service as part of a unified library system. In this scenario, regional library systems would provide services for a combination of school districts, municipalities, unorganized rural communities, and even individuals. When the report was tabled in 1929, it was an obvious that the potential of regional/district library service (the "union library" concept) could only be demonstrated through an actual project. The 1927-28 survey findings were used to secure $100,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and to employ Helen Gordon Stewart, Victoria's chief librarian, to conduct a demonstration in the Fraser Valley beginning in 1930. This project is ably described and analyzed by Maxine Rochester, "Bringing Librarianship to Rural Canada in the 1930s: Demonstrations by Carnegie Corporation of New York," Libraries & Culture: a Journal of Library History 30 (1995): 366-90. But it was the report itself that was the crucial catalyst for action because it contained copious factual information, especially statistics, which could not be garnered elsewhere (even in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics publication, Survey of Libraries) that bolstered its conclusions and recommendations. The Fraser Valley experiment served as precedent  that led to further Carnegie grants on the Atlantic coast in the mid-1930s. This "second wave" of Carnegie library grants in the 1930s encouraged the growth of libraries at a time when public funding for libraries edged towards impoverishment rather than improvement across Canada.

After four years of successful operation and after Carnegie funding ended in 1934, BC residents in twenty communities voted to continue the Fraser Valley project with local taxes. With the success of the Fraser Valley demonstration came the need to expand and upgrade library services. The Commission was able to promote the development of two more "union library" systems as they were known on Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan Valley. As the effects of the Depression lessened in 1938, the Commission began to review progress on a five-year basis. It undertook an extensive review of the 1927-28 report with a view of identifying successes and problems that had occurred during the intervening decade. On balance, the new report, Libraries in British Columbia 1940, concluded the original principles and policies of the first report should continue to constitute the foundation of provincial organization to further book service in BC. The 1940 report, however, emphasized the idea of centralized coordination for professional library training, standards of service for different sized communities, and enlarged powers for the Library Commission to distribute grants to all libraries achieving standard provincial requirements. The report lamented that libraries in larger centres--Burnaby and North Vancouver--were being operated and funded by voluntary associations and located in downtown shops. With Canada at war against the Axis powers, the report intoned that library services should be mandated and that "democracy must be intelligent" to succeed in "winning the peace" as well as the war. But wartime austerity and priorities pushed the commission report onto the shelf rather than the field of action.

Not to be idle and considering that postwar planning was essential, the same commissioners (Norman Lidster, C. K. Morison, the indefatigable John  Ridington, and E. S. Robinson) undertook another wartime study, A Preliminary Study of Adult Education in British Columbia, 1941 for the Minister of Education. They were charged to survey the existing state of adult education across BC and to submit suggestions and recommendations for its development. The Commission studied formal provincial, federal, and municipal agencies working with adults in various capacities--boards of health, departments of agriculture, educational bodies, police schools, museums, forestry programs, and youth training--as well as the Extension Department of the University of British Columbia which was praised by the commissioners. Numerous civil society organizations were mailed questionnaires: art galleries, musical and literary societies, boards of trade, cooperatives, credit unions, student and study groups, newspapers, radio stations, crafts organizations, etc. National organizations, e.g. the Workers' Educational Association and CNIB were noted although Frontier College was a notable omission. The study called for a provincial program of Adult Education comparable to the public school system. The potential of radio broadcasting was highlighted. The work of public libraries also received favourable comment--the public library was designated as a  "principle agency."  The survey's basic recommendation: the need for the provincial government to authorize a coordinating authority, the Department of Education, to establish a central adult education division under a director. Then, it would be possible to form a Council of Adult Education to determine policy with the Director for appropriate plans, standards, grants, advisory work, and necessary operating services for the entire province. An underlying wartime ideal of democratic progress once peace was attained often appeared in the study's pages. It was a broad appeal, but one that did not stimulate the government to take immediate action. As a result, the linkage between libraries and adult education remained tenuous in the postwar period, a situation not uncommon in the rest of Canada. In postwar BC, the extension service of UBC would head up adult education efforts.

Nonetheless, the three studies encompassing the Depression years standout as positive statements for the development of libraries and their connection with the emerging field of adult education. At a time when Canadians' appreciation for the arts, adult education, and library science was influenced more by parsimonious economic considerations and wartime challenges, the reports and work of the Library Commission were vital statements of "what should be" infused with bold rhetoric and factual material that fortified its arguments. On the Canadian library stage in the first part of the twentieth century, they stand out as important historical markers in the development of libraries and librarianship.


A Preliminary Study of Adult Education in British Columbia, 1941 is available for viewing via the Hathi Trust.

Libraries in British Columbia 1940; a Reconsideration of the Library Survey of 1927-28 is also available at the Hathi Trust..

Marjorie C . Holmes, Library Service in British Columbia; a Brief History of its Development (Victoria, 1959)

The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia by David Obee (2011)

The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia by David Obee. Vancouver, British Columbia Library Association, 2011. 264 p., illus., $50.00.

A modestly sized coffee table book with 300 photographs is an unusual entry for a library history but, in this case, well worth reading and possessing. The Library Book covers more than a hundred years in three major sections with eighteen chapters. David Obee is a respected journalist, a local-family historian, as well as a genealogist; and he has combined his knowledge and skills to craft an informative and entertaining history of all types of libraries in British Columbia from the late eighteenth century up to the present. With the help of a number of prominent BC people in the library community, this book was published to celebrate the centenary of the British Columbia Library Association in 2011.
     David Obee covers the development of a valued provincial service to many different clienteles by public, school, college and university, special, government and legislative libraries. While 'service' is a keynote theme, Obee also includes details and chapters on intellectual freedom, information technology, library associations, and library organization. The text is divided into three main periods with fairly even treatment: 1796 to 1926; 1927-1959; and 1960 to today. Often, of course, books that celebrate contemporary milestones concentrate on the latest period, but that is not the case in The Library Book.
      In the first part, we learn that James Strange brought books to BC on a fur-trade mission in 1796; that New Westminster established the first 'public' library in 1865; that the Legislative Library was formed in 1863 to serve the small British colony on Vancouver Island; that three Carnegie libraries had opened by 1905 (Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster); that a training course in librarianship appeared in 1913; and that the University of British Columbia library opened in 1915. Progress was never easy, of course. Few municipalities took advantage of the Free Libraries Act of 1891; however, when this act was thoroughly revised in 1919 it also established a Public Library Commission and granted financial aid to 'library associations' which became eligible to receive travelling libraries (small boxes of books) from the Commission's headquarters. This was an important landmark to provide all provincial residents with some form of library service.
     The second section begins with the Commission's efforts to promote the development of regional libraries (a Canadian innovation) under the stewardship of the dynamic Helen Gordon Stewart. In 1930 she began a successful Carnegie funded regional demonstration in the Fraser Valley which led to the creation of two other library systems, the Okanagan and Vancouver Island. The Great Depression and WWII stymied other progress but regional systems and bookmobiles were a major step in reaching rural Canadians. The postwar era saw new buildings, larger collections, better-trained librarians, and the spread of business, government, and school libraries. But perhaps the most interesting chapter in this part touches on a personal confrontation between a librarian, John Marshall, and the Victoria library. During the height of the Cold War and anti-Communist rhetoric, in 1954, Marshall was summarily terminated for his ties with 'Red' organizations. At the same time, pro-Communist books came under fire. Half a century later, in 1998, the Victoria Library publicly apologized to Marshall. By this time, libraries had become advocates of intellectual freedom not guardians of political and moral standards.
     The final section begins in 1960; this is not a seminal date, but perhaps the 1960s decade was for Canadian libraries of all types. There was a boom in new library buildings across Canada and British Columbia was no exception. New universities and colleges--Simon Fraser (1965), Victoria (1963), Capilano (1968), and Okanagan (1963)--rapidly developed with a need for new library operations based around computer technology. Outside cities, the days of the one-room rural schoolhouse had come to end as more centralized schools with better libraries and staffing became the norm. In 1961, a School of Librarianship was established at the University of British Columbia to provide more librarians with a standard degree for professional training, the BLS. Obee concludes his history with chapters on the "tsunami" of technological change that has swept libraries since the 1970s, the explosive growth of the internet, and the emergence of the "library without walls." This period is necessarily compressed, but Obee gives the reader the basics without delving deeply into library jargon and administrivia.
     One feature of The Library Book that deserves special comment is the design and format of the volume. Excellent black and white/colour photographs are sprinkled throughout. Boxed texts with quotes and outlines of important events or people who have made valuable contributions are helpful additions that complement the chronological format. Deserving individuals who receive particular attention are E.O.S. Scholefield, John Ridington, W. Kaye Lamb, Lois Bewley, Basil Stuart-Stubbs, Margaret Clay, and Helen Gordon Stewart. They made contributions on a national level, as well as in British Columbia. At about 12" x 12," the book is still easily readable and displays nicely. There is an excellent timeline and appendices detailing various topics on associations, award winners, etc. The index provides convenient access to persons, subjects, and institutions. Researchers and historians will have to be satisfied with the narrative and pursue their interests elsewhere because there are no footnotes or a bibliography!!! But most general readers can do without the academic apparatus.
     David Obee and the BC Library Association must be congratulated for bringing The Library Book to press. It stands as the most complete Canadian provincial history of libraries produced to date and an important addition to the history of libraries in Canada.