Canadian Library History Blog

Before the Second World War, there was only one standalone university library building in the Canadian west. The University of British Columbia library opened in 1925 on the Point Grey campus in Vancouver under the direction of John Ridington. However, with the post-1945 increase in student numbers, including returning war veterans, overcrowding at three Prairie universities led to development plans to transfer and consolidate library collections from various academic buildings into a separate, central library. University collections had grown incrementally across each campus, and at mid-century, Manitoba held almost 250,000 volumes, Saskatchewan about 125,000, and Alberta almost 150,000. These were relatively large holdings in a Canadian context and were comparable to academic libraries of a similar size in Ontario, such as Queen’s or Western, which had erected buildings in the interwar years, the Douglas (1924) and Lawson (1934) libraries. With the increasing pressure to develop rese...

Canadian librarianship was formed incrementally and was loosely structured in the first half of the twentieth century when it emerged as a modern professional career. The practice of Librarianship coalesced around the broader field of an emerging academic discipline, library science, an expanding range of professional specialties (e.g., children’s librarianship or special library work), increasingly technical aspects related to acquiring and organizing different types of resources, and the provision of assistance and information to readers and clients. For the most part, librarians in various settings sought to develop an intermediary role between their clientele and the world of print. They did so when library science evolved as a university-based discipline grounded in the knowledge and techniques of collecting, organizing, and managing records for public use. In 2019, I examined three significant issues on this topic in an article From Library Work to Library Science in Partn...

School Libraries in Canada before 1945 R.H. McGregor school library, c.1944 In the 1930s, while many British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario schools continued the tradition of small classroom collections, promotion of good recreational reading, and reliance to a great extent on public libraries for book stocks and branches in schools, there were indications of change. In a few urban areas, such as R.H. McGregor in East York (Toronto), progressive reforms did include a separate room for a library. In Ontario, Margaret Fraser, an influential high school librarian at Galt (now Cambridge), outlined what she felt the mission of the secondary 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 Co...

Resources of Canadian University Libraries for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Report of a Survey for the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges , by Edwin E. Williams. Ottawa: National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges, November 1962. 87 p. Resources of Canadian Academic and Research Libraries/Ressources des Bibliothèques d’Université et de Recherche au Canada by Robert B. Downs. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1967. 301 p. By the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the number of full-time undergraduate and graduate university students across Canada was increasing dramatically, and provincial governments were granting new charters to several universities, such as Victoria, Calgary, Waterloo, York, Guelph, Brock, and Carleton. Additional funding for faculty, teaching staff, and buildings came from federal and provincial governments to accommodate this growth. Consequently, the expansion of libra...

Canadian Librarians Organize in 1945 When the Second World War ended in 1945, with V-E Day in May and V-J Day in August, the long-awaited time to create a national organization for Canadian librarians, trustees, staff, and anyone interested in libraries had arrived. For almost four years, the Canadian Library Council (CLC), headed first by Charles Sanderson, Toronto Public Library, and then by Margaret Gill, National Research Library, had been planning for the establishment of a national association on a membership basis. There was general agreement that a country-wide association to promote library interests and a national library to provide services not currently available to Canadians were both essential. Earlier in the year, in April, the Council had established specific committees to prepare concrete proposals for an organizational meeting and a constitution to be adopted by provincial library associations during summer and autumn 1945. Another measure, a national survey of librar...

Project Progress: A Study of Canadian Public Libraries . Prepared for the Canadian Library Association and its division the Canadian Association of Public Libraries by Urban Dimensions Group Inc. Toronto, Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, January 1981. 120 p., ill. Issued in French as: Projet progrès .    My review first appeared with shorter text in Canadian Public Administration vol. 26, no. 2 (June 1983): 315-316 as follows. . . . . . In 1979 the Toronto-based Urban Dimensions Group Inc. was commissioned by the Canadian Library Association to study problems confronting public libraries in Canada. The group’s report, Project Progress , identifies a number of issues affecting libraries in a national context, and offers practical data as well as recommendations to respond to these challenges. Implicit in this survey is a muted call to action. Yet, in the introduction, the CLA Steering Committee members offer a guarded forecast: “the future is before us.” There ar...