Canadian Special Libraries Form a National Identity, 1945–1970

Library of Parliament, Ottawa, 1940s

In the spring of 1946, Elizabeth Homer Morton, the Secretary of the Canadian Library Council, recounted her observations on special library services to the Special Libraries Toronto Chapter. In the fall of 1945, she had travelled across Canada to assess library services. She visited a variety of special libraries: the Oakalla Prison Farm libraries in Burnaby, British Columbia; the library of the hospital ship Lady Nelson in Halifax Harbour; the Co-operative Wheat Pool libraries on the Prairies; and the extension work of Hudson’s Bay House in Winnipeg to company posts. She concluded optimistically, “Library service in Canada owes a great debt to the special librarians past and present. Not content with building up their own collections, they have done much for Canada’s education and information services by encouraging the institution of public library services.” Indeed, the growth of special libraries due to the intensity of industry and research in the war years 1940–45 had given cause for optimism in the two Canadian chapters of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), in Montreal and Toronto. While government libraries, such as the majestic Library of Parliament, comprised the majority of special libraries, small business libraries were being established at a greater pace and proving their worth.

In the immediate postwar years, there were three centres of special library collective action: the two established chapters of the American SLA, and, in 1949, the Research Section of the Canadian Library Association. The latter national grouping served to address issues common to college, university, research, and special libraries, and to promote their interests. The primary focus on special library work was mostly the preserve of the two chapters, which sometimes worked with the New York Chapter of SLA to organize specific conferences devoted to special librarians. These two chapters focused on special librarians’ identification of their profession and career. They fostered the development of group associations beyond their local areas and sought to clarify the role of special libraries. They ascertained collective needs and pursued goals to support members and engage with the public interest. Sharing best practices, advocating for libraries, networking with colleagues, and establishing standards of service promoted confidence within their parent organizations. Consequently, the two decades following 1950 eventually led to the decision to form the Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services (CASLIS) in June 1969 as a constituent division of the Canadian Library Association.

Three Postwar Conferences, 1947–49

As a springboard to promote member involvement, three regional conferences were organized by the Toronto, Montreal, and Western New York SLA Chapters: one in Toronto on Oct. 17–18, 1947, another in Rochester on Oct. 8–9, 1948, and a third in Montreal on Sept. 23–24, 1949. Training for librarians and staff was the general focus of the first two meetings. At the King Edward Hotel in Toronto in 1947, two prominent voices, Winifred Barnstead, director of the University of Toronto Library School, and Edna Poole, longtime librarian of the Toronto Academy of Medicine, expressed the view that general university courses, not specific ones, constituted the best way for educators to advance special library work. Librarians should engage in continuing education efforts to further their careers. Beatrice Simon, from McGill University, outlined her view on the training requirements for medical, hospital, and nursing librarians. Mary Jane Henderson, the head of the Montreal Sun Life Assurance Co. library, spoke on training in he life insurance industry. A year later, at Rochester, Phyllis Foreman, librarian of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, spoke on training library assistants for circulation work and George Johnson, librarian of the Law Society of Upper Canada, addressed issues related to in-house ‘sub-professional’ training for the ordering of materials.

In Montreal, a new theme, communication and cooperation, formed the basis for discussion. The keynote speaker, W.K. Lamb, the Dominion Archivist, addressed the issue of creating a union catalogue for the proposed National Library at some length. It was an arduous task, but he felt special libraries could play a role in contributing to a union catalogue because “they can play a very important part. By your very name, you have specialized needs and unusual needs, and you have unusual material stored away in these libraries. I do not look upon the Union Catalogue as anything narrow.” Lillian Steers, librarian of the Dept. of Mines and Resources, outlined cooperative efforts in Ottawa amongst libraries. Mildred Turnbull, librarian at the Royal Bank of Canada in Montreal, spoke on cooperation among different types of libraries in her city.

The three regional meetings were productive efforts to connect members with peers and complemented the annual summer postwar SLA conferences held in Boston, Chicago, Washington, and Atlantic City from 1946 to 1950. When the Toronto Chapter proposed to hold the conference, the SLA set a date of 1953. The Toronto group was growing in numbers and felt confident it could manage the task. By summer 1952, Toronto had formed a local Executive and committees under the capable and energetic chairmanship of Pauline Mary Hutchison, librarian of the Canada Life Assurance Co.

The Special Libraries Conference, Toronto, June 1953 

Pauline Hutchison, c.1953

The 1953 Toronto conference, which took place at the Royal York Hotel for four days beginning on June 22nd, drew about 1,000 attendees from the United States and Canada. It was an opportunity to showcase American and Canadian library progress since the previous SLA meeting in Montreal in 1936. The April issue of Special Libraries had profiled libraries in Montreal and Toronto that SLA members could visit. A special four-day tour to Montreal and return to Toronto was offered for advance registrants. Toronto had a diverse array of library resources to explore, including the Academy of Medicine (the second-largest medical collection in Canada), libraries of the Ontario Legislature, the Osgoode Hall Law Society, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Pauline Hutchison worked tirelessly to offer a blend of speakers for an informative (and entertaining) annual meeting. Canadian speakers provided a variety of interesting topics at the opening Monday session: Marian Thompson, from the Toronto Star Library, spoke about handling large files of pictures. Edna F. Hunt, assistant chief librarian at the National Research Library in Ottawa, explained new developments in inter-library loan activity. Two general fora on ‘Canadian Resources’ were held on Tuesday. Dr. Robert C. Wallace, the former Principal of Queen’s University, provided a comprehensive survey of Canadian scientific research. Resource extraction was the topic J. Gerald Godsoe, vice-president of the British American Oil Co. Ltd., summarized. Earl S. Neal, an Imperial Oil Co. director, provided a succinct account of oil exploration and the expansion of Canadian oil and gas markets. Later, at the SLA banquet on Wednesday evening, A. Davidson Dunton, Chairman of the CBC Board of Governors, entertained delegates about America’s northern neighbour, even venturing to say that Canada would not be assimilated by America simply because it was different.

The Toronto SLA conference was a successful undertaking that highlighted growing expertise in special library work among Canadians. Peter C. Newman, an aspiring journalist with the Financial Post who covered the convention, wrote on June 27th, “Today, the business library is a common feature of almost every type of enterprise, with insurance companies, banks, public utilities, publishers, and manufacturers leading the parade. Trade associations, law firms and advertising adgencies are other important library operators.” As careers developed, some special librarians were venturing into the field of Documentation, which explored new principles and techniques for information searching, storage, and retrieval. Two years after the convention, at the 1955 Canadian Library Association conference in Saskatoon, Edna Hunt outlined documentation efforts at the National Research Council, the Defence Research Board, and the Aluminium Laboratories Ltd. in Kingston. She would continue to make significant library contributions, both nationally and internationally, and be a founding member of the Canadian Association for Information Science in 1970–71. Pauline Hutchison, who garnered accolades for her work in Toronto and SLA, would eventually be inducted into the SLA Hall of Fame, established in 1960.

Growth of Special Libraries and Professionalism

Throughout the fifties, there was sustained growth in special libraries, particularly company libraries, as well as librarianship. Western libraries were being established, especially in Alberta, for example, Imperial Oil (1950) and Shell Oil and British American Oil in 1954. Louise Lefebvre, the chief librarian at the Pulp & Paper Institute in Montreal, and one of the founders of the Quebec Library Association in 1932, signalled changing directions in her talk at CLA’s 1957 conference in Victoria. What was a special library? She said, “The special library is, in short, a particularized information service, which correlates, interprets, and utilizes the material at hand for the constant use and benefit of the organization it serves.” What about the special librarian? She said, “The Special Librarian of the future, the one for whom industry is already clamoring and ready to pay a high salary, is a specialist with a degree in library science and a reading knowledge, if possible, of languages such as French, German and even Russian. Such a combination of talents to-day is painfully scarce.” In the same year, the Librarians Group of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada issued a statement criticizing the federal government’s so-called ‘improved’ schedule of salaries and benefits for librarians after investigating its unfavourable comparison with those of other professions in the public service. Additionally, in 1956, another new section devoted to special interests formed in CLA: the Canadian Music Library Association was organized as an official section to promote services in its field of librarianship at the annual meeting held in Niagara Falls with a membership of 35.

By the mid-1950s, there was a growing recognition for the need for professional qualifications, greater clarity of purpose regarding services, and more assertive action regarding working conditions. In fact, at the outset of 1959, the SLA revised its membership categories: new members in the active class would now have to hold a degree from a library school of recognized standing and have had three years of professional experience in a special library to qualify. The CLA Council followed suit in November 1959 when it adopted its position on a national standard for librarians:

Jack E. Brown, 1950s

“No one will be recognized by the Canadian Library Association–Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques as a fully qualified professional librarian in Canada unless he holds the equivalent of the B.A. degree as granted in Canada plus proof of library training equivalent to that required for the Bachelor of Library Science degree (B.L.S.) in Canada or Master of Library Science degree (M.L.S.) in the United States of America.” As the decade closed, in November 1959, the Canadian Library Association Bulletin featured the importance of special library work by devoting an entire issue to its progress. The issue featured important collections from across the country, along with regional synopses. It also introduced new professionals, such as Jack E. Brown, the new chief librarian of the National Research Council. He would oversee a significant era as the library officially became the National Science Library in 1966 and then assist with the development a new building, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), opened in 1974. He influenced the profession during the sixties and seventies with innovations such as the Canadian Selective Dissemination of Information service (CAN/SDI), a current awareness service for scientists and researchers based on centralized processing at the National Science Library (NSL) of scientific databases. 

Striving for a National Focus

The 1960s witnessed a dramatic period of growth for special libraries of various types—those serving parent organizations (e.g., governments), libraries developed for specific subjects (e.g., films), or libraries organized to hold different formats (e.g., maps). Contemporary surveys indicate that almost 300 special libraries were formed during this period. General categories of service included reference, user orientation, document delivery, information retrieval, bibliographic assistance, and current awareness. Across North America some special libraries were beginning to be known as “information centres” or “documentation centres,” and librarians were starting to embrace new computerized technology to play a helpful role in a new era of information and knowledge. Local perspectives were lessening and libraries were expanding their range of services and clienteles. The NSL was leading the way in providing delivery of documents as well as information and translation services. The two Canadian chapters sought to enhance member involvement, refine leadership structures, and pursue broader goals and objectives. For example, the Toronto chapter investigated the extent of training in Canadian library schools and the value of continuing education opportunities in its schedule of 1963/64 workshops.

At the national level, two important studies touched on special library work in the early 1960s. Beatrice Simon, assistant chief librarian at McGill University, conducted a study of major universities, Library Support of Medical Education and Research in Canada (1964), that proposed a national program for improving access to Canadian medical information resources, such as improved financial support and the establishment of a National Medical Bibliographic Centre and Information Service. A second report,  Science-Technology Literature Resources in Canada by George S. Bonn, the science and technology chief at the New York Public Library, included universities and major research libraries. He recommended that the NSL in Ottawa serve as the central collection in science and technology, supporting and encouraging principal regional libraries to strengthen their collections and provide better service aided by special grants. Networking among libraries and the availability of computerized databases promised to greatly expand the range of information available to special libraries.

Librarians were rearranging professional connections and forming new groups to better address their concerns. In 1963, many university and college librarians formerly in the Research Section of CLA formed their own association, the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries. Shortly after, this action prompted a name change to CLA’s Research and Special Libraries. In 1963, a group of Canadians in the American Association of Law Libraries successfully formed a national chapter affiliated with AALL, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, with Marianne Scott of McGill University as its first president. In June 1967, the Association of Canadian Map Libraries was established at the Public Archives of Canada as a separate entity.

Mariam H. Tees, c. 1975

At this point, in 1966, the Toronto and Montreal chapters of SLA began discussing the formation of a larger Canadian organization. According to contemporary accounts, there were approximately 750 special librarians in Canada by the late 1960s. They were members of various groups: just more than 300 were members of the CLA Research and Special Libraries Section, about 350 were CLA members, and the two Canadian chapters had fewer than 200 members each. SLA continued to be a strong influence in Canada, and the Montreal chapter hosted its second SLA conference at the beginning of June 1969, with the theme ‘Information Across Borders.’ Miriam Tees, librarian of the Royal Bank of Canada, chaired the organizational committee. She was in charge of a library of 50,000 volumes and 800 periodical subscriptions and looked forward to library computerization to provide faster service to the company. One of the key moments of the conference was an address by Beryl Anderson on Canadian information resources. In her summary, she made an important point by stating that a strong national association could be an effective instrument for fostering greater integration into the national information network. It was a successful conference that brought attention to Mariam Tees’ remarkable abilities and eventually to her presidency of SLA in 1975–76 when she assured the membership, “As we move further and further into the information era, people with our special training and knowledge become more essential than ever.” A week after the Montreal SLA conference concluded, at St. John’s, Newfoundland, members of the  CLA Research and Special Libraries agreed to dissolve and begin preparations to form a new division within CLA specifically for special libraries.

At the June 1970 CLA meeting in Hamilton, special librarians formally adopted a name change and a new constitution for the Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services (CASLIS). This step constituted a significant milestone in establishing Canadian special librarians as a voice in national affairs within CLA. The Canadian special libraries sector had grown in numbers and confidence in the sixties, and the CASLIS initial membership almost reached 300. However, the proliferation of library groups and the development of ‘type of library’ membership adopted by the five divisional groupings in CLA by 1970 indicated that national concerns or projects for librarians were giving way to provincial, regional, and local issues, especially continuing education to further careers. As well, the activities of international affiliations remained attractive: both Canadian chapters of SLA continued their connection with SLA after 1970. In 1971, the Canadian Music Library Association of CLA dissolved and chose to affiliate with the International Music Library Association rather than CASLIS. Instead of charting national policies, CASLIS executives spent their energies recruiting and establishing chapters in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton during the 1970s. During this time, the new association and its member chapters participated in a variety of joint programs and workshops with other library and information science groups. It was the strength of the local chapters that heightened awareness of CASLIS for years to come.

My previous blog on the organization of special libraries in Montreal and Toronto by 1940 is at this link.

My previous blog on the 1936 SLA conference held in Montreal is at this link.

My biography of Jack Ernest Brown is at the Ex Libris Association website at this link. 

 

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 he had 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.

The Postwar Future and Special Libraries

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 and their members, active forces in Canadian and Special librarianship, could reasonably be credited for some of this growth. Some members, such as Janet Saunders, a graduate of Queen’s University (BA 1918) who worked at the International Labour Office library in Montreal during the war before it returned to Geneva, pursued successful careers beyond Canada. The Montreal chapter president in 1942, Catherine Anne Pearce (BLS McGill 1936), earned her masters in library science at the University of Illinois in 1947 and began working for the Transportation Association of America in Chicago and later for the Richfield Oil Co. in Los Angeles. These two chapters also attracted members in smaller Canadian cities and in western Canada from Winnipeg as far as Victoria and Trail, BC. In the postwar period, the chapters would participate in a series of joint regional conferences with their SLA American counterparts in the 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.

 

Special Libraries go on the air “Putting Knowledge to Work” in Montreal, 1936

Montreal Gazette, May 5, 1936

Special Libraries Organize in Montreal after 1932

The 28th annual conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) was held in Montreal at the Mount Royal Hotel on rue Peel from June 16–19, 1936. It was the third time SLA had come to Canada for its yearly convention, having joined with the American Library Association’s conferences at Ottawa in 1912 and at Toronto in 1927. But on this occasion, SLA chose to convene on its own because a separate, very active SLA Chapter in Montreal had formed in May 1932 with 19 original members. At this time, Montreal was the business and financial capital of Canada. The new Chapter soon expanded rapidly to almost 70 members and to other libraries in regional centres: Ottawa, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Special librarianship quickly attracted several Canadians from libraries such as the Royal Bank of Canada, Sun Life Assurance Company, Canadian Industries, École Polytechnique, Montreal Board of Trade, McGill University, Forest Products Laboratory of Canada, the Insurance Institute of Montreal, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics and the National Research Library. The chapter’s quarterly Bulletin first appeared in January 1935 edited by Beatrice V. Simon, a McGill University medical librarian. Although the Depression era still lingered, it was a vibrant time of growth for Canadian special librarians.

The Chapter also had strong leaders, especially Mary Jane Henderson (BA, Queen’s University, 1925; BLS, Pratt Institute School of Library Science, 1926), who became the first president of the Montreal Chapter. Henderson was an accomplished organizer who was inducted into the Special Libraries Association Hall of Fame in 1964 after her retirement. She made the host arrangements and organized a successful program under the theme, “Putting Knowledge to Work,” for the 1936 conference expected to attract about 200–300 people. The Mount Royal Hotel (today a renovated shopping mall) served as the conference headquarters. Henderson coordinated the work of four essential committees: programs, luncheons and banquet, local arrangements, and advance publicity. She also helped enlist prominent speakers. For the Friday general session. Brooke Claxton, a distinguished Montreal lawyer, addressed SLA delegates on the question of peace and war: “I thought it would be interesting for us, for a time, to see if we have any common reaction to that fear of war which everyone throughout the world shares today.” Claxton would eventually rise in political ranks to become Canada’s Minister of National Defence in 1946. B.K. Sandwell, the liberal-minded editor of Saturday Night published in Toronto, echoed the theme of Anglo-American relations. He spoke during a luncheon to three SLA groups on the issue of cross-border “trade” in ideas noting the impact of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation on Canadian culture. Two prominent McGill men, Sir Andrew MacPhail and Lt.-Colonel Wilfrid Bovey, spoke at the evening banquet on Thursday. MacPhail entertained his audience regarding his views on the gradual transition in library work: the business of a special librarian, he concluded, was not to accumulate books but to select and “selection is the main business of art, of the artist, and of the genius, which a librarian must be.”

A notable conference highlight featured three radio talks carried by the CBC network in eastern Canada at 6:15 p.m. on three weeknight evenings. Radio broadcasts by librarians were not innovative, but SLA’s reach on the CBC spanned thirteen stations from Toronto to Halifax and Charlottetown was a Canadian first.The SLA President, William F. Jacobs, General Electric, opened with an introduction to special libraries.

We special librarians have in our files such diversified material as newspaper clippings, pamphlets, magazines, telephone directories, corporation directories, yearbooks, government documents, advertisements, art prints, and so on. To us, all this is knowledge — knowledge needed by the business man, the research worker or the specialist in his profession. And it is our job to see that this knowledge is usefully applied.

He was followed by Eleanor Cavanaugh, librarian at Standard Statistics Co., New York City, who explained how a business could profit from its own library resources. After offering a few examples, she stated, “The special librarian has, in the past twenty-five years, justified the judgment of those executives who realized the need of some organized and centralized fact-finding department within their own organization.” Angus Fletcher, Director of the British Library of Information in New York, delivered the final radio session devoted to “Putting Government Documents to Work.” The British Library in New York had a unique function in the SLA fellowship which was populated mostly by business concerns. This library was part of a growing Anglo-American culture spanning the Atlantic.

“It was established in the year 1920 and attached to the British Consulate-General in the city of New York. Its task is to serve the general public as a library of authoritative information on British affairs, and it is also the office to which appropriate questions are referred by the British Embassy and Consulates in the United States.”

Delegates concluded the convention on Friday afternoon with a short tour and a social tea at the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club, hosted by the city of Montreal, before returning home. By all accounts, especially in newspapers, the SLA’s annual meeting was a success. The host chapter had enlisted the aid of McGill University, the CBC, the Quebec Library Association, municipal and provincial officials to bolster their confidence. They were justly proud of hosting SLA and realizing the Montreal chapter had attained the seventh largest membership in just four years! This organizational experience would stand the chapter in good stead in the prewar years. The group would participate in two more important Canadian inter-provincial library conferences held in Ottawa in 1937 and Montreal in 1939 by offering organization assistance and speakers to highlight their respective views. Its example encouraged special librarians in Toronto to form their own chapter in 1940 and, eventually, host SLA’s annual conference there in 1953.

Further reading:

Selected speeches, the conference program, three radio broadcasts, and various SLA reports are available in the digitized issue of Special Libraries for July-August 1936.