Canadian Library History Blog

Betty Butterill, n.d. I had an opportunity to speak at OLA's most recent Super Conference in Toronto. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the revamped annual OLA conference! OLA's restructuring of its various annual meetings and sub-conferences in the mid-1990s has been highly successful for the library community and its trade show, attracting attention from across Canada, not just the province of Ontario. Anyway, I was speaking at a session designed on "governance" mostly aimed at library trustees but also of some interest to librarians and people interested in libraries as well. I am posting a PDF version of a PowerPoint that I used to talk about a "short history" of Ontario's public library movement, its trustees, legislation, the OLA itself, and some main trends that have absorbed people's attention over the past century. The history of libraries in Ontario does not usually focus on library boards or trusteeship or the OLA's impact but i...

Early in the twentieth century a small group of trustees, librarians, and persons interested in libraries met in Toronto at the Ontario Education Department's Normal School located on St. James Square (present-day Ryerson University). They planned to form an association to promote public library development in Ontario, despite the their small numbers--just more than thirty attendees. The delegates elected James Bain, Jr., chief librarian of the Toronto Public Library as President of the Ontario Library Association. He read an inspiring paper, "The Library Movement in Ontario." The new Secretary from Lindsay, Edwin A. Hardy, gave a more pragmatic paper, "An Outline Programme of the Work of the Ontario Library Association." Both men would be instrumental in the following years in which the OLA would vigorously promote public libraries and become one of the most successful library associations in North America. Other presentations focused on Canadian literature a...

The Institution shall be called The Toronto Public Library—and the date of its commencement is hereby declared to be the 27th of October, 1842. So read a small pamphlet that outlined the bylaws and the constitution of yet another Canadian subscription library formed in the first part of the nineteenth century. The entry fee for a subscriber was £1, the quarterly subscription 2 shillings/6 pence, and payment to the Librarian 1 shilling. Like many of the more than fifty subscription libraries established in the Canadian colonies before 1850, the library did not enjoy a long lifespan. Until now, its formation has not attracted much attention, but a perusal through the pages of the British Colonist for the last months of 1842 provides insight into the slow development of the 'public library' concept in Upper Canada (called Canada West from 1841-66 and Ontario after 1867) early in the 1840s. My interest in this particular library is its name--Toronto Public Library--and the rat...

After 1980, library mechanization in Ontario's public libraries gave way to more rapid changes in automation, i.e., the systematic control of repetitive library operations by electronic equipment and programs which reduced the need for human involvement. Computers and management information software began to make possible the term “knowledge workers.” Public libraries started using computers to circulate books, track patron overdues, and provide instant information on the status of books. North York offered the New York Times in an online format. By November 1977, the complete text of Toronto’s Globe and Mail was being published online, “Info Globe,” which became immediately available for online searching and retrieval by library subscribers. For some time, the University of Toronto Library Automated System (UTLAS) provided libraries across Canada with a computerized system providing catalogue copy for books and a database of holdings that could be used for resource sharing and c...

French language display in Algonquin region, 1969 The new 1966 Public Libraries Act formed the structure for rapid, and conflicting, developments into the mid-1980s when this act was greatly modified. This was an era of continuous change in local government at a period of time when municipal regional government replaced older county structures. Expanded provincial jurisdiction over municipalities in Ontario became common. As well, federal/provincial centennial financing--$38.7 million net cost in Ontario--became available to assist the largest construction program since the Carnegie grant era. Almost seventy public library buildings were renovated or constructed in Ontario on a cost-shared basis with municipalities. The 1966 Act modernized local board structures and funding. As well, the Act introduced quasi-independent regional library systems governed by trustees in an effort to equalize services and coordinate planning across cities, towns, older counties and districts in O...

Oshawa Public Library, c.1954 The idea of the modern public library as an energetic influence promoting its services to the entire community arrived in Ontario after most Carnegie buildings had been built. Of course, the public service ethic had existed before 1920, but the value of stewardship--the library as guardian or storehouse of treasures--had loomed larger for decades. As the service value progressed into the 1950s, the public library served as a place to collect the best books and make them useful to as many children and adults as possible. The library became a more accessible community resource and an active force: books were conveniently arranged on “open” shelves, collections were catalogued, and the librarian became a guide or intermediary to assist patrons. The modern library was an appealing idea (one not wholly accepted in some of Ontario’s hundreds of municipalities) that successfully prevailed despite the austerities of the Great Depression and the Second World War. ...

Ennotville library c.1910 (built 1856)  From 1775 to 1850, small membership subscription libraries acted as public libraries dispensing educational resources and recreational reading to Canadian users on a geographic-community or common-interest reading basis. The variety, number, and collective status of subscription libraries ushered in the persistent nineteenth-century concept of the semi-private public library administered by trustees and populated by members who voluntarily agreed to accept entry charges, annual dues, and fundraising. The collegial space provided by the subscription library fostered a greater sense of publicness in an emerging Canadian nation before 1850. It also forged numerous associative identities in localities for like-minded reading groups. Subscription library development reveals that significant attributes of post-1850 municipal public libraries—especially the public library association which continues today—were inherited from Canada’s colonial li...