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November 1995, vol. 27, no. 11
by Pam Bjornson, Executive Director, Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
Introduction
"Significant Treasures", a monthly series published in the Globe and Mail, recently highlighted a rare book in the collection of the National Library of Canada. The treasure is an original copy of the first book on Canada by a Canadian: Histoire veritable et naturelle des moeurs & productions du pays de la Nouvelle-France... dite Le Canada, by Pierre Boucher.
Fifteen years ago, the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) microfilmed its first book: this very copy of Histoire veritable, which was printed in Paris in 1664. The CIHM Canadiana access and preservation project now comprises over 70 000 titles, but this first microfiche, with CIHM No. 00001 in the corner, still has a special significance for those associated with CIHM, and reminds us of the importance of what one CIHM founder called "the project of microfilming an entire national literature".
Background and Mandate
CIHM was established in 1978 in response to concern among Canadian librarians and scholars about the widely dispersed and physically deteriorating Canadian print heritage. CIHM's mandate is to make printed Canadiana, including rare and scarce material, more easily available to Canadians from coast to coast, and to bring scattered holdings together in a single comprehensive microfiche collection. Institute staff locate, catalogue, and film printed Canadiana, and the resulting research collection is made available to libraries within Canada and abroad.
Many of Canada's major collections of Canadiana date back to colonial times. These collections are dispersed across a vast country, and this has made research difficult and very costly, as scholars have had to travel between distant libraries in search of materials. Added to this consideration is the serious problem of the deterioration of printed materials, the result of the acids used in manufacturing paper during the past 150 years.
The Institute has made selections from Canadiana holdings and produced a comprehensive microfiche collection with emphasis on two areas, preservation of the intellectual content of the original, and scholarly access to the resulting collection. Access is enhanced by print catalogues and indexes, online catalogues available at many major libraries, and indexed microfiche catalogues. The collection is published on microfiche, which facilitates handling and user access.
Operations
The Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions is an independent non-profit organization. Members of the Board of Directors are scholars, bibliographers, university library directors, and business people. Some of the librarians and scholars who have served as directors of the Institute include David Bentley, Ramsay Cook, Patricia Fleming, Claude Galarneau, Gayle Garlock, Doug Lochhead, Carman Miller, Bruce Peel, Muriel Roy, George Story, and Thomas H.B. Symons. Two National Librarians, Marianne Scott and Guy Sylvestre, have also served on the board, ensuring a strong link with the National Library of Canada. Additional input is sought from the university community through advisory committees which assist with developing selection criteria for specific collections.
The Institute's head office is located in Ottawa, where staff research, catalogue, and prepare materials for filming. One full-time researcher is based at the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, and other regional researchers from Halifax, Wolfville, Quebec City, Montreal, London, and Vancouver survey local collections as needed. Three additional regional staff members will be added shortly, one in each of the Prairie provinces.
Established in 1978 with a major developmental grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), the Institute has evolved into a successful cooperative organization whose partners include the major Canadian research libraries, SSHRCC, and the Department of Canadian Heritage. Many other libraries in Canada and abroad assist the work of the Institute by purchasing CIHM collections or lending their materials for filming.
The National Library of Canada has supported CIHM in many essential ways. The Library provided the initial training of the Institute's cataloguing staff during the first years of operation, bibliographic research contracts, and office space. More recently, the Library's Internet link and Library products such as CANMARC tapes support the CIHM collections and make them widely accessible. As well, both the National Library and the National Archives of Canada have generously made available their collections, including Rare Books and Special Collections, for filming.
The Early Canadiana Collections
The Early Canadiana microfiche collection spans three and a half centuries of Canadian development, and is a major research source for the study of Canada in every discipline. The collection includes not only very rare and scarce materials, such as the Pierre Boucher work mentioned above, the Jesuit Relations, or de Bry's Grands Voyages (both held by the National Library), but also numerous documents that reconstruct the lives, movements, and social milieus of early Canadians. The collection includes history, geography, religion, philosophy, French- and English-Canadian literature, politics, science, technology, fine arts, economics, and Native studies. It is also used for research on urban life, immigration, labour history, women's studies, Arctic and northern studies, genealogy and local history.
The monographs collection was produced between 1978 and 1988, and contains microfiche copies of 57 800 books, pamphlets, and ephemera printed before 1900. The aim was to create a representative collection of pre-1900 Canadiana by including at least one edition, usually the first, of materials published in Canada, written by Canadians, or containing significant Canadian content.
The pre-1900 serials project began in 1988 with a collection of annual publications, and one year later the Institute began to microfilm early Canadian periodicals. The resulting periodicals collection comprises approximately 57 500 issues of 1 285 titles. The annuals collection includes almanacs, directories, and annual reports of various kinds. The periodicals collection includes Canadian imprints to 1900, excluding those already filmed in their entirety by commercial firms.
In 1994, CIHM embarked on its third ongoing project: microfilming Canadian monographs published between 1901 and 1920. This collection, like the annuals and periodicals, contains Canadian imprints only, except in the field of literature, which will include a representative selection of books by Canadian writers published abroad.
Books from the early twentieth century are as brittle as those of the late nineteenth century, and many are so fragile that they have already been withdrawn from circulation. Canadian Monographs 1900 to 1920 will add 25 000 Canadian titles over the course of the five-year project. CIHM's bibliographic research for this project will augment significantly the knowledge about publications from this period.
Contemporary Research
CIHM serves a library and scholarly community that is changing rapidly. These changes, including financial cutbacks, increased resource sharing among university libraries, new technologies, and corresponding changes in patterns of research, could significantly affect the future work of the Institute. Rapidly changing technologies mean that CIHM must choose the best means possible to ensure the accessibility of our collec-tions. At some point, this may entail duplicate recording of a book for distribution in several formats. At present, recent studies indicate that the best practice is to continue using microfilm, which can be converted to an electronic format as needed. A pilot project investigating digitization of microfiche is in the planning stages.
Access
Most Canadian research libraries that subscribe to the Early Canadiana collection have mounted the records on their online computer catalogues. The CIHM collection is usually housed in a library's microforms section, which often has a staff member responsible for assisting researchers with those collections.
For the pre-1900 monographs, annuals, and periodicals collections, there is a catalogue on microfiche called Canada: The Printed Record (Ottawa, 1995). The microfiche catalogue has a general register and seven indexes, allowing the collection to be searched by author, title, series, subject, date or place of publication, and CIHM number. The collection records are also in the AMICUS, and ISM databases, and some can also be found in the OCLC database. CIHM's new World Wide Web homepage offers form-based searching of the complete CIHM database and bilingual access to information about CIHM services and collections. The Institute is very grateful to the National Library of Canada, which assisted the Institute's staff in establishing the homepage, and to the University of New Brunswick Library, which made the CIHM database available via the World Wide Web. The WWW address for the CIHM homepage is http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cihm/home.html
Future Directions
CIHM endeavours to make the Early Canadiana collection, a record of Canada's printed heritage, accessible to all Canadians. Individual titles are available on microfiche or in printed format, and the Institute also has a database search service, which provides custom bibliographies.
With the help of scholarly working groups, CIHM hopes to refine further the pre-1900 collections to create specialized subject sets, and also to publish additional print resources and other access tools. Interested librarians and researchers are encouraged to share their ideas and comments through articles or notes in the CIHM newsletter Facsimile, participation on advisory committees, and informal contact with the staff and board.
Please contact CIHM for an information kit and a complete list of libraries which hold CIHM collections or subject sets.
Contact:
Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
P.O. Box 2428
Ottawa, Ontario
KIP 5W5
Telephone: (613) 235-2628
Fax: (613) 235-9752
Internet: cihmicmh@nlc-bnc.ca
Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1995-12-11).