National Library News October 1999 Vol. 31, no. 10

There is a short story for young people in which the protagonist, a fur trapper, learns at great personal cost, the value of building a solid bridge of not just one but two logs to cross the rivers of an untamed North American landscape. The National Library of Canada goes one better than our hapless hero, and constructs numerous bridges to its rich and diverse landscape of Canadian collections. In this issue of National Library News, as in the previous one, the focus is on the accessibility to the collections and services of the National Library which enables Canadians to avail themselves of their published heritage.

In the first section, "Bringing Literature and Music to the Public", the emphasis is on youth and popular culture. Céline Gendron describes the 1999 Read Up On It, the Library’s annual, bilingual thematic guide to Canadian literature for young readers. Now in its 11th year, this RUOI celebrates humour and is aptly entitled, Tickle your Funny Bone! For his part, Dr. S. Timothy Maloney is "Takin’ Care of Business" when he details the efforts of the Music Division to strengthen the Library’s collections of jazz, pop, and rock musicians. The title of the article is a reference, of course, to a ‘classic’ tune long associated with Randy Bachman. The Library acquired the Bachman archive several years ago and aims to complement it with the collections of his contemporaries in popular music.

Since its inception, the Library has faced the challenge of distance in rendering its collections accessible to all Canadians. Resource sharing services such as the union catalogue, Canadian Book Exchange Centre, interlibrary loan, and document delivery continue to bridge the gap between collections and Canadians, through the intermediary of an extensive library network. Now, however, we have new media at our disposal which bring Canadians into immediate and direct contact with the Library’s holdings.

The section, "New Media", highlights a number of key endeavours that connect Canadians with their published heritage. Louise Tousignant works directly with the electronic Canadian periodicals and she reports on the challenges of managing a collection of e-Canadiana. Stepping back from the Library’s own collection, Nancy Brodie describes Virtuoso, a non-profit scholarly publishing group to which the Library belongs. Changes in the publishing landscape are making new connections necessary and through Virtuoso, the Library and its partners will examine the electronic publishing process from creation through description and dissemination.

In "New Media", we are treating not only the questions of information which is ‘born digital’, but also information which has been transformed from a traditional format to an electronic one. It is increasingly recognized that not all existing print information will be digitized: the costs are prohibitive, and the pay back questionable. That stated, selective digitization of material with Canadian content has tremendous potential to enlighten, educate and inform. The next articles offer three different examples of new technology as a bridge between formats.

Alan Gillmor, a music professor at Carleton University, embarked on an innovative research project to transform information from manuscript to digital utilizing a voice recognition software program. His report on his project with the Istvan Anhalt fonds is both instructive and humorous. As noted in "Old Grooves, New Waves" Richard Green has transformed audio to digital. The Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings brings the earliest 78 rpm recordings in the Library’s recorded sound collection to the world through the multimedia capabilities of the Internet and is available on the Library Web site at <http://www.nlc-bnc.ca>. The National Library’s first, and still among the most popular sites, is Canadian Confederation. What began as the digitization of a selection of print publications, woven together through narrative, has been enhanced by the addition of more primary material, as well as additional interpretative text. Norma Gauld outlines the plans to further enhance this thematic, multimedia resource to render it even more valuable to students of Canada’s history.

Technology, such as digitization, can bridge the physical space between the collection and Canadians, as has been demonstrated by the above articles. Intellectual access, however, closes the gap in another way. The finding aid to a manuscript collection is the bridge a researcher traverses to understand the contents of such collections. Catherine Hobbs created the finding aid to the second accession of prize-winning author Carol Shields’s fonds. Her experience was one of discovery and delight.

Another form of intellectual access is that afforded by the cataloguers. Presenting a particular challenge are the publications in the more than 100 languages that comprise the multilingual mosaic that is Canada. Marjorie Malcolm and David Murrell-Wright explain the cataloguing practices which provide user access to foreign-language material in the Library’s collection.

Library staff are joined by the research community in endeavours to describe and interpret the Library’s collections, to mutual benefit. SAVOIR FAIRE, a seminar series, now in its fourth year, is a forum for the exchange of information on topics in Canadian studies. Mary Bond and Norma Gauld document the series and, in so doing, demonstrate the vibrancy and variety of scholarly activity at the National Library.

Mark Kristmanson, SAVOIR FAIRE presenter - in a letter to Mary Jane Starr
June 22, 1999

Frequently, the Library allows the creators whose works are represented in the collection to speak for themselves. Such was the case with first-time author M.P. Rogers, who, now in her ninth decade, gave a reading from her novel, OONA ParaSelene. In the International Year of Older Persons, M.P. Rogers connected with her listeners, and bridged more than one generation gap.

Accomplished women are in vogue in October as the Library marks Women’s History Month with another edition to its Web site, Celebrating Women’s Achievement. In her article, "Changing Canadian Women, Changing Canadian History", Mary Bond identifies the Canadian activists who will be added to this growing electronic biographical resource.

As our collections grow, so too do the ways and means of accessing them. Be they traditional or innovative, physical or intellectual, the methods of access the National Library provides to its collections and services allows Canadians, and those interested in Canada, to explore the country’s published heritage.