National Library News September 1999 Vol. 31, no. 9

Building Bridges

"There are famous bridges over great waters/lesser known ones join small towns and country roads. All are useful in extending reach and viewpoint..." ¹

Building bridges is the theme of the September and October issues of National Library News. Bridges as a metaphor for access to the National Library’s collections seem as appropriate today in light of the information highway, as in the days of iron rails and corduroy roads. The reasons for approaching the collections are myriad; as are the bridges, if you will, for rendering them accessible, for spanning the gulf which may exist between the researcher or reader, and the enormity and complexity of holdings of more than 16 000 000 items.

A collection as vast as the National Library’s demands description, interpretation, and contextualization in order to render it both available and comprehensible. These two issues of the National Library News highlight the activities and programs of the Library that can be deemed bridges which link researchers and the general public with the collections and services of the National Library of Canada.

For more than 20 years, the National Library has mounted exhibitions as a means of bringing select items from the collection into public view. In this issue, Nina Milner casts an eye back over two decades of exhibitions and focuses on the goals and the successes of the Library’s exhibition program. The millennium period offers a unique opportunity for exhibition programming, and the Library has adopted a "past-present-future" approach for the annual major exhibition in each of 1999, 2000 and 2001.

For the current exhibition, Impressions: 250 Years in the Lives of Canadians, Michel Brisebois, rare books curator, goes inside the exhibit and writes from his perspective as curator. In the year 2000, the Library will celebrate the internationally-renowned jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, whose archive is housed at the National Library, and in 2001, we will present Canadians’ views of their collective future. Entitled "Looking to the Future", Randall Ware’s article describes the early planning for the 2001 exhibition and outlines the external support the Library has garnered to date for the 2000 exhibit.

Within the framework of public programming, exhibitions are complemented by cultural events. These events bridge the distance between the author, illustrator, composer and performer and the reader and listener. They are a powerful combination of a transcendental present with a future promise. The former derives from the real-time connection of the reader to the author, a bridge of spoken words. In the case of musical performance, it is the notes themselves that form the connection between those who compose and perform and those who listen and appreciate. The promise resides in the fact that many of the creative Canadians who take part in the Library’s public programming are at the early stage of their careers. In a temporal sense, a series of linked bridges is created among the past works, the current publication, and future achievement.

The section of this issue entitled "Hear and Now" illuminates the National Library’s role as a voice and venue for Canada’s published heritage. Randall Ware reflects on his experience over the last decade in presenting Canadian writers and musicians to an increasingly engaged public. In doing so, he compiles an impressive list of Canadian creators with whom he has worked, some with solid and well-deserved reputations and others whose accolades and prizes were yet to be realized. For the delight of recognition and, perhaps, remembrance, a collection of photographs offers a pictorial record of a selection of the hundreds of cultural events at the Library in recent years.

September 1999 is a milestone for the Library, as the auditorium in 395 Wellington will be reopened after a complete renovation. The facility will once again welcome audiences who seek to understand and appreciate Canada’s musical and literary heritage. Marcia MacDonald, planning officer in Research and Information Services, identifies the significant features of this new space in an article entitled, "Pride of Place: A New Auditorium to Showcase Canada’s Cultural Heritage".

In November, the National Library, with the support of several partners, notably the Canada Council and CGI, will present the ninth Governor General’s Literary Awards Gala Reading. This evening is a jewel in the Library’s public programming crown. A capacity audience will fill the auditorium to share in the excitement and joy of the 14 winners of the 1999 literary awards. This event serves as a bridge between communities: the authors, illustrators, translators who create the works and the readers who delight in their achievements. A bilingual presentation, the gala reading is a bridge between linguistic communities, as anglophone and francophone prize winners take to the stage, to speak to or read from their respective works. To gain a first-hand perspective of the excitement, one of the 1998 recipients, Diane Schoemperlen, describes her reaction to events surrounding the awarding of the prize.

Exhibits, displays, readings, musical performances, and other forms of public programming are more often associated in the public mind with galleries and museums, than with libraries. Cheryl Jaffee, curator of the Jacob M. Lowy Collection, muses on the role and place of the library as a cultural institution and of librarians as bridge builders in her article, "No Mystique Necessary".

Showcasing Canadian literary and musical publishing is the goal of public programs. Increasingly, the Library is featuring those authors and musicians whose archives are found in the Literary or Music Manuscript Collections. These primary materials augment and enhance the Library’s holdings of published works acquired through a variety of mechanisms, including legal deposit, gifts and exchange. For researchers, the collocation of primary and secondary material in one institution is ideal. For public programming, it is inspirational.

In this issue, Pat MacDonald, Research and Information Services, highlights the primary resources in Quebec and French-Canadian literature in the Literary Manuscript Collection in a piece entitled "Gems in the Collection". In the October issue, Dr. Timothy Maloney, director of the Music Division describes the Library’s initiative to collect archives in the realm of popular music, to complement the Library’s existing strengths in what is commonly referred to as classical music. In the same issue, Catherine Hobbs will focus on her experience in creating a finding aid to the Carol Shields fonds, a rich resource for the study and appreciation of Canada’s literary heritage.

Fundamental to accessing a collection is the bibliographic description of each item. A series of articles in this issue explore specific means by which researchers and the general public can approach and understand the totality of Canada’s published heritage. The assignment of subject headings is one bridge that facilitates this process, and the National Library assumes a responsibility for ensuring that Canadian topics are accurately and appropriately reflected. Répertoire des vedettes-matière (RVM) and Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) are complementary intellectual endeavours to capture, describe and thus render accessible that which is Canadian. Michel Fournier, Université Laval Library, describes RVM in "When We Do Not Know the Title of a Work...." David Farris, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services, describes the latter in his article, "Retrieving Information through Canadian Subject Headings".

As Canada’s published heritage is increasingly electronic in format, the Library has constructed new kinds of bridges to render e-publications accessible. Canadian Information by Subject (CIBS) is a structured guide to Canadian information resources found on Internet sites. David Murrell-Wright, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services, explains the coverage, structure and ease-of-use of CIBS. While CIBS tracks Canadian content on the net, Barrie Burns describes how Canadiana: The National Bibliography on CD-ROM "takes advantage of the storage capacity and retrieval flexibility of CD-ROM technology" to provide searchable bibliographic records for Canadiana, in his article "The National Bibliography: New Wine, New Bottles". In the October issue, Louise Tousignant from the Electronic Publications Acquisitions section will expand on the theme of electronic access in "From the Electronic Collection: Preparing On-line Periodicals and Access to Content". In her article, she details the challenges of creating access to this dynamic portion of our published heritage, Canadiana.

This issue of National Library News highlights some of the bridges for understanding and appreciating Canada’s published heritage. In the October issue, we will focus on Canadian books and their readers, as well as the new media and how the Library is bringing its collections to a wider public through digital technology.