National Library News May 2000 Vol. 32, no. 5

The Germ of the National Library

I joined the staff of the Canadian Bibliographic Centre at the beginning of November 1952. A young, inexperienced librarian, I had graduated from the McGill University Library School that same year. Early in 1952, I had been fortunate enough to visit the Canadian Bibliographic Centre with my library school class.

While in Ottawa, I applied for work with the federal government and was interviewed by an large, intimidating board of government librarians (there must have been about a dozen of them), including Adèle Languedoc, the Canadiana acquisitions librarian at the Canadian Bibliographic Centre. The experience reminded me of a post-graduate student submitting to an oral examination before earning his or her degree. I also took the opportunity, while in the nation’s capital, to meet W. Kaye Lamb, the Dominion Archivist and soon-to-become first national librarian, in his spacious office; it was a Saturday morning, as I recall, and Dr. Lamb chatted affably with me for perhaps half an hour.

After gaining my library science degree, I worked for several months as a reference librarian at the Winnipeg Public Library before unexpectedly receiving a letter from Martha Shepard, Director of the Canadian Bibliographic Centre, inviting me to work at the Centre. I was the first man and last librarian to join the staff before the Bibliographic Centre was promoted to the National Library of Canada in January 1953.

When I arrived, the staff of the Bibliographic Centre consisted of four clerks and four librarians. The Centre was located on the ground floor of the old Public Archives building (now the Canadian War Museum); at the time, the National Gallery of Canada was similarly situated in part of the National Museum building in Ottawa. The Bibliographic Centre staff was crowded into one end of the Archives museum, which contained busts, flags, paintings and an assortment of other artifacts relating to Canadian history. The area being open to the public, the Bibliographic Centre employees were on display along with the various historical objects (such as a large model of Quebec City). The commodious museum was occasionally used for staff parties, and I remember a Christmas dance for the Public Archives and Canadian Bibliographic Centre employees being held there in 1952.

The staff of the Bibliographic Centre resembled a small family, with Dr. Lamb as its father; he was even referred to as "Father" by some of the librarians. He was our figurative father and that of the soon-to-be-born National Library.

Our little family was part of a larger one, the staff of the Public Archives; and a friendly closeness or neighbourliness existed between the two staffs. The Public Archives staff was itself still on the small side in those far-off days, and we came to know the clerks and archivists who shared the building with us (one of them being Wilfred Smith, later to succeed W. Kaye Lamb as Dominion archivist).

At the beginning, I worked half days for Jean Lunn, cataloguing publications for Canadiana, and half days for Martha Shepard, editing Union Catalogue cards. My job was humble and my salary small (I started at a yearly salary of about $2 800); and we had to work five-and-a-half-day weeks at that time, with only two weeks of annual leave. Nevertheless, I felt privileged to be one of the pioneers at the Canadian Bibliographic Centre and to be able to contribute to the development of services unique in Canada.

In my book on the first 25 years of the National Library, published in 1978, I included the following anecdote. Jean Lunn and Adèle Languedoc once attended a reception at which Vincent Massey was present. Dr. Lunn was introduced to Mr. Massey, who, after being told that she worked at the Canadian Bibliographic Centre, exclaimed, "Ah, yes – the germ of the National Library." Whereupon, Miss Languedoc impulsively said to Mr. Massey, "And I’m the assistant germ."

We were preparing the way for the National Library, but hard would it have been for me to imagine, in those pre-1953 days, that so tiny a germ would grow into the large, complex institution that now exists – nor did I ever imagine that I would someday be the first editor of the National Library News.