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National Library News |
The Canadian Bibliographic Centre had very modest beginnings 50 years ago. In these extracts from his unpublished memoirs (MG 31, D8, vol. 18, file 8, p. 247-251), Dr. W. Kaye Lamb, newly appointed Dominion archivist and chair of the National Advisory Committee, recounts his struggles to institute the Library and have it taken as seriously as its more established sister institution, the then Public Archives of Canada.
"As soon as I arrived in Ottawa the Minister appointed a National Library Advisory Committee to assist me with the preliminary planning. It included ten members from all across the country, as well as Francis Hardy, Librarian of Parliament, and myself. The backbone of the committee, from my point of view, was the three working librarians – Edgar Robinson, of Vancouver Public Library, Elizabeth Dafoe, Librarian of the University of Manitoba, and Peter Grossman, of the Nova Scotia Regional Libraries.
"The Committee met first on March 4, 1949, and I proposed that as a first step toward a National Library we should establish a Bibliographic Centre which, with a minimum of books and staff, could begin work on two projects that were obvious functions of a National Library – a Union catalogue, to provide a key to the book resources of the country, and a catalogue of current publications of Canadian origin, authorship or interest, which I hoped might soon begin to appear in the form of a periodical distributed free to all Canadian libraries.
"For the next year we could do little except plan, until funds became available in the estimates for 1950-51, but in February 1950, in anticipation, the Minister had given me written authority to go ahead with the organization of a Bibliographic Centre. Martha Shepard, formerly in the Reference Division of the Toronto Public Library, became Director of the Centre on May 1, 1950. Dr. Jean Lunn, formerly Librarian of the Fraser Institute of Montreal, joined the staff on July 1 as Bibliographer, and at once took over responsibility for the current list, which we had decided should be entitled Canadiana. It appeared as a separate publication in January 1951, and thereafter the never-ending struggle began (1) to publish the monthly issues on time (which we were often unable to do), and (2) to secure copies of the new publications that should be included in it. This latter was a sleuthing assignment of major proportions, and it was performed superbly for years by Adèle Languedoc, who joined the staff in January 1951. The Shepard - Lunn - Languedoc combination was a quite extraordinary aggregation of varied talents, and the National Library project profited enormously from their devoted work over the next twenty years, much of the time under physical conditions that were far from ideal.
"As early as 1951 I had taken to trudging around Ottawa, looking for a possible site for a National Library building. The other point I had in mind as a requirement for the site right from the beginning, was that the building should house both the National Library and the Public Archives. And there was, to my mind, sound strategy behind this view. I could sense that there was some sentiment in favor of building a library building quite soon, but this had not been accompanied by any generous financial provision for the library itself. In 1952, when all this came to head, the Bibliographic Centre was still accommodated, fairly comfortably, in one of the larger museum rooms in the Old Archives Building. To contend that an institution of that minuscule size could justify the construction of a large building erected with an eye to the future was simply not realistic. If a separate structure were built, it would be somewhat on the scale of the Ottawa Public Library. My solution to this dilemma was to assume (as proved to be the case) that when building time came no objection would be raised if I set out to accommodate both the branches under my jurisdiction, and just not the one that happened to be more talked about."
In this piece, Dr. Lamb reveals himself again as a personable and generous leader, citing the contributions of the people who aided him in his life’s adventure, to found one institution while maintaining another. As his approach to his duties included a certain amount of dry humour, he would understand that I urge you to hang on to those candles from the celebration of the Bibliographic Centre for the 50th anniversary of the National Library itself in 2003.
Ian E. Wilson,
National Archivist