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

The Canadian Bibliographic Centre

Just as Sir John A. Macdonald had overseen the first parliamentary discussions on a national library, so too did his bust stare out over the first activities of the library’s predecessor, the Canadian Bibliographic Centre. The quarters may have been a "dark chamber", but they were no House of Commons. The few souls hired in early 1950 to get the Centre started sat behind filing cabinets at one end of the museum room in the Public Archives on Sussex Drive. Visitors would ask where General Wolfe’s baby shoes were.

The Canadian Bibliographic Centre's corner of the Exhibition Room in the Public Archives building.

At its first meeting, in March 1949, the National Library Advisory Committee, approved by Cabinet months earlier, had recommended the immediate establishment of a bibliographic centre. The centre would be the first step in the creation of a national library for Canada. Chaired by Dominion Archivist W. Kaye Lamb, the Committee saw as the core of the centre a union catalogue of the holdings of Ottawa’s government libraries, to which would later be added special collections of other libraries across the country. Subsequently, the Committee recommended that the proposed centre be given the task of compiling a current bibliography of Canadian publications. Secretary of State Gordon Bradley approved the plan and, in February 1950, appointed Dr. Lamb to administer the new Canadian Bibliographic Centre.

Though, for the sake of simplicity, funding for the Centre was included in the Public Archives estimates, the Centre, with an initial budget of $41 000, was organizationally separate from the Archives from its inception. Dr. Lamb moved quickly to make three key appointments. The first was of Martha Shepard, who assumed her duties as director on May 1, the day the Centre came officially into being. Miss Shepard was eminently qualified for the position, having had 10 years’ experience as a reference librarian at the Toronto Public Library and possessing specialized photographic training, a critical attribute for the job. Miss Shepard’s assignment was to start a reference service and begin the compilation of a national union catalogue.

The second appointment, two months later, was of Jean Lunn, who held a doctorate in Canadian history from McGill University and was librarian at the Fraser Institute. As bibliographer, Dr. Lunn was to create a national bibliography and to be in charge of the production of other listings. Dr. Lamb then recruited Adèle Languedoc, primarily to work on French publications and French bibliographies. A professional librarian, Miss Languedoc came to the Centre after four years of service with American Relief for France, where she assisted with the rehabilitation of libraries following the war. Soon, Mlle Clarisse Cardin joined the team to work on the national bibliography, followed by Dr. Ian Wees to help with the union catalogue.

Work on the National Union Catalogue began immediately upon Miss Shepard’s arrival. The idea was to microfilm the main entry catalogue cards of selected libraries (starting with Ottawa’s government libraries), produce five-inch-wide roles of prints, cut them into facsimiles of the original cards, stamp them with a library location symbol, and interfile them into an alphabetical arrangement which would become the Union Catalogue. By the end of 1950, the catalogues of four government libraries, the Toronto Public Library Reference Division and the University of New Brunswick Library had been completed. Libraries taken into the fold in this manner were asked to keep the record up to date by sending in cards for new acquisitions and discards. By the end of 1952, the Union Catalogue represented over one million volumes held by 37 libraries.

At the same time, the Centre began assembling what was to become a massive collection of bibliographic and other reference works. These were used to reconcile Union Catalogue entries from different libraries for what were thought to be the same work and edition, to identify and verify publications improperly cited by libraries requesting locations for interlibrary loans, and to respond to conventional reference questions.

The Centre was anxious to make a quick impression on the Canadian library community. The opportunity presented itself almost immediately. Dr. Lamb had become aware that two members of the Toronto Public Library staff, Dorothea Todd and Audrey Cordingley, had been compiling a check-list of Canadian imprints for the period 1900-1925. He secured their agreement to have the Bibliographic Centre publish the list. With the cooperation of Canadian Library Association’s executive director, Elizabeth Morton, the Centre arranged to have sample copies ready for display at the Association’s June 1950 conference.

Public Archives building, Sussex Drive. Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada.

The main publishing project, though, was the national bibliography – the listing of all current materials published in Canada as well as those about Canada or written by Canadians but published elsewhere. The Toronto Public Library had been issuing an annual Canadian Catalogue of Books since 1923, but in 1950 arranged for the catalogue to be published as instalments in the Canadian Library Association’s Bulletin. With the advent of the Canadian Bibliographic Centre, the Toronto Public Library was only too happy to hand the responsibility for the bibliography’s production over to the Centre. The first issue of Canadiana, as the Centre renamed the catalogue, appeared as an independent publication in January 1951. Canadiana continued and expanded the previous catalogue; and it added publications of the Canadian government. French titles were listed in French and English titles in English. After the first six semi-monthly issues, Canadiana became a monthly. By May of 1951, some 420 Canadian libraries were receiving the publication free of charge.

Adèle Languedoc had the key job of finding out about Canadian publications, contacting publishers and persuading them to send copies to the Centre for cataloguing and listing. Many, but not all, publishers were happy to cooperate. Those that did realized the advantage of having their titles brought to the attention of hundreds of prospective purchasing libraries. Unlike some other countries, Canada had no legal deposit requirement at the time. That would have to wait until the National Library Act came into being. Miss Languedoc and Dr. Lamb, himself, scoured foreign journals and publishers’ listings for items having a Canadian connection. The Centre purchased these. At the same time, Dr. Lunn scanned publications sent to the Library of Parliament under the completely separate regime of copyright deposit. Most of these titles were American, but only by looking at them could she determine whether any qualified for Canadiana. She did this by going right to the parliamentary library shelves, picking out the wanted titles and cataloguing them on the spot, often having to climb ladders to do so.

Production of Canadiana was labour intensive. Staff typed cataloguing entries on strips of lined card stock, cut them, and pasted them onto brown paper sheets. These sheets became the camera-ready copy, which then went to the Government Printing Bureau. When the sheets came back, the individual cards were removed from their paper backing with a letter opener, interfiled with those from previous issues, and then re-assembled at the end of the year for the annual cumulation.

Dr. Lamb had always felt very strongly that preservation was one of the most important tasks of a national library. In the first days of the Bibliographic Centre, he discovered that hundreds of titles listed in Marie Tremaine’s Bibliography of Canadian Imprints to 1800 existed in only one or two copies. Using a grant from the Americana Corporation in New York and a portable Recordak E camera borrowed from the Library of Congress, he spent family vacations and business trips tracking down and microfilming the rare items in libraries across the country. Copies were then made available for loan or purchase.

Other early projects included the publication of a guide to Canadian Graduate Theses in the Humanities and Social Sciences (1951) and, in cooperation with the Canadian Library Association, the annual cumulation of the Canadian Index to Periodicals and Documentary Films (1952).

So proceeded the work of the Canadian Bibliographic Centre. But the ultimate goal of a national library was not forgotten. In taped conversations several years ago, Dr. Lamb recalled the steps leading to the passage of the National Library Act. Shortly after Dr. Lamb came to Ottawa as Dominion archivist in 1949, prime ministerial aide Jack Pickersgill confided in him that a royal commission on the arts, letters and sciences (the Massey Commission) was about to be established, and that the matter of a national library was to be referred to it. Dr. Lamb was uneasy about the possibility of the commissioners being asked to recommend whether there should be a library, since he felt the question had already been decided by the terms of his own appointment. He advised that they be asked to recommend the character and extent of the library instead. This the Commission did in its 1951 report. Though, so far as Dr. Lamb was concerned, the Commission suggested little that was not already conventional wisdom, it did keep the promise of a national library in the government’s mind.

The February 1952 Speech from the Throne announced that Parliament would be asked to consider legislation for the establishment of a national library and to provide for the construction of a building in which to house it. In May 1952, Dr. Lamb sat in the gallery when Prime Minister St. Laurent gave his speech sponsoring the bill. It proceeded quickly, receiving Royal Assent within two months. The National Library Act took effect January 1, 1953.

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Main Sources

Carolynn Robertson. The Canadian Bibliographic Centre: Preparing the Way for the National Library of Canada. Ottawa: National Library, August 14, 1999.

F. Dolores Donnelly. The National Library of Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1973.

Lawrence J. Burpee. "A Plea for a National Library". The University Magazine. February 1911.

House of Commons. Debates.

Transcript of oral history interview with W. Kaye Lamb, conducted by Basil Stuart-Stubbs, 1988.

Transcript of oral history interview with Adèle Languedoc and Jean Lunn, conducted by Beryl Anderson, 1988.

Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. Report. Ottawa: 1951.