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National Library News |
Clarisse Cardin,
former Librarian at the Canadian Bibliographic Centre, and
Chief of the Subject Analysis Division, National Library of Canada
As you no doubt know by now, Canadiana began in a corner of the Public Archives Museum, in an old building on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. A few screens separated the Canadian Bibliographic Centre from items displayed in the Museum. The voices of visitors to the Museum did not reach the Centre, aside from a few exclamations at the sight of Wolfe’s chair.
The Bibliographic Centre staff was very limited; towards the end of 1951, it was composed of only eight people, four of whom would later worked on the national bibliography under the enlightened leadership of Dr. Jean Lunn.
Legal deposit did not become mandatory until 1953, the year in which the National Library absorbed the Bibliographic Centre. The Centre, therefore, had to find other means of acquiring the publications listed in Canadiana. Although the largest publishers generally sent a copy of their publications, literary sections of many newspapers and specialized journals had to be scanned in order to locate and request other publications. Research was also conducted in bookstores. Some staff members, even while on vacation abroad, found translations of Canadian or Canadian-born authors’ works in bookstores. I remember, in particular, a Turkish translation of Arthur Hailey’s Airport being found in an Istanbul bookstore. Canadian government publications, however, were easier to obtain than those of commercial or private publishers.
The catalogers of the Bibliographic Centre compiled entries according to the A.L.A. Cataloging Rules for Author and Title Entries, 2nd ed., 1949, and the Rules for Descriptive Cataloging in the Library of Congress, 1949. The data elements were typed on small pieces of paper and, after verification, they were transferred onto strips of heavy paper, which were then cut to make cards for each individual entry. The entries and their cross-references were then arranged in alphabetical order and glued to a large rectangle of packing paper which was fastened to a drawing board. Thus, a page was created. A running head and pagination were added and, once reduced, the pages were reproduced by photolithography. On January 15, 1951, using this method, the Centre produced the first of what would be many issues of Canadiana.
The modest but promising early history of Canadiana paved the way for today’s national bibliography, a bibliography which has been, and continues to be, enhanced through the use of new information and computer technologies.