Readings in Canadian Library History

Kenneth M. Glazier was Chief Librarian Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

In the last decade Canada has witnessed a boom in the building of new libraries for the public and universities. There has been a realization that there can be no great university without a good library and a community needs the resources of an ade-quate public library.

This new volume, under editorship of Peter F. McNally who is an associate professor with the Graduate School of Library and Information Stud-ies at McGill University, has as its aim “to encourage awareness and discussion of the history of libraries and librarianship and of the place of libraries in a changing society. “ The editor is joined by 16 others in setting forth a series of papers which are fundamentally a listing of source material from various journals. The subjects range from a bibliography on Mechanics’ Institute to the Icelandic collection at the University of Manitoba. One of the more interesting chapters is entitled “Heritage to Hi Tech, Evaluation of Image and Function of Canadian Public Library Buildings” and includes a number of illustrations of libraries from the past as well as architectural designs of new libraries.

Under the heading “Academic Libraries,” writ-ten by the editor, is his statement that “Glazier gives a suggestive, though offensively presented, point of view concerning American influence on Canadian academic library development.” By coin-cidence, the author of this article is the reviewer and I have never been aware of what was “offen-sively presented.” This same article was translated into French and appeared in the Bulletin de l’Association Canadienne des Bibliothecaires de Langue Française, March, 1968.

This volume will find its rightful place on the reference shelf of a Public Library.