Bicentennial of the Quebec National Assembly library.

• Author: Bernier, Gaston

Legislators regularly celebrate anniversaries of various types, such as the creation of legislative institutions, the establishment of the press gallery or of Hansard or the passage of the Act giving women the right to vote. This year, Quebec Members and administrators are being invited to commemorate the founding of the National Assembly Library.

The establishment two hundred years ago of a library for elected and appointed parliamentarians is an event that warrants a historical review of the Library's staff, services, collections, techniques, financial resources and influence. Once the essential elements of the past decades have been established we will concentrate on presenting summarily the main activities that have already taken place and those yet to come.

The Bicentennial in Perspective

The origin of the Library of the National Assembly dates back to the very beginning of the 19th century. Its distant ancestor was created ten years after the first parliamentary institutions were founded on the shores of the St. Lawrence. More precisely, the Members established their first library on March 10, 1802. On that day, they appointed the members of a committee responsible for managing the books that had been received a few months earlier and for drafting the first rules respecting their use.

Between 1792 and 1802, the Members and public servants of the Assembly had undoubtedly used the library of Quebec, a private library created by Governor Haldimand and situated in the same building as the Parliament. Since that time, the Library has experienced three fires (1849, 1854 and 1883), several relocations and an important partition in 1867. It has been in its current location since 1915, but, since the 1970s, a number of employees have occupied offices in peripheral buildings.

For over one hundred and twenty-five years, the Library was little more than a book depository. The services available were undifferentiated, and there was felt to be no real need for an organization chart. During this period, the librarian -- and there have been some excellent ones -- constituted the essential part of the Library and its services. At the end of the 1930s, the authorities established an information service, the forerunner of what is known today as the users' or reference service. The increase in the number of services and their specialization came about in the 1970s, with the exception of the opening of a bindery. During this decade, three divisions were created: an analysis or research service (which was detached from the Library in December 2000), a group dedicated to reconstituting the legislative debates that had been held between 1867 and 1962 and a section responsible for preparing and distributing topical files. Finally, the Hansard indexing programme and, more recently, the management of the Assembly's administrative documents and in-house archives were attached to the Library. In the space of nearly two hundred years, the Library has gone from being an entity with ill-defined duties to an enterprise that furnishes specialized services and consists of distinct units having clear terms of reference.

The evolution...