2. Essays
  3. All Hands On Deck: Filling The Gaps In New Brunswick Bibliography

All Hands on Deck: Filling the Gaps in New Brunswick Bibliography

by Jocelyne Thompson (Librarian Emeritus, UNB Libraries)

Originally published in The New Brunswick Bibliography Series: A Prospectus. University of New Brunswick Libraries & Gaspereau Press, 2019. 

Note : The following paper was delivered at the New Brunswick Bibliography Symposium (Fredericton, 2018), while versions of it were presented at the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada (Regina, 2018) and at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference (Fredericton, 2018). It describes the genesis of the New Brunswick Bibliography Series.

Some of you may have noticed that I have changed the title of my presentation from the originally announced “How to Eat an Elephant” to “All Hands on Deck.” I decided to favour boats over elephants as a more fitting metaphor to describe the work of building the New Brunswick bibliography.

Other titles occurred to me after the fact; for instance, “Many Hands Make Light Work,” because in fact that’s the objective of this symposium: to consider how we might work more closely and more effectively together to build the New Brunswick bibliography and to preserve our published heritage.

And lastly, I considered calling my presentation “Bibliography Envy: Why Can’t We Have One of These?” Having discovered the two-volume bibliography of Newfoundland in the early days of my research, I decided I wanted something similar for New Brunswick, something we could point to as a container of our province’s unique history — social, political and cultural.

But before I launch into my thoughts on the current state of New Brunswick bibliography and what I’m hoping we can achieve together, I do want to acknowledge that my work and my thinking on the matter didn’t arise in a vacuum. That is to say, there has been important bibliographic work undertaken in this province in the recent and not-so-recent past, some of which our keynote speaker has already alluded to in his address. And there have been significant efforts made, as well, at preserving the physical artifacts, by many of the memory institutions, libraries, societies and other entities represented in the room today.

And again, before getting into the heart of the matter, I must say that one question bothered me especially at the start of my journey. That question was: Does bibliography still matter in the 21st century? I won’t dwell too long on that, because despite the databases and the online catalogues, I have been shocked at the amount of time it has taken me to collect 4,000 bibliographic records (and still counting), and how difficult it still actually can be to locate what one is looking for using online sources.

So I am reminded of the fourth law of library science as proposed by Ranganathan in 1931: “Save the time of the reader.”1 In this case, we might say, save the time of the scholar. That is the potential of bibliography: to reveal little-known aspects of our history and thereby generate new research pathways.

The State of New Brunswick Bibliography

When we consider the current state of New Brunswick bibliography, this is what we find. English-language New Brunswick publications up to 1820 are already well-represented in the works of Marie Tremaine and Patricia Fleming.

The record is extended by two New Brunswick-specific comprehensive works, William G. McFarlane’s New Brunswick Bibliography: The books and writers of the province (1895), and Amos Robert Rogers’s Books and Pamphlets of New Brunswick Writers, 1890–1950 (1953). While McFarlane’s and Rogers’s works are significant contributions to the bibliographic record of New Brunswick, they are both incomplete and dated.

Efforts since 1953 have included, but are not limited to, Helen Craig’s New Brunswick Newspaper Directory; the Acadiensis and Fiddlehead bibliographies; the Catalogue of the MicMac-Maliseet Collection at UNB ; Francesca Holyoke’s annotated Maritime Pamphlet Collection; and Tony Tremblay’s online New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, to name a few.

These have been important contributions, but much work remains to be done. Rogers’s was the last attempt at producing a comprehensive bibliography, and it was completed (and never published) in 1953. So beyond 1950, there is nothing approaching a real update to the work that has gone before, and the task is a moving target as new publications in the hundreds appear each year.

I contacted Eric Swanick in the early stages about what I’m calling the New Brunswickana Project,2 seeking his guidance and advice. Eric Swanick is a respected bibliographer known to many in this room, who for more than a decade served as the New Brunswick Legislative Librarian and most recently, until his retirement, as Special Collections Librarian at Simon Fraser University.

During his long career in New Brunswick, Eric Swanick undertook many important and diverse projects of a bibliographic nature, such as preparing quarterly and annual New Brunswick government publication checklists; attempting to reconstitute the Bishop Medley collection; compiling The Acadiensis Index, 1971–1991 (with David Frank); and editing a volume for the Dalhousie School of Library and Information Studies Occasional Papers Series on the history of New Brunswick libraries. He also compiled and published first and second supplements to Hugh A. Taylor’s New Brunswick History: A Checklist of Secondary Sources.

In a 1986 article entitled “New Brunswick Literature and the Pursuit of Bibliography,” Swanick makes two statements of particular relevance to today’s deliberations: the first, “New Brunswick Literature to this day … remains virtually untouched by bibliographers”;3 and the second, “What is particularly important at this juncture is that the general public and the politicians, as well as specialized scholars, be made more aware of the need for and the importance of ensuring that bibliographic materials by New Brunswick writers be conserved and made accessible, within the borders of this province.”4 He goes on to say, “What is immediately needed is a collections’ committee formed from various institutions and charged with the task of examining collection policies, pooling resources where necessary, and determining priorities.”5 To my knowledge, the committee was never formed, and the need for coordinated action is still desirable.

In 1992, at the Third National Conference on the State of Canadian Bibliography organized by the Bibliographical Society of Canada, Professor Peter McNally recommended “that retrospective/regional bibliographies be developed or completed for those provinces lacking them, namely Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.”6 No such work has been completed for New Brunswick.

It has to be said that the bibliographic control of French-language New Brunswickana is significantly better, due in part to Marguerite Maillet’s Bibliographie des publications de l’Acadie des provinces maritimes: livres et brochures, 1609–1995 (1997). The Centre d’études acadiennes at the Université de Moncton continues the work of collecting and preserving French-language materials published in or relevant to New Brunswick.

Collecting and Preserving the Physical Artifacts

My own interest in bibliographical research arose from a very practical consideration. UNB Libraries’ Strategic Plan (revised 2015) states “We will be comprehensive in the collection of New Brunswickiana [sic], as our responsibility for the preservation of recorded knowledge by libraries worldwide.” This was a re-working of a similar statement appearing in our Collections Development Policy and, indeed, in other policy statements before that.

These declarations of intent raise the question: Are we fulfilling our commitments with respect to New Brunswickana, as set out in the library Strategic Plan and the Collections Development Policy? It is one thing to say we will do something; it is quite another to do it.

Cursory investigation over the winter and spring of 2015 revealed significant gaps in our holdings, and questions such as these began to arise:

  • What kind of processes do we have in place to ensure that we are comprehensive in our collecting? 
  • What other gaps exist in our holdings?
  • What are other heritage and memory institutions in the province collecting? Should we be working more closely with them?
  • What parameters should guide our collecting? What would be beyond the scope?

Thinking about these questions led to the elaboration of a preliminary outline and plan for the New Brunswickana Project, the primary objective of which was, at that time, to build a physical collection, for research and preservation, of all published materials fitting the definition of New Brunswickana.

But here’s the rub: How do you collect what you don’t know you don’t have? It became obvious very quickly that the goal could not be readily or fully achieved without significant research being undertaken.

The best approach, and I’m referring to New Brunswick imprints here, seemed to be to attempt to identify all of the English-language publishers and printers in New Brunswick from the introduction of the first printing press on the territory (1783) to the present day, and then to compile title lists of as many of their works as are still dis coverable, for the purpose of eventually seeking out physical copies, again of as many titles as possible, for preservation in UNB Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections. (That work has begun, and data collection currently stands at about 400 printers/publishers and 4,500 bibliographical records.)

It is of course unreasonable to think that physical copies of every single item identified as fitting the definition of New Brunswickana will be found, and inevitable that some new items will be missed, although the aim remains to build as complete a physical collection as possible.

I do have to acknowledge at this juncture that, as incomplete as our collections might be, our pre- and early 20th-century holdings are nonetheless quite rich, and this due to the diligent work of dedicated library staff past and present. So it occurred to me early on that a focus on more recent years (the 1980s to the present) might be a good starting point to filling the gaps. By focusing on more recent years, we may have a chance to put our hands on materials that might not be so easily available down the road. With this in mind, various New Brunswick publishers and booksellers were approached and acquisitions made. Close to 400 volumes have been added to our collections in the last couple of years, and there’s so much more out there still to be found.

Pondering the many pieces of this complex puzzle, it occurred to me, too, that the research required to fulfil the primary objective of the New Brunswickana Project, collection building, had the potential to lead to the creation of extremely valuable bibliographic products. So secondary, but equally important, objectives of the project began to take shape, including the compilation of

  • an updated New Brunswick bibliography of bibliographies;
  • updates to existing bibliographies to bring them to the present day;
  • new bibliographies in subject areas that have up to now been ignored;
  • a bibliography of New Brunswick imprints; and
  • ultimately, a complete bibliography, for the Province of New Brunswick, of English-language materials published by New Brunswick authors or publishers, or about New Brunswick published anywhere in the world.

It is clear that, if undertaken, the project will require the cooperation and collaboration of many and won’t be accomplished overnight. This is where the question of how to eat an elephant occurred to me, and later, the idea that we need all hands on deck.

The Way Forward: A Modest Proposal

While collecting records for the New Brunswick imprints bibliography, during a winter 2017 sabbatical leave, the question of organization loomed large; that is, how to package the data into a meaningful ‘product’. Chronological order proved a sound organizing method for bibliographers focused on pre-20th-century publishing, when relatively few titles were published in any one year, and even fewer survived. But the sheer volume of 20th-century publishing makes year-order impractical and virtually meaningless. A subject approach to bibliography presents itself as the obvious solution to the problem of organization, in order to create functional and meaningful lists.

Approaching the problem from this angle, another idea suggests itself, that the ‘project’ could, and perhaps should, be broken down into manageable chunks. The major Canadian bibliographies required a decade and more of labour to reach completion. Libraries today simply cannot afford to allocate staff exclusively to this specialized work over a period of years. At the same time, bibliography is fundamental to the library profession’s basic responsibility of preserving the human record, and in our case, the New Brunswick record, and bibliography remains essential as a support to scholarship.

So with this idea of ‘chunking-up’ the work, I am proposing the creation of a comprehensive bibliography through the vehicle of a New Brunswick Bibliography Series. By dividing the labour up among subject specialists, the work has the potential of proceeding and making its impact felt more quickly. Works can be published as they are ready, eliminating the need to wait for all parts of the bibliography to be completed. A series would allow many individuals to contribute, according to each person’s inclinations and schedule. Commitments would be solicited for different parts of the bibliography and a flexible publishing timeline developed. A steering committee and an editorial board would be established to manage the project.

If all of this sounds daunting, and I imagine it does, I want to say this. In preparation for my sabbatical leave, I sought Peter McNally’s counsel, and this is the advice he gave me:

  • Don’t get hung up on perfection: no bibliography is perfect. Do your best in the time you have; others will correct your omissions or errors in later iterations; and
  • Don’t base the project on the principles of descriptive bibliography. Although individual titles may benefit from this approach, in our metadata age, enumerative bibliography with enhanced points of access and retrieval are more relevant.

Excellent advice. The old saw says that perfection is the enemy of the good. I believe what’s more important than perfection is to get the research out there so that it can be of use. I’m not advocating sloppy work. My aim would be good bibliographic records enhanced, as resources permit, with additional access points to assist researchers and other users.

There is so much within the scope of potential contributions to a New Brunswick Bibliography Series. For instance:

  • bibliographies of individual writers (Alden Nowlan, David Adams Richards, Douglas Lochhead and Alfred G. Bailey come to mind);
  • Indigenous bibliography;
  • a bibliography of literature for children;
  • another of art exhibition catalogues;
  • pre-20th-century government documents and grey literature;
  • scientific publications of New Brunswick;
  • archaeological studies;
  • a bibliography of the Bishop Medley Collection;
  • parish and church histories; 
  • education and schools;
  • Mechanics’ Institute Lectures

The possibilities are endless.

With respect to the meaning of the word “bibliography,” I believe there is value in using as broad a definition of the term as possible. For instance, there would be value in capturing the history of New Brunswick printers and publishers, booksellers and collectors, either in introductions to works of enumerative bibliography or as standalone titles in the series. In fact, any subject that attaches itself to the creation of books, collections and libraries should be considered. This suggestion is in keeping with current thought that bibliography and book history are each part of a whole.

Of course, we live in a world where unless it’s online it doesn’t exist. So, in tandem with the development of the New Brunswick Bibliography Series, a searchable database of all titles fitting the definition of New Brunswickana would be created. The database would have an advantage over the printed volumes of the series because it can be easily updated and include items that might not very well fit in a print bibliography (as such bibliographies generally exclude many types of documents for the sake of convenience or space). Also, using the database, we could solicit suggestions for missing items (in the spirit of crowdsourcing).

Conclusion

The New Brunswickana Project as a whole is much too large to complete in a hurry, or to be undertaken by any one person. And I recognize that ‘complete’ is the wrong word, because collecting and preserving New Brunswickana is an ongoing commitment. And for the same reason, ‘project’ is also the wrong word to apply to this work, although I haven’t come up with a better one.

Another question I asked myself early on in this adventure was this: Is duplication a problem? Does it really matter that UNB Libraries may acquire an item already owned by another institution in the province? Ours is a small market such that only a small run of any one title is likely to have ever been printed. Even if UNB were to duplicate a title owned by the Legislative Library, the New Brunswick Museum, perhaps Mount Allison University, and one or two public libraries, this would still amount to a very small number of copies of any one book. I think we owe it to the province to duplicate and, in that way, to ensure preservation. With that in mind, I believe UNB Libraries should strive to build as complete a collection of English-language New Brunswickana as it can manage.

The work of building that collection is a tall order. As the Bible says, “Of making many books there is no end.” That’s true even in the 21st century, and it’s true in our New Brunswick.

  • 1

    “Five Laws of Library Science.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 August 2018, 5:59 pm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science. Accessed 31 August 2018.

  • 2

    A decision was made in the early stages of the New Brunswickana Project to prefer the label New Brunswickana to New Brunswickiana, thereby saving a syllable. 

  • 3

    Swanick, Eric L. “New Brunswick Literature and the Pursuit of Bibliography.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol. 11, no. 2, Spring 1986, p. 182.

  • 4

    Ibid, p. 187.

  • 5

    Ibid, p. 188.

  • 6

    McNally, Peter F. “Canadian History Since 1974, Its Bibliographic Control.” Third National Conference on the State of Canadian Bibliography: Achievements, Challenges and Opportunities: Charlottetown, P.E.I., May 31 – June 1, 1992: Proceedings. p. 67.