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Canadian Studies: The Collection
The Yale Canadian collection, believed
to be among the two or three best in the United States,
owes much of its early growth to William Inglis Morse.
A Nova Scotian and historian of the Maritime Provinces,
Dr. Morse donated to Yale substantial collections of
scarce books and maps centering on his native province.
In 1946, he endowed a fund for the purchase of Canadian
materials for Yale libraries, which annually supplements
the much larger amount the library spends on the subject
from general appropriations.
Building on Morse's foundations, the library
has broadened his intent to include all of Canada, developing
rich and useful resources in a number of libraries and
collections. The largest collection is located in the
stacks of Sterling Memorial Library. They hold an estimated
30,000 books in Canadian history, with special strengths
in the history of the Maritime Provinces and Quebec,
the study of Native Americans, local histories and the
studies of the many ethnic groups so important to the
Canadian mosaic. Though smaller, Sterling's Canadian
literature collections, both English and French, are
very strong and inclusive, with unusual holdings of
small press publications, modern poetry and fiction,
and French Canadian literature. Newspapers constitute
another strength; several major papers are received
on current subscriptions, others come in on microfilm,
and there are also historical backfiles on film. A group
of lesser-known newspapers includes several published
by blacks who fled to freedom in Canada from the United
States. About 250 Canadian periodicals are received
in the Periodical Reading Room, with several hundred
more housed in Sterling's stacks. The library has also
acquired the Papers
of the St. Louis Fur Trade, 1752-1925, a microfilm
collection with great relevance to Canadian history.
Other troves of Canadiana in specialized
Sterling collections and in other libraries of the Yale
system provide resources for students with many different
interests. The Map
Collection houses manuscript and printed maps ranging
from the eighteenth century to the most recent publications
of the National Topographic System. Manuscripts
and Archives houses two manuscript collections focused
directly on Canada -- the papers of Sir Wilfred
Grenfell and those of William
Inglis Morse. Parts of numerous others deal with
Canada tangentially, particularly in the field of twentieth-century
diplomacy. Microfilm collections include extensive sets
of U.S. consular dispatches for the nineteenth century
and British Colonial Office records on Canada for the
period 1700-1922, as well as the papers of Henri
Bourassa, the politician and editor of Le Devoir,
and William
Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada.
The Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library contains a number
of early works on French Canada, eighteenth-century
imprints in English on Canada, and scarce nineteenth-century
items, with travelers' accounts being especially notable.
At Beinecke, the Western
Americana Collection is especially useful for researchers
on western Canada, since the "western" definition includes
territory west of the Missouri River and north to the
Arctic. There are especially valuable collections on
the early history of Vancouver Island and British Columbia,
with special strength in guidebooks and personal accounts
of the gold strikes of the Fraser River and the Cariboo.
There are also more than 400 volumes on the search for
the northwest passage (with manuscript and cartographic
materials of importance), on the fur trade, and on the
Hudson's Bay Company.
For research with a more modern focus
the Library receives both provincial and, at the Government
Documents Center at the Mudd Library, federal Canadian
government publications. Some 1,000 items were received
in the past year as part of the Library's "partial depository"
relationship with the Canadian government, and an increasing
number appear on the Internet. The documents include
complete parliamentary proceedings and publications,
statistical publications and those of executive departments,
with a generous sampling of government publications
in other fields. Other related collections exist in
the Law Library (including environmental and native
law) and also in the Forestry Library.
(Adapted from Susan
J. Steinberg, "Canadiana in the Library," Nota Bene
vol. 1 no. 1, Spring 1987, pp 2-3.)
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