National Book Histories and the Legacy of History of the Book in Canada/Histoire Du Livre Et de L'imprime Au Canada‪.‬

The opportunity to explore the legacy of the project, History of the Book in Canada / Histoire du livre et de l'imprime au Canada (HBiC/HLIC), at the Fourth National Conference on the State of Canadian Bibliography honours an anniversary, since the first public consideration of a national book history was part of the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada in Montreal in 1995. That year Eric Swanick invited Yvan Lamonde and me to chair a session where the project was launched. To address today's question of HBiC/HLIC's legacy with three volumes published in English and French in 2004, 2005, and 2007, (1) the conference organizers suggested looking at where the Canadian bibliographical community stands and which gaps and shortcomings in the existing scholarship provide opportunities for future research and publication. An obvious beginning is the community assembled around our project, a team of 172 authors who are named in our final Newsletter I Bulletin (March 2007). (2) Although we attempted to draw on local knowledge, some regions remain under-represented: 11% of our authors were from the Atlantic provinces, 29% from Quebec, 37% from Ontario, 5% from the Prairies, and 12% from British Columbia; the 6% "from away" are expatriates or colleagues with ties to Canada. When they wrote, 12% of the authors were students, 54% were academics, and 26% librarians, archivists, museum curators, and cultural workers. A handful of independent scholars filled Out the team. Roughly one-third of the authors wrote in French and two-thirds in English. Volume I is the work of 58 authors, volume 2 of 71, and volume 3 of 104. Joint authorship rose from 7% in volume 1 to 10% in volume 2, to 24% in volume 3- Increased collaboration between authors in the final volume reflects major differences in the development of the French and English book trades in the twentieth century and the need to join parallel stories into a single narrative.