1
1. CARLETON UNIVERSITY – COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
Carleton University has earned a reputation as a dynamic research and teaching
institution (Carleton History, 2014). Located in our nation’s capital, the University was formed
in 1942 as a non-denominational college. It is currently home to more than 24,000 full and parttime undergraduate and graduate level students. The University offers degree programs in
more than 50 disciplines, but is particularly strong in the fields of architecture, journalism,
international affairs, public affairs and technology. The University is divided into five faculties:
Arts and Social Sciences, Engineering and Design, Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, Public
Affairs and Science. Carleton is also home to the Sprott School of Business.
MacOdrum Library
Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library serves the entire student and faculty
population at Carleton. Having recently undergone major renovations, MacOdrum Library is
considered the main portal to all the library’s resources. The Library is continuing through a
growth phase, aiming to use emerging technologies to reach users wherever they are and
enhancing access to global collections through consortia projects and agreements for the
purchase of electronic materials. Improving access to information is a key strategic priority for
MacOdrum Library (MacOdrum Strategic Plan 2011-2015). As the primary source of information
to support research and teaching on campus, the Library has made it their goal to ensure that
information is as widely accessible as possible by increasingly digitizing content, incorporating
emerging technologies in the delivery of collections, implementing new search and discovery
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tools to ensure deep access to collections, and increasing community awareness of their
collections (MacOdrum Strategic Plan 2011-2015, p. 1).
The MacOdrum Library’s mission is to “promote excellence at Carleton University by
collecting, preserving, and providing access to information resources and services for our
teaching, learning, research, and administrative communities, wherever they are located.”
(Carleton University, 2014).
Collection Development at MacOdrum Library
At MacOdrum, Library subject specialists and library representatives in academic
departments at Carleton University select scholarly resources. Collection development
decisions are based on collection and subject profiles in addition to selection tools such as core
academic lists, citation lists, citation analysis tools and book reviews from reputable sources
(Collection Development Policy, 2014). The Library aims to collect a variety of materials beyond
monographs including research reports, videos and films, government publications, bulletins,
conference proceedings, maps and other data. MacOdrum Library has been increasingly
purchasing eBooks to support teaching and research, but the majority of books continue to be
purchased in print format (Collection Development Policy, 2014).
The collection emphasizes current imprints. The Library attempts to collect university
press publications as well as selections from the standard commercial publishers. The Library
will also purchase current material requested via interlibrary loan (ILL) if it falls within the
Library’s subject profiles. The Library does not collect textbooks unless they are requested as
course reserves or reading lists. An approval plan for most subjects is maintained for
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monographs from Canada, the US and the UK. With regards to multiple copies, the Library will
normally purchase one copy of each title and will only purchase multiple copies for heavily used
titles and course reserves (Collection Development Policy, 2014).
general principles of collection development in Academic Libraries ***
2. THE HISTORY OF WOMEN’S LABOUR IN CANADA
The collection consists of materials on the history of women’s labour in Canada.
Academic scholarship has paid considerable attention to women’s participation in the
workforce since the rise of social history in the 1970s. Social, labour, gender and women’s
historians have all made contributions to this subject making it a diverse collection to analyze.
The collection was selected due to my knowledge and interest in Canadian social and gender
history. The collection consists of materials written on the subject of women’s labour in Canada
(and the British North American colonies) from 1800 onwards. Sub-topics of the collection
include biographies / case studies; education as it relates to employment; primary sources;
women in particular professions or fields of work; race; social / gender studies; and social
welfare. Carleton students wrote many theses on this topic, but they were excluded from this
collection. Furthermore, many articles have been written on the topic of women and the
workforce in Canada and are featured in edited collections and journals. These materials were
not included in the collection if the edited collections themselves dealt with broader topics than
women’s labour. Edited collections or readers were only included if multiple articles or chapters
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dealt with the topic of women’s labour in Canada (ie. Karen Flynn’s Moving beyond borders: a
history of Black Canadian and Caribbean women in the diaspora).
Before the 1960s women’s history was seen as a novelty. Women’s history was limited
to ‘great women’: those who could not be left off the historical record or who had made a
significant impact on society. The second wave women’s movement altered this trend and
scholars began to consider the lives of everyday women. Other types of historical inquiry that
emerged in the 1970s including New Social History further influenced women’s history. The
new left movement also occurred at this time leading to Marxist inspired histories as attention
was drawn to the impact class structures had on people’s experiences. Working class history
considered how working class people functioned and how both men and women experienced
work. As a result a noticeable trend emerged in Canadian historiography on the topic of
women’s working lives from the late 1970s onwards. The rise of gender history in the 1990s led
to the continued analysis of women’s labour in Canada, with particular emphasis placed on
power relations and the social production of knowledge.
The foremost scholar in the history of women’s work in Canada is Joan Sangster. An
established academic, Sangster has dedicated her career to the study of Canadian women’s
labour. She consistently produces in depth, well-researched and intriguing studies on the
subject, with some emphasis on Ontario. Other prominent scholars in the field include Ruth A.
Frager, Linda Kealey, Ruth Roach Pierson and Mary Kinnear.
The current historiographical trend in the history of women’s work in Canada would be
gendered analyses of labour. Gender history analyzes discourse, representation and gendered
5
constructions of social categories and the way in which power is articulated through gender.
This differs from social history which is concerned more with people and their lived
experiences. Works such as Jennifer Stephen’s Pick one intelligent girl: employability,
domesticity and the gendering of Canada's welfare state, 1939-1947 and the edited collection
Contesting bodies and nation in Canadian history are examples of gendered histories of
women’s labour. Ruth A. Frager’s Discounted labour : women workers in Canada, 1870-1939
and the edited collection Home, work and play: situating Canadian social history, 1840-1980 are
examples of social historical examinations of this subject.
Based on my knowledge of the subject area, the following are core books of this subject
area that I would expect to find in the collection:
Barker, M. (1991). Immigrant domestic servants in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical
Association.
Brand, D. (1991). No Burden to Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario,
1920s to 1950s. Toronto: Women’s Press.
Frager, R. (1992). Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Labour
Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kealey, L. (1998). Enlisting Women for the Cause: Women, Labour and the Left in
Canada, 1890-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kinnear, M. (1998). A Female Economy: Women’s Work in a Prairie Province, 1870-1970.
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Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Parr, J. (1990). The Gender of Breadwinners: Women, Men and Change in Two Industrial
Towns, 1880-1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Sangster, J. (1995). Earning Respect: The Lives of Working Women in Small-Town
Ontario, 1920-1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Steedman, M. (1997). Angels of the Workplace: women and the construction of gender
relations in the Canadian clothing industry, 1890-1940. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
3. COLLECTION EVALUATION
Collection Profile
The Canadian women’s labour history collection at Carleton University consists of 86
titles. The collection can be described as current, with almost half of the collection being
published from 2000 onwards. The average age of the collection is 19 years, but with primary
sources excluded the average age is reduced to 14 years. If we consider that the rise of New
Social History occurred in the late 1970s and was followed by the rise of gender history in the
1990s, it is entirely reasonable that the collection includes 39 resources published between
1975-1999. Many of these materials are known to be seminal texts in the historical field of
Canadian women’s labour. The most common publication date for materials in the collection is
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2011, but the collection includes resources published almost every year from the 1980s
onwards.
As Carleton’s collection development policy dictates, print monographs make up most
of this collection. Other resource types are also present including microfilms, government
publications, and videorecordings. The following is a chart representation of resource types in
the collection.
Ebooks
Digitized
Gov. Reports
Microfilm
Monographs
Videorecording
T
Further emphasis could be placed on developing the electronic resources in the
collection, and the collection development policy indicates that the Library is consciously
monitoring the availability of eBooks to add to the collection (Collection Development Policy,
2014).
Class and social welfare (9%), the professions (30%), primary sources (7%) and
biographical examinations of working women (10%) are fairly well represented in the collection,
but social and gendered analyses of women’s labour are most prominent making up 36% of the
collection. Resources that explore women’s labour in relation to race, colonialism and
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immigration (3%) as well as education as it relates to labour (3%) could be further developed in
the collection. As these are not special foci as listed in Carleton’s History subject profile, it may
be that titles with these thematic foci have not been actively sought out by Library staff
(McLeod 2012).
The collection is appropriate for a scholarly academic community comprised of
undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty. It includes introductory survey texts
such as Rethinking Canada : the promise of women’s history, as well as highly specialized,
theoretical texts such as Joy Parr’s The Gender of Breadwinners. 19th and 20th century women’s
and gender history is a special focus for Canadian history, as described in Carleton’s History
subject profile for collection development. This is likely because the topic is a major feature of
multiple courses in the History curriculum at Carleton. The history of women’s labour in Canada
would likely be featured in the following courses:
HIST 2304 Canadian Social History: A thematic exploration of how the spaces of home, work, and play have been
historically produced, understood, and experienced in Canada. (Carleton Undergraduate Calendar, 2014)
HIST 3505 Women in Canada: Selected issues in the history of women in Canada. Themes include women and war,
aboriginal women's history, sexuality, the women's movement, immigration, and motherhood. Attention will be
paid to the social construction of gender and the intersections of gender with class, ethnicity, and race.
HIST 3602 Families and Kinship in Canadian History: An analysis of transformations in family life in Canada since
1500, its varieties and continuities, relationship with political and economic institutions, and the changing status of
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its members. It also looks at notions about the family to underscore the complex dynamic between images and
practices.
* please note: descriptions taken from in the Carleton Undergraduate Calendar 2014 *
The history of Canadian women’s labour collection at MacOdrum Library is well equipped to
meet the needs of the above courses, as well as Carleton’s wider academic community with
interests in women’s, gender or social history in Canada.
Shelf Availability Test
As Alabi (2011) explains, “availability is often considered as a measure of library
effectiveness or overall performance. The user doesn’t care that a library owns a million
books if he cannot get the one he wants.” 81% of the titles in the collection are currently
available to patrons. 17% are on loan, but 2 of these titles have multiple copies and are
therefore still available to patrons. Therefore 16% of the collection is unavailable t o
patrons as of January 23 rd, 2014. This test does not take into account e-resource usage or
availability.
Comparative Statistics -- List Selecting
Essential Reading List Comparison
Carleton’s collection was compared against an essential reading list for women’s labour
prepared for a women’s history course at Athabasca University that is simila r to HIST 3505
Women in Canada (See Appendix A). MacOdrum Library had all 37 titles listed in the
course’s essential reading list. The library held multiple copies of many of the resources,
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and 38% of the list was available in both electronic and hard copy format. The comparison
reveals that Carleton is conducting highly successful collection development on the subject
of Canadian women’s labour history.
Brief Test of Collection Strength
The Brief Test of collection strength developed by Howard D. White was used to determine
the collection strength level at Carleton (see Excel Spreadsheet, Sheet 4). A master list of
materials that a library should have on the social history of women’s labour was devised.
The titles were searched in the OCLC Worldcat database and the number of holdings at
Canadian libraries was recorded. The titles were then arranged according to the holdings
into the following levels: minimal, basic, instructional and research. The titles were then
searched for in Carleton’s local catalogue. Carleton held all the titles on the master list,
meaning that the collection is at the highest level: research. Combined with the essentia l
reading list comparison, these qualitative methods of analysis demonstrate that Carleton
has a very strong collection on the history of women’s labour in Canada.
4. COLLECTION MANAGEMENT
The collection of materials on the history Canadian women’s labour at Carleton
exceeded my expectations. The collection manages to include excellent representation of both
primary texts by prominent scholars as well as unique or niche studies by up-and-coming
academics on the topic. It is also interdisciplinary in nature, including historical studies from
disciplines such as communications, social work, religious studies and women’s studies. The
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variety of topics, currency and array of publication dates also mean that the collection’s
breadth and coverage is excellent. Below is a list of modifications or improvements that I would
like to implement to improve the collection further:
Goals for the Collection

I will look for duplications within the collection, highlighting which records having
multiple hardcopies and considering whether this is necessary. Particular attention will
be paid to older or out of date materials with multiple hardcopies that may require
weeding.

Considering the focus on gender and its intersections with class, ethnicity and race in
HIST 3505 Women in Canada, I would like to see some strengthening of the subcategory for ethnicity and race in the collection. As a country known for its
multiculturalism, it is important that the collection include materials that consider how
women of colour or various ethnic backgrounds have contributed to the history of
labour in Canada.

The collection is mostly comprised of hardcopy monographs, and as a result I would like
to see some diversification of the resources including the addition of electronic
resources and visual media.
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Bibliography
Bradbury, B. (1987). Women's history and working-class history. Labour/Le Travail, 23-43.
Carleton University. “History” Carleton University: 2014. Available at:
http://carleton.ca/about/history/
Carleton University. Undergraduate Calendar: History. Carleton University: 2014. Available at:
http://calendar.carleton.ca/undergrad/courses/HIST/
MacOdrum Library. “MacOdrum Library Strategic Plan 2011-2015.” Carleton University: 2011.
Available at:
http://www.library.carleton.ca/sites/default/files/about/projects/CUL_Strategic_Plan_20112015.pdf
MacOdrum Library. “About the Library” Carleton University: 2011. Available at:
http://www.library.carleton.ca/about
MacOdrum Library. “Collection Development Policy” Carleton University: 2014. Available at:
http://www.library.carleton.ca/about/policies/collection-development-policy
MacOdrum Library. “Subject Profile: History” Carleton University: 2012. Available at:
http://www.library.carleton.ca/sites/default/files/about/policies/subjectprofiles/Subject%20Profile%20HISTORY%202012.pdf
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Appendix A
Essential Reading List for Canadian Women's Labour History
Prepared by Dr. Donica Belisle for her course HIST 365 Girls and Women in Canada at Athabasca University
Resource
1. Baillargeon, Denyse. Making Do: Women, Family
and Home in Montreal During the Great Depression.
Trans. Yvonne Klein. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press,
1999.
2. Barber, Marilyn. Immigrant Domestic Servants in
Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association,
1991.
3. Barber, Marilyn. “Sunny Ontario for British Girls,
1900-30” AND Nipp, Dora. “But Women Did Come:
Working Chinese Women in the Interwar Years.” in
Looking into My Sister’s Eyes: An Exploration in
Women’s History. Ed. Jean Burnet. Toronto: The
Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1986. 55-73
and 179-194.
4. Bates, Christina. “Creative Ability and Business
Sense: The Millinery Trade in Ontario.” AND
Gelman, Susan. “The Feminization of High Schools:
The Problem of Women Secondary School Teachers
in Ontario.” AND Sirovyak, Susan Michi. “Our
Mother’s Patterns: Sewing and Dressmaking in the
Japanese-Canadian Community.” In Framing our
Past: Canadian Women’s History in the Twentieth
Century. Eds. Sharon Anne Cook, Lorna R. McLean,
and Kate O’Rourke. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2001. 348-358; 170-173; 359-365.
5. Brand, Dionne. No Burden to Carry: Narratives of
Black Working Women in Ontario, 1920s to 1950s.
Toronto: Women’s Press, 1991.
6. Brand, Dionne. “We Weren’t allowed to go into
factory work until Hilter started the war’: The 1920s
to the 1940s” We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t
Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s
History. Eds. Eggy Bristow, Linda Carty, Afua Cooper,
Sylvia Hamilton and Adrienne Shadd. Toronto:
Owned
by
Carleton
(Y/N)
Y
Copies Format
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
2
Y
1
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
2
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
14
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
University of Toronto Press, 1994. 171-191.
Brandt, Gail Cuthbert. “The Transformation of
Women’s Work in the Quebec Cotton Industry,
1920-1950.” The Character of Class Struggle: Essays
in Canadian Working-Class History, 1850-1985. Ed.
Bryan D. Palmer. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1986. 115-134.
Burr, Christina. Spreading the Light: Work and
Labour Reforms in Late-Nineteenth Century Toronto.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Campbell, Marie. “Sexism in British Columbia Trade
Unions, 1900-1920.” AND Wade, Susan. “Helena
Guttenridge: Votes for Women and Trade Unions.”
In Her Own Right: Selected Essays on Women’s
History in B.C. Eds. Barbar Latham and Cathy Kess.
Victoria: Camosun College, 1980. 167-186; 187-204.
Creese, Gillian. “The Politics of Dependence:
women, Work and Unemployment in the Vancouver
Labour Movement Before World War II. Class,
Gender, and Region: Essays in Canadian Historical
Sociology. Ed. Gregory S. Kealey. St John’s:
Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1988. 121142.
Danylewycz, Marta. Taking the Veil: An Alternative
to Marriage, Motherhood and Spinsterhood in
Quebec, 1840-1920. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1987.
Frager, Ruth. “Class, Ethnicity and Gender in the
Eaton Strikes of 1912 and 1934.” Gender Conflicts:
New Essays in Women’s History. Eds. Franca
Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1992. 189-228.
Frager, Ruth. Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity and
Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto,
1900-1939. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1992.
Frager, Ruth and Carmela Patrias. Discounted
Labour: Women Workers in Canada, 1870-1939.
Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2005.
Guildford, Janet. “Separate Spheres: The
Feminization of Public School Teaching in Nova
Scotia, 1838-1880.” Separate Spheres: Women’s
Worlds in the 19th Century Maritimes. Ed. Janet
Guildford and Suzanne Morton. Fredericton:
Acadiensis Press, 1994. 119-145.
Kealey, Linda. Enlisting Women for the Cause:
Women, Labour and the Left in Canada, 1890-1920.
Y
3
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
15
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.
17. Keshen, Jeff. “Revisiting Canada’s Civilian Women
during World War II.” Rethinking Canada: The
Promise of Women’s History. 4th ed. Eds. Veronica
Strong-Boag, Mona Gleason, and Adele Perry.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002. 249-267.
18. Keslie, Genevieve. “Domestic Service in Canada,
1880-1920.” Women at Work: Ontario, 1850-1930.
Eds. Janice Acton, Penny Goldsmith and Bonnie
Shepherd. Toronto: Canadian Women’s Educational
Press, 1974. 71-125.
19. Kinnear, Mary. A Female Economy: Women’s Work
in a Prairie Province, 1870-1970. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1998.
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
2
20. Kinnear, Mary. In Subordination: Professional
Women, 1870-1980. Montreal: McGill Queen’s
University Press, 1995.
Y
2
21. Klippenstein, Frieda Esau. "Scattered but Not Lost:
Mennonite Domestic Servants in Winnipeg, 1920s1950s” Telling Tales: Essays in Western Women’s
History. Eds. Catherine A. Cavanaugh and Randi R.
Warne. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000. 200-231.
22. Kobayashi, Audrey. “For the Sake of the Children:
Japanese / Canadian Workers / Mothers.” Women,
Work and Place. Ed. Audrey Kobayashi. Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. 45-73.
23. Lindstrom, Varpu. “Finnish Women at Work”
Defiant Sisters: A Social History of Finnish Immigrant
Women in Canada. Beaverton, ON: Aspasia Books,
2003. 84-114.
24. MacKay, M. Elaine. “Three Thousand Stiches: The
Development of the Clothing Industry in
Nineteenth-Century Halifax.” Fashion: A Canadian
Perspective. Ed. Alexandra Palmer. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004. 166-181.
25. McPherson, Kathryn. Bedside Matters: The
Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996.
26. Morton, Suzanne. “The June Bride as the WorkingClass Bride: Getting Married in a Halifax
Neighbourhood in the 1920s.” Canadian Family
History: Selected Readings. Toronto: Copp Clark
Pitman, 1992.
27. Morton, Suzanne. “Young Women.” Ideal
Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class
Suburb in the 1920s. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1995. 131-150.
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
3
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
16
28. Parr, Joy. The Gender of Breadwinners: Women,
Men and Change in Two Industrial Towns, 18801950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
Y
2
29. Pierson, Ruth Roach. ‘They’re Still Women After All’:
The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
30. Pierson, Ruth Roach. “Women’s Emancipation and
Recruitment of Women into the Labour Force in
World War II.” AND Prentice, Alison. “The
Feminization of Teaching.” The Neglected Majority:
Essays in Canadian Women’s History. Eds. Susan
Mann Trofimenkoff and Alison Prentice. Toronto:
McClelland & Stewart, 1977. 125-145.
31. Roberts, Wayne. Honest Womanhood: Feminism,
Feminity and Class Consciousness Among Toronto
Working Women 1893-1914. Toronto: New
Hogtown Press, 1976.
32. Sangster, Joan. Earning Respect: The Lives of
Working Women in Small-Town Ontario, 1920-1960.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
33. Sangster, Joan. “Mobilizing Women for War.”
Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour
of Robert Craig Brown. Ed. David MacKenzie.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 157193.
34. Steedman, Mercedes. Angels of the Workplace:
Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in
the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997.
35. Strange, Carolyn. Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils
and Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Y
2
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Hardcopy
Y
3
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
1
Hardcopy
Y
2
36. Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Canada’s Women Doctors:
Feminism Constrained” A Not Unreasonable Claim:
Women and Reform in Canada, 1880s-1920s. Ed.
Linda Kealey. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1979. 10929.
37. Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Working for Pay” The New
Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English
Canada, 1919-1939. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman
Ltd. 1993. 41-80.
Y
4
Hardcopy
&
Electronic
Hardcopy
Y
2
Hardcopy
Total Materials on List
37
Percentage in Carleton’s Catalogue
100%
Therefore highly successful collection development
17