This bibliography cites those Canadian and foreign reference sources that describe Canadian people, institutions, organizations, publications, art, literature, languages, and history. It lists books of a general nature as well as works in the disciplines of history and the humanities. These large divisions are then broken down by subject, genre, type of document, and province or territory. Titles of national, provincial/territorial, or regional interest are included in every subject area when available. The contents of the book are indexed four ways: by name, title, French subject, and English subject. And to facilitate browsing, the major reference books (those dealing with more than one subject or a large geographical region) are also cross-referenced.

The core of the book revolves around the shifting nature of Ontario’s political landscape. In many ways this is a story of successive governments, ambitious politicians, diligent bureaucrats, and endless library reports straddling the decades. Their aim appears to have been making even better a system that, despite weaknesses, was clearly the best in Canada. Three distinctive trends emerged in Ontario librarianship after the 1930s: first, a growing sense of professionalism in librarianship; second, an enhanced sense of belonging to a pan-Canadian library movement that in 1946 would result in the formation of the Canadian Library Association; and third, a heightened awareness of the competing demands of high culture and popular culture. Public libraries became an important vehicle for promoting community, albeit with competing visions of “space and place,” as Canada generally and Ontario specifically experienced post-World War II immigration and the baby boom. As libraries approached the 21st century, the concerns of digital formats and the all-encompassing Internet intertwined to alter the book-centric "bricks and mortar" world of libraries. Nonetheless, public libraries were well placed to survive this new threat, just as they had with the challenges of radio, television, and telecommunication challenges in the 20th century.

The Canadian Multicultural Mosaic has long been recognized as an OCo if not the OCo outstanding characteristic of the Canadian nation at home and abroad. It has, further, come to be regarded as a model worldwide of a well-functioning culturally diverse society. This first book-length study of Canadian multicultural childrenOCOs literature sets out to explore how literature for the young has contributed to the creation of the countryOCOs multicultural discourse as well as to the construction of its national identity. In this context, childrenOCOs literature possesses particular significance, as juvenile literature by nature serves an educational purpose which extends to forming and informing the next generation of a countryOCOs citizens. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of the complex structures at work, not only the fictional works themselves but also CanadaOCOs policy with regard to childrenOCOs culture and literature have been examined. In order to provide an optimally comprehensive picture, chapters include, among other aspects, information on public library services for immigrant children, on Canadian research collections specializing in childrenOCOs literature, on Canadian publishing for children, and on promotional activities. The works of fiction examined cover the period from 1950 to 1994 OCo thus illustrating the development of the nationOCOs multicultural discourse OCo and include various Canadian regions as well as protagonists belonging to different ethnic groups. While the approach is interdisciplinary, the novels discussed are above all read against the tenets of Canadian multiculturalism as manifested in such core documents as Prime Minister TrudeauOCOs 1971 parliamentary declaration and the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act. The chief objective of the present study is to understand the interdependence between ideology, childrenOCOs literature, and the creation of a national discourse."