The library of the Ministry of Culture and Communications of Quebec (MCC), which contains some 27,000 titles, will be permanently closed. Its content, or at least part of it, will migrate to the Cécile-Rouleau library of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity.
This was confirmed in a memo sent to departmental employees, including The duty got a copy. In this note, the MCC also assures that employees will be able to access library resources after the move.
The department has set up a “project office” responsible for evaluating the content to be moved, the services to be maintained to meet needs, and the collaboration to be established with the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec. The office will also have to make decisions about “grey literature,” the term for government documentation that has not been published. It must also identify “possible solutions with regard to the documents kept in the premises of the Center de conservation du Québec, and the Réserve d’archéologie du Québec, as well as the documents belonging to the Conseil du patrimoine du Québec”.
Following protests, including The duty had reported in 2021, the MCC asked an external consultant specializing in librarianship, Silvie Delorme, coordinator of this project office, to produce an assessment report of the situation. The latter filed a first report last December. “You can access it through the access to information law,” she said, following the ministry’s guidelines.
“All I can say is that the ministry is in a serious process,” she simply added. For her part, Quebec Solidaire MNA Catherine Dorion is concerned that it is “extremely difficult” to get information on the process.
“We thought it was good to alert the media because it worries us,” she said. How many unknown jewels are in this library? she asks, referring to certain documents relating to the October crisis or the history of theater in Quebec. Departmental reports, commissioned over the years, can also be found there.
In 2020, the Department of Culture and Communications cited understaffing as the reason for closing the library, after one employee retired and the other changed jobs. “In the summer of 2020, the MCC undertook a needs analysis,” the ministry explained in an email.
Single copy documents
For Fernand Harvey, who earlier this year signed the book History of cultural policies in Quebec, 1855 to 1976, at Éditions du Septentrion, the establishment of a library evaluation committee is good news. The library collection, which he consulted for the writing of his book, includes all the documents assembled during the request for classification of a heritage building.
“For example, there is a survey on music and theatre. Often you only find one typed copy,” he says.
On the side of the Ministry of Culture and Communications, questions are answered in writing, quite laconically. “The documentation center is an internal service for MCC employees, located at 225, Grande Allée Est, in Quebec. This is not a service offered to the general public. The Ministry’s documentation center contains mainly monographs, but also a few thousand issues of periodicals for a total of approximately 27,000 titles. Some external researchers occasionally consult certain books in the library,” we are told.
The Corporation of Professional Librarians of Quebec, which was initially concerned about the closing of the library, hopes that the collection, once transferred, will be managed by sufficient staff to animate it.
“There is always some loss when the documentation center of a ministry closes,” said Vice-President Anne-Frédérique Champoux. However, a library is nothing when left unstaffed, she says. It remains to be seen whether the Cécile-Rouleau library will have enough staff to showcase its new collections.