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The Canadian literature

poetry collection,
James A. Gibson Library,
Brock University

Lydia Thorne, MLIS Co-op Student (lthorne@brocku.ca)

Liaison Librarian: Justine Cotton (jcotton@brocku.ca)

Liaison Services, James A. Gibson Library

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Overview
The current Canadian literature poetry collection is housed as part of the print collection at the
James A. Gibson Library, Brock University.
Here is a brief overview of the 201 items in the collection:

LC Call #: PS 8255 - PS 8300

Format: Mostly nonfiction print books; also some anthologies and works of
poetry by individual authors
Language: Primarily written in English, with a few titles in French
Publication Dates: 1889 - 2014
Condition: Good (mostly hardcover materials); bindings intact
Scope: The subject matter of the texts varies greatly across the collection. The
topics covered range from specific geographical areas (from the West coast, to
the Prairies, to the Maritimes- and even some from the Niagara region!),
historical periods (pre- centennial; post-centennial to present; WWI; WWII), to
diaspora literature (Italian; Chinese; South-Asian; African-American), to a
focus on different minority groups (women; Aboriginal), to poetry collections
organized around genre (love poems, ecological poetry; hockey poetry; satire)

Users
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Canadian literature poetry collection is to support undergraduate and
graduate students and faculty in the English Language & Literature department at Brock
University. However, the collection may also serve other users on campus, such as students in
Canadian Studies, Women and Gender Studies, or Aboriginal Studies who may take electives in
this department for example.
Department
The English Literature department is part of the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.
Students who are interested in a degree in English have the following degree completion options:
a four year Hons. B.A degree (additional streams include a focus on English & Creative Writing
or English & Contemporary Culture) or a three year B.A. degree. Students can also minor in
English or in Professional Writing. There is also an undergraduate program that is offered in
English and Creative Writing. For graduate studies, the department offers a one year MA, but it
is a small program, with only 6 students in 2015 (for more statistics on student enrolment in this
department, please see Figure 1). Finally, students who are not enrolled in a degree program also
have the option to compete a certificate in Rhetoric and Writing. These modules allow students
to develop both specialist and more general degree programs. A student, for example, can obtain
a degree in English Literature or combine studies in this area with work in other disciplines.

Figure 1. Student enrollment in English Literature at Brock University between 2013- 2015.
As of 2015, there were 304 undergraduate students enrolled full time in English Language &
Literature at Brock University (down from 335 students in 2013).
For part-time, there were 20 undergraduate students enrolled in 2015 (down 40 students- or 50%from 2013).
Source: http://brocku.ca/institutional-analysis/data-visualizations
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Courses:
The program offers the following 9 electives (all undergraduate) on Canadian Literature: 1

ENGL 2P64: Early Canadian Literature

ENGL 2P65: Modern Canadian Literature
ENGL 2P66: Contemporary Canadian Literature
ENGL 3P66: Adapting Canadian Literature
ENGL 3V60-3V69: Special Topics in Canadian Literature
ENGL 4P64: Contemporary Canadian Fiction: The Short Story
*ENGL 4P65: Space and Place in Modern and Contemporary Canadian Poetry*
ENGL 4P68: Avant-Garde in Canadian Literature
ENGL 4V60-4V69: Topics in Contemporary Canadian Writing

Faculty Research:
There are currently 20 faculty members in the English department at Brock. Three faculty
members specifically identify Canadian Literature as being one of their research areas, however,
only one faculty member mentions Canadian Poetry specifically. 2

Weeding Criteria

<2010 that has never circulated

Low circulation count (items that have never circulated or only a few times)
Anthologies as they can be out of date quickly
Keep items that preserve institutional or regional knowledge
o For example:
The Poetry of Old Niagara (Ed. Kevin McCabe)- 1999
Looking for Trees: A Brock University anthology of Creative Writing2009

Evaluation

49/201 materials were published after 1995 = 24% (almost a quarter); 152 books
published before 1995

20 books have never circulated

o However, that is actually not that bad!
At least it is much better than the averagemany studies of university libraries
conducted in the last 20 years have shown low circulation counts. In fact, for
many, up to 40% of their print collection has never circulated at all 3

2015-2016 Undergraduate Calendar, English Language and Literature:

https://www.brocku.ca/webcal/2015/undergrad/engl.html
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English Department Faculty web site:

http://www.brocku.ca/humanities/departments-and-centres/english-language-and-literature/faculty-and-staff-el

In the 1970s, a study done at Pittsburgh University found that 40% of books purchased seven years earlier had never
circulated. At Bucknell, 39% of books purchased from 19911994 had never circulated. A study at Cornell
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However, if low circulation is taken into account

o 50 books (almost 25% of the collection) have circulated 0-1 times since 1995
o But what is considered a low circulation count? 0-1? 10? 20?

Only a few duplicate copies were found

Titles:

Titles that had circulated the most:

1) 40 Women Poets of Canada (Ed. Dorothy Livesay; Seymour Mayne) 1990
2) 15 Canadian Poets plus 5 (Ed. Gary Geddes & Phyllis Bruce) 1978
3) 15 Canadian Poets x 3 (Ed. Gary Geddes) 2001

Award winner for most interesting looking title:

The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective and Disrespectful Verse/ Chiefly by
Canadian Writers (Ed. F.R. Scott and AJM Smith) 1962

One of personal interest:

A Northern Romanticism: Poets of the Confederation: A Critical Edition (Ed. Tracy
Ware)- Professor at Queens University, took a course from him on Alice Munroe during
my MA

Limitations

No data before 1995

Some items had unusually high circulation counts- were they are course reserve at one
time?
Course descriptions in the Undergraduate Course Calendar are quite general sometimes
hard to know if materials are needed for a course- how to predict use?
No easy to see what Brock has for eBooks duplication?

University found that of books in their collection published in 2001, only 35.5% had circulated at all by 2009 and
that 55% of books published since 1990 had never been checked out. Spitzform reported in 2011 that, at the
University of Vermont, fully 40% of our books had not been checked out for years after they began sitting on our
shelves. In the same year Cheung, working in a Hong Kong academic library with an exceptionally high overall
circulation rate (121,000 circulations per year from a collection of about 470,000), nevertheless found that for
books1015 years old, about 36% had never circulated, with wide variation from 9% to 76% by LC (Library of
Congress) classification. Downey reported in 2012 that at Kent State University 39% of all librarian-selected print
books have never circulated. At Wake Forest University, Cramer ran a rather crude analysis and concluded in
2013 that roughly 50% of books have not circulated since local collection of circulation data began in 1991 and 36%
of the remaining 50% had circulated only once (Belvadi 64).

Summary
Overall, 39 books out of the 201 in the collection (about 20%) were weeded from the
Canadian literature poetry collection.
These materials were part of the 1995 project and duplication project and had low
circulation counts4

Works Consulted
Belvadi, M. (2016). DDA and traditional monograph acquisition- the experience of a small
university library. Insights 29 (1). Retrieved from
http://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.285/

For a full list of materials and for more information, please see Weeding List PS under the Collections Working Group
on SharePoint
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