Canadiana is a term used to describe things (e.g., books, historical documents, works of art, music and artifacts), ideas, or activities that concern or are distinctive of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, its peoples, and/or its culture, especially works of

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

and other cultural products. It can also refer to the collection of such materials, such as in cultural fields like

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

. As a category often seen in

bookstore Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, book people, bookmen, or bookwomen. History The found ...

s and in research

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

, Canadiana can describe works produced in Canada (including literature and

non-fiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or content (media), media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real life, real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to pre ...

), works about Canada, and works published outside of Canada that are of special interest or significance to Canada. More generally, the term can also include books that do not necessarily deal with Canada or Canadians themselves, but were written by Canadians or people who were Canadians at some point in their life. Two books by Canadian author

Douglas Coupland Douglas Coupland (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian novelist, designer and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He ...

—'' Souvenir of Canada'' and '' Souvenir of Canada 2''—for example, are collections of images of pop-culture Canadiana.

Name

The suffixes ''

-ana -ana (variant: -iana) is a suffix of Latin origin that is used in English to convert nouns, usually proper names into mass nouns, most commonly in order to refer to a collection of things, facts, stories, memorabilia, and anything else, that rela ...

'' and ''-iana'' are commonly used in reference to a collection of things that relate to a specific place, person, etc. Similar to the concept of Canadiana is that of

Americana Americana may refer to: *Americana music, a genre or style of American music * Americana (culture), artifacts of the culture of the United States Film, radio and television * ''Americana'' (1981 film), an American drama film * ''Americana'' (20 ...

for the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

.The term

Canuck ''Canuck'' ( ) is a slang term for a Canadian, though its semantic nuances are manifold. A variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of the term. The term ''Kanuck'' is first recorded in 1835 as a Canadianism, ori ...

iana has been used (rarely), in humorous contexts, as a synonym for Canadiana. Canadiana bookplate TPL 1914

Library system

Since 1950, one of the specific mandates of the

Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; ) is the federal institution tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is the 16th largest library in the world. T ...

(LAC) has been to document the published heritage of Canada through a comprehensive bibliography—titled Canadiana: The National Bibliography of Canada. In

OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

's WorldShare

integrated library system An integrated library system (ILS), also known as a library management system (LMS), is an enterprise resource planning system for a library, used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed. An ILS is usually ...

, the Canadiana

authority file In information science, authority control is a process that organizes information, for example in library catalogs, by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or an identifier (generally Persistent identifier, persistent and Alpha ...

contains two record types: # ''Canadiana Subject Headings In English'', a list of subject headings in the English language, using

controlled vocabulary A controlled vocabulary provides a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. Controlled vocabularies are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other knowledge organization systems. Controlled v ...

, to "access and express the topic content of documents on Canada and Canadian topics." , the database contains around 2,500 subject and geographic name headings in English. When cataloguing in English, LAC uses the Library of Congress/NACO Authority File (LC/NAF). # ''Canadiana Name Authorities in French'', used by LAC and other Canadian libraries when creating bibliographic descriptions in French. The database contains over 600,000 records for names, names/titles,

uniform title A uniform title in library cataloging is a distinctive title assigned to a work which either has no title or has appeared under more than one title. Establishing a uniform title is an aspect of authority control. The phrases conventional title and s ...

s, and series titles.

References

External links

Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana
— Canadiana art collection at Library and Archives Canada
Canadiana.org
— A non-profit, cultural

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

with the mandate to locate and preserve early printed Canadian materials. Much of this material is available in digitized format a
Early Canadiana Online

Thisiscanadiana.com
— A Canadiana blog and educational video series exploring lesser-known tales from Canadian history.
Peel's Prairie Provinces
— A full-text, searchable database of digitized prairie Canadiana, including newspapers and other Western Canadian publications
Baldwin Collection of Canadiana
— Large research collection of rare books

Toronto Public Library Toronto Public Library (TPL) is a public library system in Toronto, Ontario. It is the largest public library system in Canada, and in 2023 had averaged a higher circulation per capita than any other public library system internationally, making i ...

. {{Authority control Culture of Canada