Library of Parliament

Library of Parliament

·        Introduction

Thction ofe Library of Parliament (French: Bibliothèque du Parlement) is that the main data repository and analysis resource for the Parliament of Canada. The main branch of the library sits at the rear of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, and is that the last untouched a part of that larger building's original incarnation when it burned down in 1916. The library has been increased and restored variety of times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building these days is a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.

The library is overseen by the Parliamentary bibliothec of Canada ANd an associate or assistant bibliothec. The Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and therefore the Parliamentary Budget Officer are thought of to be officers of the library.

·        History

The Library of Parliament's roots be the decade, when the legislative libraries of Upper and Lower Canada were created; these operated separately until the creation of the Province of Canada in 1841 and therefore the collections were amalgamated and followed the urban center because it affected between Kingston, Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec City. The library was to be established in Ottawa when, in 1867, Queen Victoria chose Bytown as the new seat for her crown in the Dominion of Canada, and the Library of Parliament Act fashioned the establishment in 1871.

Though construction of the current library began in 1859 and therefore the assortment arrived in Ottawa in 1866, work was halted in 1861 and wasn't completed till 1876, when the 47,000 volumes—including several donated by Queen Victoria—were installed. Around 1869, the builders discovered that they did not have the technical data to create the vaulted roof, which means that Thomas Fairbairn Engineering Co. Ltd. of Manchester had to be contracted  to supply a pre-fabricated dome among a number of weeks; this gave the Library of Parliament the excellence of being the primary building in North America to possess a progressive Fe roof. Further, in 1883, the library's 300 gas lights were converted to electricity. However, such additional costs brought the library's price to $301,812, a sum added on top of the total price for all the parliament buildings, that had already gone so much higher than the first assigned budget. Within only 12 years, the entire roof was stripped of its slate shingles in a tornado that hit Parliament Hill in 1888, since then the roof has been clad in copper.

·        Main branch characteristics

Designed by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, and galvanized by British depository room,the building is made as a chapter house, separated from the most body of the Centre Block by a corridor; this arrangement, likewise as several different details of the look, was reached with the input of the then parliamentary bibliotheca, Alpheus Todd. He walls, supported by a hoop of sixteen flying buttresses, are load bearing, double-wythe masonry, consisting of a hydraulic lime rubble fill core between an interior layer of dressed stone and rustic Nepean sandstone on the exterior. Around the windows and along other edges is dressed stone trim, along with a multitude of stone carvings, including floral patterns and friezes, keeping with the Victorian High Gothic kind of the remainder of the parliamentary advanced. The roof, set in three tiers topped by a cupola, used to be a timber frame structure covered with slate tiles, but has been rebuilt with steel framing and deck covered with copper.The initial overall combination of colours—grey Gloucester limestone and grey Nepean, red Potsdam and buff Ohio sandstones, as well as purple and green slate banding—conformed to the picturesque style known as structural poly

·        Parliamentary librarians

• 1870 - 1884: Alpheus Todd
• 1885 - 1920: Martin Joseph Griffin
• 1920 - 1938: Martin Burrell
• 1944 - 1959: Francis Aubrey Hardy
• 1960 - 1994: Erik John Spicer
• 1994 - 2005: Richard Paré
• 2005 - 2011: William R. Young
• 2012 - 2018: Sonia L'Heureux
• 2018 - Present: Dr. Heather Lank

Partnerships and collaboration

The Library of Parliament could be a member of the Canadian Association of analysis Libraries