Finding Scott Library’s Microtext Collection

Left: John Thomson, manager of library facilities, with the new, compact storage unit for York’s Microtext Collection


York’s Scott Library Microtext Collection has been moved from the second floor of the library to room 118, down the hall from the Map Library and the Sound & Moving Image Library.


The new space was especially modified to create a comfortable and quiet reading area as well as to accommodate special microtext storage units for a valuable and enduring research collection.


Because of the move of the government documents from the Business & Governments Publications collection at York’s Schulich School of Business to Scott Library, the Microtext Collection now includes the microfilm portion of government documents. (See July 7, 2003, YFile at http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=1514.)


Right: Microtext Collection


York University Libraries’ (YUL) collection consists of tens of thousands of rolls of microfilm as well as hundreds of thousands of sheets of microfiche. If you are looking for a diary, early book, broadside or pamphlet to use as a primary source in your historical research relating to Canada, the Microtext Collection is where you’ll want to be.


YUL has the entire run of microfilm documents, more than 70,000 titles, issued by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) – books, serials and ephemera from first European contact to the beginning of the 20th century and now the inclusion of government documents.