Our Mission

The Bibliocentre is committed to working with college libraries to enable faster, easier access to information which is essential in learning-centered environment. The Bibliocentre anticipates and meets the current and future needs of its users by: acting as a change agent in the application of emerging technologies providing effective cooperative services and system-wide cost savings providing access to electronic learning resources and automated systems for all colleges developing and maintaining centralized networks supporting the development and distribution of training materials consulting with stakeholders and partners, and maintaining a customer-based, continuous improvement approach.

The Bibliocentre Mandate

The Bibliocentre is a division of Centennial College and is funded as a separate agency for Ontario College Resource Centres by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. The Bibliocentre acts on behalf of the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. The mandate of the Bibliocentre embraces the following obligations: 

• To administer the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training's grant to the Bibliocentre and additional funding received from special projects and service contracts.
• To act in close co-operation with the Users' Advisory Group as the central acquisitions, indexing, cataloguing and processing agency for Resource Centre materials. 
• To develop and maintain networks, systems, services, products and a central integrated library database system structured to meet the ongoing needs of the Bibliocentre and its clients.
• To act in consultation with the Ministry of Education and Training as a publisher/distributor of college-produced Learning Packages, establishing copyright procedures wherever necessary. 
• To negotiate with organizations outside the College system, to market, promote and provide Bibliocentre services and products, and to provide consulting services in areas of expertise as appropriate.

History of Bibliocentre

The Bibliocentre was established by the Government of Ontario in 1968 with a purpose to purchase, catalogue and process materials for Community College Learning Resource Centres (LRCs) throughout Ontario. As an early adapter of the consortium model, this central service agency was created to save money, staff and resources, and to provide a union catalogue that would include information on materials held by all college libraries.
The Bibliocentre started as the "McMaster Project" (under the direction of Professor William Ready) when the community colleges were first established. The project funded by the provincial government and operated initially by McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, was designed to speed the opening of the colleges and eliminate costly duplication of expenditures (such as book selection, acquisition and cataloguing) for courses which were to be taught at multiple colleges.
Each college was to receive a basic collection of reference and subject materials for its core courses and specialized materials for individual local programs. The books were to be provided "ready-for-the-shelf", fully catalogued, labeled and processed by September 1967. The "McMaster Project" proved to be so successful in terms of speed and cost-effectiveness that it was decided to continue its pioneering work. The Committee of Presidents agreed to establish a central cataloguing facility which would continue to acquire, catalogue and process materials for the colleges. The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Bibliographical Centre, College Bibliocentre for short, was established in April, 1968.
A comprehensive automated Acquisition/Accounting System was designed and tested during 1969-70. During 1971, the Acquisition/Accounting System was put into operation. Discussions were initiated with University of Toronto Library Automation Systems (UTLAS) regarding an automated cataloguing system and development of a catalogue database.
In 1974, the first on-line terminals to the UTLAS facility were installed. The Bibliocentre also centrally produced and distributed Learning Packages for faculty and students to support the Ontario Management Development Program. In 1974, the Board of Governors of Centennial College agreed to assume legal, management and fiscal responsibility for the operation of the Bibliocentre. In the summer of 1978, the Bibliocentre chose DOBIS as the system to operate in-house and began the task of converting the machine readable records housed at UTLAS to the DOBIS format, as well as programming for total cataloguing support through the DOBIS facility via the mainframe computer housed at Centennial College.
The most recent and significant change in the history of the Bibliocentre was the decision to purchase a new library integrated system so that the Bibliocentre can continue to provide leading-edge information technology services. Ten Learning Resource Centres (Algonquin College, Centennial College, Collége Boréal, George Brown College, Georgian College, Humber College, La Cité Collégiale, Seneca College, Sheridan College) joined forces with the Bibliocentre as the BIBLIONET CONSORTIUM to implement a migration to the new library integrated system in the summer of 1996. Currently the Bibliocentre utilizes Sirsi Unicorn Library System.