Early Canadian Cultural Journals Index

This ground-breaking index includes 137,943 records of prose, poetry, drama, fiction, and miscellaneous items (letters to the editor, sheet music, illustrations, advertisements, and obituaries) from 203 nineteenth-century periodicals published in Canada.

It includes The Nova Scotia Magazine, Canada's first literary magazine, longer-running titles such as the Canadian Monthly and National Review, and more ephemeral ones such as Mayflower or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper. Not all runs are complete; only what was found extant was included. Some major periodicals such as Saturday Night are not included. The Journals collection, which was not released with the original index on CD-ROM, records what was seen, where, what was entered in the collection, and what is missing. In addition to essential publication information, there are subject descriptors on all items.

Related full-text content

Much of the content described in these records has been digitized and is freely available online through the Canadiana Collections.

Content warning

As the Canadiana website notes: "The Canadiana Collections contain content created over five centuries that tell an incomplete, oftentimes distorted and, sometimes harmful, story of Canada. The content, metadata, and resource descriptions in the Canadiana Collections contain language that reflects the biases, norms, and perspectives of the time in which they were created. This includes harmful and offensive wording, cultural references, and stereotypes." This is true also of the metadata records, provided in this collection, which record the language of the time.

Invitation to contribute

This collection is open to correction and enhancement by members of CWRC. Please be in touch at cwrc / at / ualberta \ dot \ ca if you are interested in contributing.

Data conversion: For this collection, the data from the original database developed for the CD-ROM was transformed into records using the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS).