A new bilingual database of Canadian Literary Awards, created by a dedicated team of Memorial University librarians, is about to “go live” at the QEII’s Electronic Classroom (L – 2028) onWednesday, May 29, at 2 p.m. 

Librarians Angela Lonardo, Karen Lippold and Suzanne Sexty, along with the expertise of web programmer Chad Healey, began the colossal task of compiling, researching and finally organizing all French, English, and bilingual literary awards in Canada from the years 1923-2000. The database is designed to appeal to anyone interested in Canadian Literature, from literary scholars to members of the broader community.

“Though some information about literary awards can be gotten from various sources, there wasn't one comprehensive, bilingual source for Canadian literary awards," said Ms. Lonardo. “Also, we got our data for the most part directly from the sponsoring agencies, from the source let's say."

The database has also caught the attention of a larger, national project called the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC). The collaboratory project is collecting and connecting Canadian literary data into a cross-disciplinary and user-friendly web-based platform that extends beyond the traditional data silos that currently exist. Essentially, the project is creating a super database for researchers to use that will web together data from all kinds of sources and put it in one virtual place.

According to Susan Brown, project lead of the CWRC project and also a professor of English and theatre studies at the University of Guelph, the literary database will provide very important and often lesser known information about Canadian writers and will become an integral part of the collaboratory project.
  
“For instance, a researcher investigating Alice Munro would be able to search CWRC for information about her life and her writing, and would discover alongside information from other projects the impressive number of awards Munro has received, including lesser-known ones such as the Upper Canada Brewing Company's Writers Craft Award,” said Ms. Brown. “Having this information within the CWRC will mean that portions of it can be mapped and visualized, alongside other CWRC materials.”

The collaboratory’s interest in the literary awards database is good news to Ms. Lonardo. 

“Participation in the CWRC project will ensure that the data will be dynamic while also allowing for updates and enhancements,” she said. “And our participation will give the database wider exposure.”