“Asian Canadian Literary and Cultural Bibliography” - Val Lem
Channel: Bibliographical Society of Canada
Date: 2021-06-25

Val Lem, Ryerson University Library

John Miska’s Ethnic and Native Canadian Literature: A Bibliography (UofT Press, 1990) was an early effort to identify publication by foreign-born Canadian writers and indigenous authors in Canada. More recently, traditional bibliographic monographs focus upon regional and specific diasporic groups. (Mary Kandiuk’s Caribbean and South Asian Writers in Canada (Scarecrow Press, 2007) and Rajwant Singh Chilana’s South Asian Writers in Canada (Asian Publications, 2017). This case study discusses the origins and evolution of an online exhibit that has morphed into an updating website using the WordPress platform. Asian Heritage in Canada, and more specifically the “Authors” section of the site had a very modest launch in May 2003. At that time, the site identified less than fifty authors and included only 15 individual author pages. By January 2021 it has grown to highlight the literary works with a brief biography of about 500 authors. Information from the site has been organized into a spreadsheet to facilitate analysis including trends.