Coverage of Canadian Imprints in ESTC on CD-ROM (1992)

Since its inception in 1976 the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTc) has been steadily excpanding our knowledge of British and English-language printing history during the eighteenth century. Its revolutionary emphasis on the use of MARc records and its exhaustive union catalogue scope, whereby not only all works, but all extant copies of all relevant works are cited, have made it a model for international retrospective bibliography. The purpose of this report is to assess the value of the ESTc database in its most widely accessible form the Esrc on CD-RO1V (1992) as a resource for the historical and bibliographical study of Canadian imprints and the printing trade for the eighteenth century. The following criticisms refer exclusively to the CD-ROM edition. No attempt has been made to assess either the microfiche or on-line versions of ESTC On RLIN.I Also, since ESTc is an on-going project, we can be reasonably confident that some of the problems associated with Canadian imprints described here will be corrected eventually. Of course, ESTC's major limitation with respect to Canadian imprints is its exclusion of all periodicals published more frequently than annually, including newspapers, the principal mode of publishing for all eighteenth-century Canadian printers (with the single exception of the partners, Roger Lelibvre and Pierre-Edouard D6sbarats). It is expected that this problem will be addressed during the next phase of the ESTc project, which will be devoted to the bibliographical description of serials. With respect to monographic publications we can define three essential measures of ESTC'S Value as a resource for the study of eighteenth-century Canadian printing history and bibliography: (I) the extent of its coverage of the universe of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints defined by Marie

resource for the historical and bibliographical study of Canadian imprints and the printing trade for the eighteenth century. The following criticisms refer exclusively to the CD-ROM edition. No attempt has been made to assess either the microfiche or on-line versions of ESTC On RLIN.I Also, since ESTc is an on-going project, we can be reasonably confident that some of the problems associated with Canadian imprints described here will be corrected eventually.
Of course, ESTC's major limitation with respect to Canadian imprints is its exclusion of all periodicals published more frequently than annually, including newspapers, the principal mode of publishing for all eighteenth-century Canadian printers (with the single exception of the partners, Roger Lelibvre and Pierre-Edouard D6sbarats). It is expected that this problem will be addressed during the next phase of the ESTc project, which will be devoted to the bibliographical description of serials. With respect to monographic publications we can define three essential measures of ESTC'S Value as a resource for the study of eighteenth-century Canadian printing history and bibliography: (I) the extent of its coverage of the universe of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints defined by Marie t Stephen Francom is a Master of Library Science student at the University of Toronto. He has recently completed a four-month internship at the Archives of Ontario .
Tremaine in A Bibliograpl2y of Canadian Imprints I757-I800 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1952); (2) its effectiveness in locating extant copies of works which Tremaine identified but for which she found no copies; and (3) its effectiveness in identifying and locating extant copies of works not identified by Tremaine.
In total, Tremaine identified I,210 items which were either printed or proposed to be printed in Canada prior to 180I.2 A search of the ESTc database defined by the codes 'cy=en and nr= Tremaine' identifieS 2II ESTC records for works both printed in Canada and cited in Tremaine.3 Table I analyseS ESTc coverage of Canadian imprints in terms of a percentage of the total number of imprints recorded by Tremaine, divided chronologically in five-year sections: This analysis demonstrates that ESTC'S coverage of the universe of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints defined by Tremaine is generally sparse, averaging 17-5% of the total and never in any five-year period reaching 25% of the total. Coverage is especially meagre prior to 1776 and minuscule for the period I75 I-I765. It is encouraging, however, that ESTc coverage does at least reflect the dynamic pattern of the development of eighteenth-century Canadian printing revealed by Tremaine's research, characterized by steady growth between 175 I and I775 followed by dramatic, loo% increases in press output beginning in 1776 and 1786.
Of the I,2zo total items identified by Tremaine, 397 were works for which Tremaine was unable to locate an extant copy -Tremaine ncl (no copy located) items -or works which were in somne way advertised or proposed to be printed but for which Tremaine concludes that no evidence is available to demonstrate that the work was ever printed.4 ESTc has been largely unsuccessful in illuminating this grey area of eighteenth-century Canadian historical bibliography; it supplies descriptions, and provides locations of a single extant copy in each case, for a mere fifteen of 397 Tremaine ncl items, or just under 4% of the total.s In contrast, the Tremaine supplement project (undertaken by Patricia Fleming and Sandra Alston) has to date located extant copies of approximately I20 Tremaine ncl items, or just over 30% of the total. At least three of these fifteen times had been located in extant copies prior to their citation in ESTC, further limiting ESTc's contribution to the broadening of knowledge in this area. 6 Several classes of material are prominent among the nearly 4oo Tremaine ncl items, and it is instructive to analyze the extent to which ESTc has, by locating extant copies, contributed to a broadening of knowledge of these classes. The most numerous class of Tremaine ncl items is almanacs (eighty-five items), particularly those for Quebec (fifty-four), Lower Canada (twelve) and Nova Scotia (fifteen). Six of the fifteen Tremaine ncl items located in ESTC are almanacs: one for Lower Canada (Tremaine 92I) and five for Nova Scotia (Tremaine 33o,350,870,923,and 978). It is, however, a measure of the inconsistency and incompleteness of its coverage of Canadian imprints generally that ESTc has not located all of the extant copies of Tremaine ncl almanacs nor even all of the Tremaine ncl almanacs held in collections which have reported some Tremaine ncl almanacs tO ESTC.7 Other populous classes of materials among Tremaine ncl items include Laws & Statutes (fifty-seven items, none located in ESTC), particularly for the jurisdictions of Quebec and Lower Canada (fortyfour): proclamations of Provincial Governors and Lt.-Governors (fifty items, one located in ESTc -Tremnaine 404), particularly those for Quebec and Lower Canada (twenty-five) and Nova Scotia (seventeen), and especially those issued under the authority of Governor James Murray (1764Murray ( -1768 in Quebec and Lt.-Governor Wentworth (179S-I808) in Nova Scotia -nine items each; school books or primers printed in Quebec (sixteen items, none located in ESTC; none located by the Tremaine supplement project); and book catalogues -for auction sales and libraries (sixteen items, one located in ESTC -Tremlaine II88; no others located by the Tremaine supplement project). A complete list of Tremaine ncl items located in ESTc along with a summary of new information provided by ESTc relative to Tremaine's description of the item is found in Table 2: The third essential measure of ESTC'S value as a resource for the study of Canadian printing history and bibliography is the extent to which it has identified legitimate eighteenth-century Canadian imprints not previously identified by Tremaine or any other bibliographical source. A search of the ESTc database using the terms 'cy=cn andnot nr=Trremaine' and 'cy=cn and nr=not in Tremaine' identifies twenty-seven items which ESTC CatalOgulerS are SatiSfied are eighteenth-century Canadian imprints not cited by Tremaine. It is highly probable that not all of these items are eighteenthcentury imprints; it is likely that at least two of these items are, in fact, cited by Tremaine; and it is certain that at least two of these items were identified in other non-Tremaine sources prior to their citation in ESTC.
ESTc tl4S223 is probably an 1806 reprint of Tremaine II84, as described in Tremaine's note to that item: see item ol59 in Milada Vlach and Yolande Buono, Catalogue collectif des impressions québecoises, I764-I820 (Montreal: Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec, 1984 ESTc records woz 6696 and woz 6660 were both identified and located at McGill in Catalogue collectif o924 and o443 respectively prior to their identification by ESTC. This leaves some twenty-three eighteenth-century Canadian imprints not identified by Tremaine but now recorded in ESTC fOr analySiS by date of publication and subject content, as well as place of publication, printer, extent/ format, language, and repository.s Only three of these items were printed prior to 1780 and none prior to 1770, a fact which reflects the dramatic rise in Canadian printing beginning in the late I770s. These items are highly· miscellaneous in subject content and authorship. As was the case with Tremaine ncl items, almanacs (four items, three for Nova Scotia) are the class of material best served by ESTc in its coverage of not-in-Trremaine Canadian imprints. Sermons (three items) and official publications of various agencies of the Quebec provincial administration (four items, including two ordinances issued by the Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace -Quebec District, and proclamations issued under the authority of Governors Dorchester and Haldimand) are also well represented. Predictably, given that the press in eighteenthcentury Canada was largely subsidized as an organ for the dissemination of official or institutional information and opinion, only eight of these twenty-three not-in-Trremaine imprints are works of personal authorship; the rest were issued anonymously or under the auspices of various corporate bodies.s To date, the compilers of the Tremaine supplement project have identified approximately 150 eighteenth-century Canadian imprints not recorded by Tremaine. ESTC'S identification of twenty-three such items (or 15 -3% of the known total) is comparable but slightly inferior in extent to its coverage of in-Trremaine imprints (211 of I,2o4, or 17·5 % of the total). It is, nevertheless, a great improvement on its coverage of Tremaine ncl items (a mere fifteen of 397 items, or 4% of the total).
In theory, one of the great advantages of ESTc from the perspective of the student of Canadian imprints is its access to the resources of hundreds of repositories and collections not available to Tremaine. Indeed, ESTc's list of contributing Canadian libraries includes thirty-six repositories not known to or not consulted by Tremaine, largely because, like the National Library of Canada, the institution did not then exist.
But this ostensible advantage is largely negated by the fact that so few of these repositories have contributed records of their eighteenthcenturyl Canadian imprints tO ESTC; or perhaps, having been reported, their records have not yet been processed by ESTc and added to its current file.Io Whatever the reason, only seven of these thirty-six repositories have records of holdings of Canadian imprints in ESTc, and of these seven, only two -the National Library of Canada, with seventy-one items, and the University of British Columbia, with twenty items -are represented in significant numbers. Moreover, of the ESTc holdings reported by Canadian repositories not known to Tremaine, only one record (Tremaine 737, for which Tremaine found only a photostatic copy, located by ESTc at the National Library of Canada) corresponds to an item for which Tremaine could locate no copies, and none are for items not identified at all by Tremaine.
It is particularly disappointing that many Canadian institutions have reported voluminouS ESTC holdings of non-Canadian imprints while at the same time they are represented in ESTc by few or no Canadian imprints. The University of Alberta has contributed at least 2,I89 records tO ESTc, while McMaster University is represented by an astounding I 3,93 6: none of these records is of Canadian imprints. The University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has contributed at least 9,5 72 ESTc records, a mere nine of which are of Canadian imprints. The Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec has reported holdings of 75 6 total ESTc items, only one of which is a Canadian imprint, despite the fact that this institution is known to possess several hundred early Canadian imprints (see Catalogue collectif). Certainly, one must conclude from this evidence that ESTC's access to repositories and collections not known to Tremaine has not yet led to any significant broadening of knowledge about or access to surviving copies of early printed Canadians.
The inadequacy of ESTc's coverage of repositories holding significant collections of early Canadian imprints is even more acute and more apparent when one examines the number of records of Canadian imprints listed in ESTC With holdings in Canadian repositories known to and examined by Tremaine. With only two exceptions -McGill University and Dalhousie Universitythe vast majority of Canadian repositories is represented in ESTc by far fewer records of Canadian imprints than the number of items noted in their collections by Tremaine.
In the Maritime provinces there are five repositories with major collections of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints: Dalhousie University, the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Legislative Library, Acadia University, anad Mount Allison University. Of these, only Dalhousie's collection is adequately represented in ESTc. TremIaine located thirty items, thirteen of which were identified as unique, at Dalhousie. To date, Dalhousie is represented in ESTc by forty Canadian imprints, including nine of the thirteen unique items identified by Tremaine and three items (all Nova Scotia almanacs) not identified by Tremaine.
At the Public Archives of Nova Scotia Tremaine found seventyseven items, ten of which she identified as unique: the Archives is thus far represented by only twenty-seven ESTc records of Canadian imprints (but eight of the ten unique itemis), only one of which identifies an item not in Tremaine. The Nova Scotia Legislative Library is listed by Tremaine as holding copies of sixty-eight eighteenth-century Canadian imprints; to date the Legislative Library is listed in ESTc as a contributor of a mere four records of Canadian imprints. The situation is even worse with respect to the Acadia collection. Here Tremaine located copies of eighty itemns, fifteen of which were unique -including twelve Nova Scotia laws; ESTc locates copies of only two items at Acadia, neither of which corresponds to any of the unique items identified by Tremaine.
Mount Allison University is not a formal ESTc contributor; thus the Davidson Collection of early printed Canadians is not accessible to researchers through ESTc. According to the recent catalogue of the Davidson Collection, the collection contains copies of fifty Tremaine items as well as copies of five eighteenth-century Canadian imprints not identified by Tremaine.x x In terms of ESTc coverage of Quebec repositories, the only bright spot is the McGill University collection. Tremaine located copies of thirty-six items at McGill, none of which was unique. McGill's collection of Canadian imprints is represented in ESTc by fiftyseven items, including eleven items not identified by Tremaine"2 and copies of five items for which Tremaine found no copies.
At the Bibliothèque de la ville de Montr6al (Tremaine's CaQM), Tremaine located copies of ninety-four items, seven of which were unique: to date, ESTc contains records of only thirty-nine items with copies located at the Btibliothèque de la ville de Montréal, none of which are items not identified by Tremaine or for which Tremaine found no copies, and including only three of the seven unique items. Catalogue collectif, published in I984, located copies of 246 items at the Bibliothèque de la ville de Montr6al.I3 The Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec in Montreal did not exist when Tremaine was preparing Canadian Imprints, but at its inception subsumed most of the substantial collection examined by Tremaine at the Bibliothèque de St. Sulpice (Tremaine's CaQMS).
Here Tremaine located 191 copies of 143 items, forty of which she identified as unique. As noted above, despite contributing at least 756 records tO ESTc and despite total holdings (in I984) of 543 Quebec imprints dated I764-1820 (as listed in Catalogue collectif), the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec is represented in ESTc by a single Canadian imprint. Of the forty items in the St. Sulpice collection identified as unique by Tremaine, only two are located in ESTc at other repositories, leaving thirty-eight unique items unrepresented because the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec's collection of Canadian imprints has either not been reported to or not been processed by ESTc. These thirty-eight items include several works of major historical and bibliographical significance, including Tremaine 147, a primer printed in the Abnaki dialect; Tremaine 251, the second illustrated Canadian imprint; Tremaine 598, a broadside map of Montreal c. 1789; and Tremaine 466, the 1785 catalogue of the Quebec Library (these items are all listed as unique to the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec collection in Catalogue collectif). A second huge gap in ESTC's coverage of Canadian imprints in Quebec repositories is its failure to include as a contributor the S6minaire de Qu6bec in Quebec City. Tremaine examined this enormously rich collection when it was affiliated with the Uni-versit6 Laval (thus her use of the location code CaQQL). When Laval relocated to Sainte-Foy, nearly all of the eighteenth-century Canadian imprints remained at the S6minaire.I4 Here Tremaine located 224 copies of 205 items, fifty-four of which were unique. Catalogue collectif confirms that, as of 1984, forty-five of these fifty-four items are still in the S6minaire de Qu6bec collection (seven items are not cited in Catalogue collectif and two others are located at the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec or McGill but not at the S6minaire de Qu6bec), forty-one of which remain unique (four items exist in two copies, one located at the S6minaire de Qu6bec and the other at either the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec or the Bibliothèque de la ville de Montr6al). Universit6 Laval is a formal contributor tO ESTc but to date is listed as having contributed records for In Ontario three institutions, the Library of Parliament and National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library (cited by Tremaine as the Toronto Public Library collection, where she located 55o copies of 456 items, 123 of which were unique), are represented in ESTc by a total of seven records of Canadian imprints. At the Library of Parliament (two ESTc Canadian imprint records), Tremaine located 193 copies of 173 items, fifty-five of which were unique, including twenty-seven unique copies of Quebec and Lower Canada almanacs bound in collections of the Quebec Gazette, along with nineteen unique copies of the Quebec Gazette's carrier's addresses. Thirteen of the twenty-seven almanacs are cited in Catalogue collectif with copies (many of which are incomplete) in either or both the S6minaire de Qu6bec and the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec. Five of the nineteen carrier's addresses are cited in Catalogue collectif, all single copies located at the S6minaire de Qu6bec. This leaves thirty-seven items, apparently unique to the Library of Parliament collection, including fourteen copies of Quebec and Lower Canada almanacs and fourteen copies of the Quebec Gazette's carrier's addresses, not represented in ESTc along with an additional eighteen items identified by Tremaine as unique to the Library of Parliament collection but now known to exist at the S6minaire de Qu6bec and/or the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec but not recorded in ESTc  . In fairness, it must be noted that since Tremaine examined this collection it has been largely reorganized and Tremaine's location notations have consequently been rendered obsolete. This has made it extremely difficult for contemporary researchers to find many of the items cited by Tremaine. At the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library (ESTc contributors of at least 2oo total records, of which none is for a Canadian imprint), Tremaine found ninety-five copies of seventy-nine items, twenty of which were unique, including fourteen unique broadsides. In addition, Gertrude M. Boyle, ed., A Bibliography of Canadiana: First Supplement (Toronto: Public Library Board, I959) lists four eighteenth-century Canadian imprints added to the (now) Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library collection since Tremaine published Canadian Imprints in 1952, including two items not identified by Tremaine (items 4757 and 4765); and Sandra Alston, ed., A Bibliography of Canadiana: Second Supplement (Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, I985-I989) lists eighteen eighteenth-century Canadian imprints added to the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library collection since 1959 including one item not identified by Tremaine (item 6670) and two items for which Tremaine found no copies (item 6679 = Tremaine 1138; item 6683 = Tremaine II91). This leaves, through 1989, a total of at least lor items in the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library collection, of which perhaps as many as twenty-five are unique, unrecorded in ESTC .
The two British repositories with major collections of eighteenthcentuiry Canadian imprints, the British Library and the (London) Public Record Office, are, from the point of view of researchers interested in using ESTC tO Study early printed Canadiana, a study in stark contrast. On the one hand, the general broadening of knowledge of the British Library's eighteenth-century collection, which has resulted directly from the ESTc project, is well illustrated by the inclusion in ESTc of more than three times as many Canadian imprints with copies at the British Library as were identified by Tremaine. Limiting her search at the British Museum Library to the Haldimand papers, Tremaine found twelve items, ten of which were unique. ESTc to date includes records of thirty-nine Canadian imprints with copies at the British Library, including all but three of the twelve British Museum Library items identified by Tremaine and five items not identified by Tremaine at all. In keeping with the ESTc's general expansion of knowledge of 'ephemeral' printing, two of these five not-in-Trremaine items are broadsides.
Unfortunately, for ESTC Students of Canadian imprints, the prospect is not so pleasant with respect to the resources of the Public Record Office (Lpro). To date ESTc has located only one Canadian imprint at Lpro, where Tremaine identified I6 I items, many of them broadsides sent to the Colonial Office by Canadian Governors and Lt.-Governors in their dispatches, and forty-seven of which Tremaine identified as unique. Of these 16I items, ESTc locates thirty-seven with copies in other repositories, but only one of the forty-seven items described by Tremaine as unique to the Public Record Office (Tremaine 6I13 located at the National Library of Canada).
It is doubly disappointing that ESTc not only does not include descriptive notice of a large number of apparently unique imprints but also misses an opportunity to contribute substantially to the historical, bibliographical record of eighteenth century Canadian imprints by confirming or altering the second-hand descriptive records produced by Tremaine for many of the items she located in unique copies at Lpro but which she apparently never saw, basing her descriptions on manuscript transcriptions of the original documents which she found at the Public Archives of Canada (now the National Archives of Canada).I On a more positive note, the compilers of the Tremaine supplement project report that much of the relevant material at Lpro has been flagged, perhaps by ESTC researchers, and all has of course been described for inclusion in the forthcoming Tremaine supplement.
The short conclusion to this extended discussion is clearly that ESTc coverage of Canadian imprints, particularly those held in Canadian repositories, is woefully inadequate, especially so when much of the relevant material -particularly Quebec imprints -is I9 Francom : Coverage of Canadian Imprints in ESTC On CD-ROM well documented in other bibliographical sources. The few instances in which ESTc has been relatively successful in encompassing and making accessible eighteenth-century Canadian imprints held in certain repositories -Dalhousie University, McGill University, the National Library of Canada, and the British Library -cannot compensate for the general and severe underrepresentation of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints held in most Canadian repositories and the utter omission of collections of virtually unparalleled richness at the London Public Record Office, the Bibliothèque nationale du Qu6bec, the S6minaire de Qu6bec, and the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library.
Errors, omissions, and inconsistencies are to be expected in a project as massive and compleX aS ESTc, and it would, of course, be unfair to apply the same critical standards to a general bibliographic database as to a descriptive bibliography with a relatively narrow scope such as Tremaine's Canadian Imprints. Nevertheless, it seems neither unfair nor irrelevant to identify problems inherent in the ESTc database which cumulatively diminish its utility both as a union catalogue and as a resource for historical, bibliographical research relative to Canadian imprints.
In addition to the generally meagre coverage of the major eighteenth-centuiry Canadian imprint collections in Canadian repositories, ESTc's location-coding protocols and explanatory keys are confusing and riddled with frustrating errors. Single repositories are sometimes designated by multiple location codes. For example, the law library at York University is listed as CaOTYL, with 5 I2 citations; as CaOTY-L, with eight citations; and as Ca-OTYL, with one citation. Furthermore, mis-entered codes appear in the 'Libraries' browse indexes and various location fields of the records themselves which cannot always be connected with the name of an actual repository in the lists of contributing libraries provided in the ESTC On CD-ROM printed Manual.I6, I7 Such errors and inconveniences undermine user confidence in what should be one of ESTC's most useful features -the ability to search the holdings of particular libraries or proximate groups of libraries -and calls into question the integrity and effectiveness of the file as a union catalogue.
Closely related to the issue of repository coverage is the issue of numbers of locations holding extant copies of particular works.
ESTC iS self-advertised as a union catalogue; it aims to provide exhaustive lists of worldwide locations of extant copies of the specific works cited in the ESTC file. This feature of ESTC iS valuable and important for several reasons. First, scholars have greater access to extant copies because they know where such copies are located. This is crucial because the bibliographical study of works produced during the hand-press period depends on the physical examination of multiple copies of such works. In the hand-press period every copy of every edition is worthy of scholarly notice because it may contain anomalous features which might help to clarify aspects of the printing history of particular works and of the eighteenthcentury book trade in general. Specific copies may contain or lack, for example, half-titles, cancelled and/or inserted leaves, stop press corrections, errors in imposition, advertisements, and subscribers lists. The importance of ESTc's decision to list all extant copies rests in the fact that the anomalies are bibliographically significant. Comprehensive lists of extant copies of works are also helpful in establishing priorities for the preservation of particularly scarce editions, and represent significant secondary evidence of the geographic extent of eighteenth-century printing and the collecting practices of specific individuals and institutions.
Given these potential benefits the student of early printed Canadiana will clearly be interested to know the extent to which they are realized with specific reference to eighteenth-century Canadian imprints. A comparison of the number of locations listed by Tremaine and by ESTC fOT wOrks commonly described (i.e., items cited both in ESTc and Canadian 1mprints) reveals that ESTc has not only cited far fewer works than did Tremaine but also, in most cases, lists far fewer locations than did Tremaine. T-able 3 summarizes the comparison by charting the number of locations provided by ESTC relative to Tremaine. The category '-5,' for example, indicates the number of commonly described works for which ESTc lists at least five fewer locations than did Tremaine. Only those ESTC l0CatiOnS described as 'primary' or 'verified' have been considered. ESTC locations described as 'unverified' have been ignored:I This analysis indicates that in nearly 60% of the cases considered, ESTc hals provided fewer (in many cases far fewer) locations than did sI Francom : Coverage of Canadian Imprints in ESTC On CD-ROM Tremaine, and where ESTc has provided more locations, the addition is marginal (with one exception, a single addition). ESTC's claim to function as a union catalogue cannot, at present, be maintained with reference to Canadian imprints.
In her introduction to Canadian Imprints Tremaine claimed that early Canadian imprints have survived in sufficient numbers that, with respect to the printing trade in eighteenth-century Canada, 'the general picture is clear. Additional items may possibly come to light from time to time, but they are unlikely to change the picture in any significant way' (p. xi). The advent of ESTc has identified and made accessible some few items either not known to Tremaine or which she knew of but could not locate in extant copies; however, neither these identifications nor ESTc's descriptions of Canadian imprints already well documented in Tremaine and other bibliographical sources has resulted in any major revision of the broad outlines of the portrait of printing in eighteenth-century Canada sketched by Tremaine.
To date ESTc has not provided evidence to alter Tremaine's conclusions regarding the authorship, date and place of publication, or printer(s) of items identified in Canadian Imprints. Nor has the information assembled and made available by ESTc led to the definitive identification of any printer or printers' partnership arrangement or centre of printing activity not known to and documented by Tremaine, nor even to the extension of the operative dates assigned by Tremaine to the activities of specific printers and presseS. ESTc has not revealed any significant class of printed materials not known to Tremaine (although ESTc has made important contributions in identifying extant copies of various almanacs and broadsides), or which she concluded were either never printed in significant numbers or were printed but are now irretrievably lost (such as materials on the fur trade, the Indian almanacs, and elementary school books or primers). These conclusions are noted here not by way of criticism but as a statement of fact.
For the most part, ESTc descriptions of Canadian imprints provide, at best, relatively minor adjustments in bibliographical detail and confirmation of tentative bibliographical conclusions, ascriptions and attributions made by Tremaine, most often with reference to ncl items (see Table 2 above). Unfortunately, such positive contributions, modest as they are, are at least matched and probably exceeded by errors, anomalies, and inconsistencies in the bibliographical record of eighteenth-century Canadian imprints introduced by the ESTC, Which when combined with certain faults and Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 33/ I limitations inherent in the ESTc database and cataloguing protocols, further compromise ESTc's value as a resource for the study of Canadian imprints and printing history.
One thing which is: immediately apparent when one studies the file of ESTc descriptions of Canadian imprints is the disconcerting frequency with which ESTc title transcriptions diverge from Tremaine's (which is not to say that Tremaine, herself, was not guilty of an occasional mistranscription). Comparison of these transcriptions with transcriptions found in other bibliographical sources confirms that in virtually all cases of divergence, ESTC'S transcriptions are erroneous. In most such caseS ESTc contributors and/or cataloguers have inadvertently omitted title elements. For example, ESTC WOO985o (Tremaine 1115), describing a sermon by Mather Byles printed at Saint John, N.B., by John Ryan in 1799, omits the word 'signal' from that portion of the title transcribed by Tremaine as '. . . the late signal successes, granted to his Majesty's arms.' Confronted with such an anomaly, the bibliographer in particular is left to ponder whether this discrepancy represents a simple error in transcription or an undetected variant. The frequency of such occurrences and comparison with other bibliographical sources certainly suggest that ESTC Catal0gulerS and contributors have not been sufficiently vigilant in detecting transcription errors.
In some cases these mistranscriptions have serious semantic consequences, as in ESTC WOI673 6 (Tremaine 1 149) where the word 'first' is omitted from the caption title transcribed by Tremaine as ' . an act passed in the second session of the first provincial parliament of Upper Canada.' Similarly, the omission of the word 'Regis' (in this case an entire line on the title page) in ESTC WO I67 34 (Tremaine 889) from that portion of the title transcribed by Tremaine as 'Anno Regni Georgii mI. Regis Magnae Britanniae .. .' makes grammatical nonsense of the title. In this instance, Tremaine's transcription is confirmed by Catalogue collectif oo8 3.·I Of course, ESTc is not primarily a descriptive bibliography, but such errors, relatively minor in themselves, cumulatively undermine confidence in ESTc's claim to preserve important bibliographical information by faithfully transcribing original misprints rather than silently correcting or normalizing these. Who is to known if a particular anomaly is an original misprint or an ESTC transcription error?
Particularly in records catalogued at the British Library (ESTC record numbers beginning with the character 't'), an anomalous ESTc transcription often incorporates a deliberate ellipsis in a long title. In some caseS ESTc catalogulers have made puzzling, inappropriate, and unfortunate choices of title elements to edit by ellipsis. For example, compare the title as transcribed and edited by Tremaine in her item 439 and by ESTc cataloguers in record number to5ol35: Tremaine: 'This is to give notice . .. [to] Refugee Loyalists and disbanded troops . .. ' ESTc: 'This is to give notice that his excellency the governor, in order to fulfill His Majesty's gracious intentions . .. ' The result is that the significant words 'Refugee Loyalists' are omitted in the ESTc record and thus lost for keyword searches on materials relating to this topic.
Also problematic iS ESTc's handling of descriptions incorporating attributions -of dates of printing to undated items and printers' names to anonymously printed itemns. Tremaine herself made many such attributions on the basis of circumstantial evidence both internal and external to the printed item, and for the most part, ESTC simply incorporates these attributions in its descriptions, noting them as such and citing Tremaine as the souirce. On occasion, however, a Tremaine attribution appears in an ESTC description without acknowledgment in the notes, as in ESTC woI67S5 (Tremaine 901). In other placeS ESTc reports as definitive information an attribution which Tremaine made quite tentatively, while providing no new evidence to support the change. For example, compare ESTC WOI6738 with the corresponding description by Tremaine (item 1151). ESTc dates the item without qualification to 1799 (the date on the title page) whereas Tremaine has been much more circumspect: 'Though possibly published in 1799, this work was advertised (for the first time?) [in] . .. Upper Canada Gazette, Apr. 5, 18oo.' DoeS ESTC's unqualified attribution of this item to 1799 reflect some new information which has allowed definitive dating, or merely undiscriminating transcription of the imprint date and ignorance of Tremaine's doubts?
Most disturbingly, ESTC in some cases makes attributionsagain unsupported by evidence -where Tremaine pointedly refused to do so. For example, Tremaine item 1173 was printed anonymously, and Tremaine made no attribution (a decision supported by Catalogue collectif o45 8). In its corresponding description of this item (record number woI6638), ESTC reports the imprint as 'Quebec: Imprim6 [par Roger Lelièvre & Pierre-Edouard D6sbarats] à la Nouvelle Imprimerie 1800' and adds in a note, 'Pierre-Edouard D6sbarats and John Neilson were partners at the Nouvelle Imprimerie in 18oo.' The latter is a fact well known to Tremaine (and presumably considered by her insufficient as the basis for an attribution), and which further begs the question: why attribute to Lelièvre and D6sbarats rather than D6sbarats and Neilson? No further rationale or authority is provided by ESTc to sustain this attribution.
ESTc cataloguers have not been particularly scrupulous in noting bibliographical interrelationships between Canadian imprints even when such connections are obvious, important, and well documented by Tremaine. ESTC WO I6 69g5, a description of Tremaine 7 Io, never mentions the fact that the item. is a French translation of Tremaine 709. Similarly, ESTC WO I67 I5, describing Tremaine 1 119 , fails to note that the item is a reprint of Tremaine lo86. ESTC wo3 7 139 (Tremaine 520o) records the work's 'collation' as '[3 ], 7 6-loo p.' which is perplexing in the absence of any explanation such as is provided by Tremaine, that the work was separately printed but paged in continuation of an earlier publication (Tremaine 48 6).
ESTc's account of the imposition or format of Canadian imprints is particularly erratic, frequently incomplete, and in several instances directly contradictory to Tremaine (justifiably in one or two cases but most often not). Of the 2I T items commonly described by ESTc and Tremaine, twenty-tWO ESTc entries include no miore information in the 'Format' field than a '?'. The ESTC On CD-ROM Manual (p. 3-15) explains that the '?' indicates that the record was prepared by North American Imprint Program cataloguers working with microform copies, which naturally prevented their determination of the item's format 'with any certainty.' A further thirty-eight ESTc entries substitute for the standard ascriptions of format the dimensions in centimetres of the type page.20 Contrary to the Manual's explanations (p. 3·I4), this practice is not confined to the descriptions of single-sheet items -in fact, of the thirty-eight ESTc entries describing the 'format' of Canadian imprints in terms of type-page dimensions, only one (Tremaine 921/ESTC wo34887) is a single-sheet item. A final problem iS ESTc's policy regarding multilingual texts. While ESTc does have a language-field code ('mul') for polyglot items, it is rarely assigned. Instead, in nearly all cases in which an item contains material printed in more than one language, the dominant language is exclusively designated in the language field while reference is made in the notes field to the presence of other-zS Francom : Coverage of Canadian Imprints in ESTC On CD-ROM language material. Bilingual English-French editions are common among eighteenth-century Canadian imprints, but in citing these items, ESTc nearly invariably describes them in the language field as 'English.' Searchers must thus rely on a keyword search in the notes field in order to identify such items. A secondary problem concerning bilingual English-French Canadian imprints is that ESTc catalogulers have not used standardr phraseology in describing the manner of their imposition. ESTc record numbers woI6690 (Tremaine 942) and to94676 (Tremaine 996) are respectively described as printed in English and French 'on opposite pages' and 'on facing pages.' Tremaine describes both as printed in English and French 'on opposite pages.' In some cases, no imposition information is provided, e.g. in ESTC WOI6655/Tremaine 188, described by Tremaine as printed 'in English and French on opposite pages' but in ESTC aS merely 'printed in English and French.' The powerful search and retrieval facilities provided by ESTC On co-RoM do offer considerable potential benefits to students of eighteenth-centuiry Canadian imprints and printing history, but such benefits are at present severely limited by the relatively small sample of Canadian imprints (less than 20% of the 'universe') included in the ESTc database. In general the meagre size of this sample, and the impossibility of knowing whether it is statistically representative of the whole, means that no valid conclusions regarding eighteenth-century Canadian printing can be made on the basis of ESTc-derived data.  (Quebec, 1905). None of the fifteen Tremaine ncl items located in ESTC are items listed in Tremaine on the basis of published advertisements or proposals for printing but for which no definitive evidence was found of their having been printed as proposed. 7 The Tremaine supplement project has located extant copies of four Tremaine ncl Nova Scotia almanacs and three Tremaine ncl Lower Canada almanacs not currently located in ESTC (Tremaine 576, 749, 824, 867, 973, I109, and 1159)