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The Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, located in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the fifth floor of the Toronto Reference Library, includes a manuscript collection with over 1,500 entries consisting of historical letters, diaries, plans, notebooks, speeches and other unpublished items detailing the private lives of (mostly) Canadian individuals and organizations from the 18th century to the present day.

When you're a manuscripts librarian, a lot of the books on the shelves look like props in a Harry Potter movie.

The Toronto Public Library manuscripts have a lengthy history of their own; in 1886, Toronto's first Chief Librarian, Dr. James Bain, bought an account of the Seven Years' War in America written by an anonymous officer and established the collection with the aim of preserving Canadian history and making it accessible to the public.

James Bain: kind of a big deal at the TPL. This 1904 illuminated address commemorating Bain's 21 years of service as Chief Librarian is just one part of the Baldwin Room manuscript collection.

We're pleased to announce that there is now an online inventory and finding aid of the library's manuscript collection available to be browsed from anywhere with an internet connection. The inventory is organized alphabetically, with columns listing the name or title of the main entries, the date(s) of creation and/or publication, a brief summary of the contents and its location in our stacks. If the item is listed in our 1954 Guide To The Manuscript Collection in the Toronto Public Libraries, clicking on the "Y" in that column will take you to the appropriate page in the ebook version of the Guide available on the TPL website.

Some of the manuscripts have been scanned and are available for viewing on the TPL Digital Archive; in these cases they can be accessed by clicking on the link included in the "Name – Main Entry" column. 

Lastly, some manuscripts have more detailed print finding aids available in the Special Collections Centre; those are marked with a "Y" under the "Detailed Inventory Available?" column. Presently, none of them are available online but may be added in the future. 

Card catalogs: believe it or not, still A Thing!

The Special Collections Centre is also home to a separate archival collection of theatre and performing arts manuscripts, photographs and ephemera with an emphasis on Canadian content; detailed inventories for this collection can be found here.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the manuscript collections, contact the Special Collections department by email at trlspc@torontopubliclibrary.ca or by phone at (416) 393-7156.