Search

Digital publishing is still in its infancy, but it is useful to relate what might be called the prologue to the history of digital publishing in French in Quebec. This article presents the actors who have contributed, and continue to contribute, to the transition from print to digital culture in Quebec. It offers a panoramic view of this transition in the various publishing genres from newspapers and magazines, to journals, books, theses, dictionaries, bibliographical databases, and legal texts. A typology of the actors working in these different genres emerges, comprising publisher, aggregator (general or specialist), distributor, production technician, retailer, and librarian. The builders of Quebec's digital publishing milieu are acknowledged through brief descriptions of their projects and enterprises. Many of them have displayed a notable capacity to engage in the development of new models for the production and diffusion of culture and research. The quality of their products, services, and expertise has been recognized several times over through international partnerships and co-operative ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the text books they complement, dictionaries are widely used tools in schools. This article examines which dictionaries were authorised for use in schools from 1880 to 1960 by the Department of Public Instruction, the definitive authority for education in Quebec in the absence of a government department, and what use was made of them. During the period examined in this study, dictionaries had to receive endorsement, in the same manner as all text books for francophone public schools, from the Catholic Committee of the Council of Public Instruction, which was comprised half of Catholic bishops from Quebec and the other half from the Catholic laity. Text books and dictionaries were subjected to the meticulous and critical examination of the clerical authorities, who had the text modified or removed illustrations that did not seem to conform to orthodoxy in their eyes before granting their approval. Even though other dictionaries were circulating in Quebec, notably those of the publishers Mame, Quillet-Flammarion, and Hatier, it is the Larousse dictionary, particularly the Dictionnaire complet de la langue française with Canadian supplement, that dominated the period and that made the Montreal publisher Beauchemin its fortune. This study shows that the imported French book could only be distributed in Quebec and in Canada as long as the content met the moral standards of the Catholic Committee of the Council of Public Instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]