L.M. Montgomery Digital Library

SEARCH THE L.M. MONTGOMERY DIGITAL LIBRARY

Last Update: 6 May 2003

NOTE: The LMMI will be releasing a searchable database of LMM research in 2010.

I wrote my first essay on L. M. Montgomery when I was in the eleventh grade. Although scholarly interest in Montgomery was picking up by that time, owing in part to the publication of the first two volumes of Montgomery's Selected Journals, the small public library in my home town carried little more than a few novels and one of the short story collections. My essay was mainly based upon several primary works I owned and upon several reference works I obtained through interlibrary loan. How times have changed! Not only has the amount of material written about Montgomery quadrupled since the first volume of the journals was published, but digital media and the internet have also revolutionized how we gain access to traditional resources.

Since writing that first essay, I have always wanted to bring together the increasingly diverse array of resources on Montgomery into a unified collection with universal access. In spring 2000, I completed a selective bibliography of secondary sources (1985-1999) for my English Honours essay at the University of Prince Edward Island; that bibliography later appeared on the Institute's award-winning CD-ROM, The Bend in the Road: An Invitation to the World and Work of
L. M. Montgomery. While my work expanded on the 1986 bibliography, Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography, its accessibility and searchability were limited. In 2002, the L. M. Montgomery Institute received website funding through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and the database became part of the website expansion.

The L. M. Montgomery Digital Library currently contains more than 1000 records of secondary source material on Montgomery, including books, theses, book chapters, scholarly journal articles, periodical articles, newspaper articles, book reviews, theatre reviews, film and television reviews, video recordings, and computer files. The records date from the early Anne of Green Gables book reviews of 1908 to criticism published only this year. The database is intended for use by all L.M. Montgomery scholars and enthusiasts and is a first for Montgomery Studies.

The focus of the database is secondary source material. If you are interested in researching Montgomery's primary works, please consult the 1986 bibliography, Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography, compiled by Ruth Weber Russell, D. W. Russell, and Rea Whilmshurst, and published by the University of Waterloo. For a detailed listing of film and television adaptations of Montgomery's work, consult Benjamin Lefebvre's excellent filmography, "L. M. Montgomery: An Annotated Filmography," published by Canadian Children's Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse in 2000 (no. 99, p. 43-73).

We welcome feedback on the database including suggestions for additions. Please send your feedback through the comments form on the search page. If you have a general research question, contact the Institute via the research request form.

I wish to thank Simon Lloyd, Special Collections Librarian at the Robertson Library, for his guidance, and Dr. Elizabeth Epperly and Elizabeth DeBlois for their continued support of this project.

Heather Ludlow
May 2003