Adèle Languedoc BA graduate portrait. Credit Old McGill Yearbook 1929

b. March 28, 1904, Outremont, QC; d. December 25, 1993, Ottawa, ON

1929 BA McGill University
1929 Library Diploma McGill
1946 BLS Columbia University

1929–1936 Cataloguer, McGill University Library
1936–1945 Program Officer, McLennan Travelling Libraries Program (Program Director, 1940–1945)
1946–1950 Librarian, American Relief for France
1951–1964 Accessions Librarian, Canadian Bibliographic Centre (became the National Library of Canada in 1953)
1964–1969 Assistant National Librarian, National Library of Canada
1970–1978 Part-time Cataloguer, Pamphlets Collection, Public Archives of Canada

Languedoc, Adele de Guerry (1947). “Extracts from letters [her work for the American Relief for France].” Quebec Library Association Bulletin no. 27 (winter): 11–14.

Languedoc, Adele de Guerry (1951). “En marge du stage d'étude de Malmö, Suède.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 7 (March): 153–155.

Languedoc, Adèle de Guerry (1966). “The national role of the ‘National Library’.” CACUL Newsletter 5: 11–15. [Canadian Association of College and University Libraries]

Languedoc, Adèle de Guerry (1968). “Centenary gifts to Canada's National Library.” Ontario Library Review 52 (3): 139–141.

When hired to work at the Canadian Bibliographic Centre in 1951, there were three librarians but no books. Along with Martha Shepard and Jean Lunn, she was referred to as a founding mother. She developed the Canadiana acquisitions program and Canadian Authors File and was well-respected for her detective work in tracking down Canadian publications and Canadian authors, especially French-language authors. She represented Canadian Library Association in 1950 at the UNESCO Seminar at Malmö, Sweden and in 1958 was chairman of the Library Advisory Committee for the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition, 1958, for the Canadian Pavilion. A keen traveler, she also went to Sweden in the 1960s as a member of the Canadian delegation to a UNESCO seminar on libraries. She also traveled to Tunisia and Algeria as a library advisor, helping them to expand their national library services under a Ford Foundation grant. Following her retirement as Assistant National Librarian in 1969, she worked part-time cataloguing a special collection of pamphlets for the Public Archives of Canada.

Bédard, Francine. “A Library Without Books Acquisitions 1950–1953.” In Bulletin of the National Library of Canada 32 (6) [June 2000].
Hampton, Edna. At Last, Time for Reading, Globe and Mail, April 2, 1969.
“Retraite de Mlle Languedoc / Retirement of Miss Languedoc.” National Library News 1 (April–June 1969): 2.
Library and Archives Canada. Celebrating Women's Achievements. Adèle de Guerry Languedoc [accessed August 9, 2013].