a history of curriculum services canada

In response to its request to participate in the Work Group, a motion was made to invite the
Canadian Book Publishers’ Council to a future meeting. Later in May, following a meeting
between Executive Directors, the Council tentatively accepted OCC's plans for a first
catalogue—particularly as materials to be listed were for teacher rather than student use—but
cautioned that publishers would sue boards whose resources included published materials.
The Chair also reported that several meetings had taken place with the Executive Director of
OCSOA to discuss ongoing issues around recognition of the Catholic community. This
community was pleased with OCC's undertaking to meet its needs and recommended that this
would be best accomplished by printing two separate catalogues—one for public schools and
one for separate schools. Continued support for the Clearinghouse project would be subject to a
review of its policies and operations before the end of year one.
At the same time as these issues were being addressed, another challenging situation relating to
mandates and territory was developing. Extensive research, carried out in the education
community to determine what OCC should be doing and what was most worth doing, showed
that boards were opposed to having OCC develop learning materials. And though some of the
associations were willing to consider developing materials in co-operation with the
Clearinghouse, this was not a high priority for most boards and was viewed with suspicion by
those that had working co-operatives and/or their own marketing mechanisms. Most boards and
organizations were also unwilling to make available for free materials they had produced for
sale, even though larger boards often provided these resources to smaller boards at little or no
cost.
These attitudes left OCC with limited prospects for a significant role in either curriculum
development or in the reproduction of materials for low-cost redistribution. Rather, the
education community envisioned OCC as a "best practices" organization that could collect good
materials, publicize them to educators, and perhaps play some limited role in distribution.
Meanwhile, ONTERIS was continuing to collect materials for their database. This created a
potential problem for OCC because, without a distinguishing role in development or distribution,
OCC could well be undermined by confusion among developers over the apparent similarity
between their service and that of ONTERIS. In addition, because many developers were
unwilling to provide free copies of their material to more than one agency, there was the real
possibility that resources could be split between the two services. Clarification was needed and
a meeting was scheduled with MET, OCC, and ONTERIS. In this meeting, ONTERIS expressed
a clear willingness to work with OCC and declared no intention to compete. ONTERIS’
expertise lay in its technical ability; its mandate was broader than curriculum alone. The
strength of OCC, on the other hand, lay in its curriculum expertise, access to clients through
stakeholder groups, and ability to deal with issues such as copyright and curriculum criteria.
Whether with ONTERIS or another service, a database had to be developed quickly. The Work
Group had agreed that the first catalogue would be issued in January 1995 and the ability to
1994
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