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OISE's Ontario Historical Education Collections (OHEC)

Accessing the Collections

Materials in the Ontario Historical Education Collections (OHEC) may be viewed in the reading room by appointment only and may not be borrowed.  Please contact oise.library@utoronto.ca or call 416-978-1850 to book an appointment to visit the OHEC reading room. If possible, please provide the call numbers of the items you wish to view. 

Please note that there is no access to the OHEC collections during the pandemic, except for materials that have been digitized via the Internet Archive. 

OHEC Reading Room

  • The OHEC reading room is located on the 3rd floor of the OISE Library.

  • Food and drinks are not allowed in the reading room.

  • Materials in the OHEC are often rare and fragile and should be handled with care.

  • A scanner and computer are available in the OHEC reading room. Click here for more information on scanning OHEC material.

Locating OHEC Materials in the Catalogue

To search for documents in the Ontario Historical Education Collections:

1. On the OISE Library homepage, click on Advanced Search. Advanced Search box

2. Click Catalogue and select OISE/UT Library from the Search Scope drop-down menu.

3. Type your keywords into the search box, for example, "high school" or examinations. Searches for specific types of material include keywords such as calendar or regulations. For additional search strategies, see LibrarySearch Tips.

4. To limit your search results to OHEC materials, select OISE/UT Library - Ontario Historical Education Collection from the Library Location list. Please note that some Ontario Historical Education Collection materials are located in OISE/UT Library – Storage, OISE/UT Library – Periodical Stacks, and OISE/UT Library – Rare Books.

5. Limit by time period using the Publication Date filter 

 

Search Tips

  • Many titles are listed under a single catalogue record. See the "Other title" field for the full list of document titles under each record.

  • Use the term "courses of study" as an alternate to curriculum when searching for historical curriculum documents. 

  • Many educational documents are catalogued as serials and will appear in the search results under "Journals."

  • For serialized documents, see the "General note" field of the catalogue record for the years covered by our collection.

  • Grade levels are sometimes indicated in Roman numerals (e.g., Grade XII).