a history of curriculum services canada

1995-1996
formats.)
The second important event was the news that Executive Director, Susan Langley, had been
offered the position of Secretary Treasurer of OTF and might be leaving OCC. The Work
Group responded by forming a committee to consider her replacement and by making the
necessary arrangements to allow Chair Horst Schweinbenz to function as Acting Executive
Director in the interim (Earl McCabe (OCSTA) would take over as Acting Work Group
Chair during this time). In March, Langley resigned effective 30 April.
Much of the remainder of the winter and spring of 1996 was taken up with decisions and
actions around incorporation. The first order of business was to choose the most appropriate
incorporation status—“for profit,” “not-for-profit,” or “charitable.” To do this required a
careful examination of the tax, liability, and functional implications of each. Next, each
partner organization had to weigh the relative merits to decide which option worked best for
them and indeed, whether they would support incorporation at all. Meanwhile, new by-laws
had to be drafted.
Work also continued on other initiatives. Hundreds of orders were processed for new
catalogue materials. A colour brochure was produced to solicit corporate partnerships, 18 a
new site agreement signed with OPSBA, and an agreement reached with CFORP to cite
each others catalogues as resources. A comprehensive manual of all of the Policies and
Regulations developed since the beginning of OCC was compiled and a new motto
adopted—“Helping Teachers Make a Difference for Students.” To help promote OCC, a
folder and postcard were created and one postcard was sent to every Ontario teacher in May.
OCC also hosted its second curriculum forum.
At the same time, Kent RCSSB was solicited for an inservice pilot (14-15 May with
feedback 5 June) to help teachers access information electronically. This project would
prove very useful to teachers and also to OCC as a feedback mechanism on the electronic
version of the catalogue. TVO was approached to conduct a video teleconference on this
pilot, for later sale.
At the suggestion of members of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF), the British
Columbia Teachers’ Federation and the Council of Ministers of Education (Canada) were
contacted about the possibility of developing a national database. As it turned out,
SchoolNet, which was further along in its electronic evolution than OCC, had already
proposed doing something similar, so no further action was taken. Meanwhile, OCC
worked with the Ontario Teacher Education Librarians’ Association (OTELA) to develop a
purchase plan that would allow Ontario education faculty libraries to buy school board
documents listed in the OCC catalogue at greatly reduced prices. This initiative succeeded.
Many boards and consortia bought into the concept and, over the summer, a large number of
resources were purchased.
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