The “Wild West”? Depictions of Alberta in Ottawa Public Library Subject Headings

Abstract

This thesis examines how Alberta is represented within the Ottawa Public Library (OPL) collection through an inductive thematic analysis of the subject headings assigned to books, eBooks, DVDs, and streaming videos related to the province. Using a dataset of 333 titles, 1,257 unique subject headings were analyzed to reveal thirteen themes, including identities, extraction, Indigenous people, settler-colonialism, political life, and environment. Findings revealed that Alberta is depicted through a multifaceted lens: as Indigenous land with ongoing cultural presence; as a site of settler-colonial mythmaking, including cowboy and ranching imagery; as a province strongly tied to extractive industry and its environmental consequences; and as a politically charged region marked by alienation, resource-based populism, and debates over federal–provincial relations. This study contributes to an understanding of the role public libraries play in mediating knowledge about national regions and suggests avenues for future research into regional representation across Canadian library systems.