Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Library

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Library in Regina maintains one of the finest collections of non-fiction military history and technology books in Saskatchewan with over 2,000 titles.  These include personal memoirs, biographies, unit (naval ships, army regiments, and air force squadrons), histories, uniform and equipment history, military atlases, and original Canadian Army General Orders and regulations dating back to pre-WWI.  Current and past issues of assorted military magazines and publications are also to be found.  It is located on the second floor, south east corner of the Regina Armoury.

All RUSI members have full access to the collection, including borrowing privileges, during all hours the Mess is open.  An honour system allows members to borrow and return materials when Library staff is not available by self-completing the Library card provided with all items.  Genealogists and other researchers may be granted access to the collection for on-site research by arrangement with the Librarian at RUSI.  Below is the catalogue  of the collection.

CATALOGUE GUIDE                                                                Search:      by TITLE             by SUBJECT             by AUTHOR

GENERAL

The collection is primarily organized and catalogued on a simple Subject system.

With four exceptions the Primary Subject Identifier (PSI) is Country or
Geographical Area Of Operation e.g. “Great Britain” or “D-Day/Normandy”. The
exceptions are:

*General (all military subjects related to more than one other PSI). PSI is “General”
*World War I (European Theatre) involving more than one nation.
PSI is “WW1”
*World War 2 (European Theatre) involving more than one nation.
PSI is “WW2”
*Military Aviation not specific to another PSI e.g. “Fighter Aircraft of
the World”. PSI is “Air”
*Naval operations not specific to another PSI

Materials under the Great Britain and the Canada PSIs are further identified by:

*Operational environment e.g. “Great Britain Air” (GB-Air), OR
* “General” e.g. “Canada General” (CAN-Gen) which subject covers more than one of the operational environments e.g. “A History of the Canadian Forces” OR *As an autobiography or biography by “BIO” e.g. “Great Britain Biography” (GB-Bio). e.g. “Alexander of Tunis”.

Added to the above identifiers is a single letter being the first letter of the author’s surname e.g. the book “Up the Johns”, a history of the Royal Regina Rifle Regiment by author S. Mein is catalogued “Canada Land M” (CAN-Land-M).

EXCEPTION 1: In the case of autobiographies/biographies this letter signifies the first letter of the surname of the subject e.g. the biography of Field Marshal Alexander of Tunis (see above) will be allocated the letter “A”. e.g GB-Bio-A

EXCEPTION 2: Material that is an “official publication by a government agency, or written/edited by an unspecified author/contractor, “Author” is coded with the first letter(s) of the name of that country/province . E.g. the book Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields was an official Canadian Government publication. It is cataloged as CAN.GEN.C. The same applies to multi-volume series, collections etc.

SPECIAL COLLECTION

We are fortunate to posses some quite rare and/or expensive materials of great “cultural” value to our Institute. They are shelved in a secured case (see “Material Location” below). They are catalogued and coded in accordance with the general cataloguing codes (see “Primary Subject Indicators” and “Spine Codes” below) with “Location 2”. This collection also includes a number of written personal memoirs of their military service by Saskatchewan veterans. These are catalogued as “Memoirs”.

SERIES & PERIODICALS
The library also contains a number of bound historical military orders, regulations etc. multi-volume sets and current and earlier periodical collections and similar publications. These are listed in the Catalogue as “Series” or “Periodicals”.

PRIMARY SUBJECT INDICATORS AND SUBJECT CODES
Following below is a list of all Primary Subject Identifiers together with the corresponding portion of the Subject Code for each (less, of course, the single letter indicating author/biographical subject.

MATERIAL LOCATION

The library is on the second floor in the south corner of the Regina Armoury located at 1600 Elphinstone Street, Regina, Saskatchewan

IMPORTANT NOTES

1. Blank Spaces will be found on many pages of this catalogue. These are left there intentionally so that when new titles are added to our collection, they can be included in an up-dated catalogue without having to totally reproduce all pages.

2. Collection Access

a.   Members of the RUSI, the Regina Senior Ranks Mess (RSRM), and of the Ward Room and Petty Officers’ Mess of HMCS Queen, and members of the Roland Groome Chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society may borrow i.e. sign out and remove from the library any book, periodical, audio visual item or other library materials other than reference materials.

b.   Other persons including serving members of the Canadian Forces (CF) including Cadets and Royal Canadian Mounted Police have reference access only. That is, with prior arrangement with the Librarian, materials may be browsed, read or studied within the Library.  To make such arrangements, contact the Office Manager of the RUSI by email rusirom@accesscomm.ca  or leave a message by calling 306-757-8405.

c.   Hours of Access currently are limited to hours when the RSRM is open. Currently these hours which conform to hours the RSRM is normally open are:

September to June – Tuesdays (Land Reserves training):  2130 to 2359 hrs

July to August – As published from time to time by the RSRM

3. Copying Library Material

There is no facility in the Library for copying Library materials. Members who borrow materials are reminded that copyright laws including copying/duplicating apply to all Library materials.

Last updated:  10 November 2015