On November 10, 1854, the Legislative Assembly Select Committee of the Geological Survey approved an annual allocation of funds for the creation and maintenance of a museum and a library. This event marked the birth of scientific information services in Canada. Over the ensuing century-and-a-half, the Geological Survey of Canada Library has evolved into the Earth Sciences Information Centre of Natural Resources Canada, and has spawned the libraries of the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. In November 2004, these organizations will celebrate 150 years of library service.

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) was initially established in Montreal in 1842 under Sir William Logan, and moved to Ottawa on Sussex Street in 1881. The GSC library, originally based on Logan's personal collection, continued the development of its acquisitions program through gifts, exchanges and purchases. In 1882, John Thorburn was hired as the first fulltime librarian. By 1886, the first library card catalogue was completed with 6500 volumes. Early accounts state the importance of allowing access to the library collection beyond the staff of the GSC: "It is open to the public, like the museum itself, and has in attendance a librarian who is always ready to produce any required report."

In 1911, the GSC library moved to the newly built Victoria Memorial Museum Building (VMMB) where the GSC's research activities expanded to include a new Anthropology Division. Then in 1926, the Division's photographic collections were transferred to the library. A year later, the Museum Branch of the GSC became the "National Museum of Canada". In 1950, the Museum was transferred to the Department of Resources and Development, and subsequently the GSC Library collection was divided. The National Museum received material that dealt exclusively with archaeology, ethnology and the flora and fauna of Canada as well as museological material. The Museum appointed its first librarian in 1953, but it was not until 1959 that physical separation took place when the GSC moved to its own building on Booth Street.

In 1905, the Dominion Observatory and its library were launched. This collection grew from Chief Astronomer Dr. Otto Klotz's personal collection to include the fields of geodesy, geomagnetism and seismology. In 1970, the astronomy program and collection moved to the National Research Council of Canada, and the remaining library served the new Earth Physics Branch (EPB). Then in 1986, the EPB joined the GSC, and its library became the geophysics collection of the GSC Library.

The Surveys and Mapping Branch moved to Booth Street in 1961, and their many collections were gathered together to create the Surveys and Mapping Branch Technical Library. In 1971, the new Canada Centre for Remote Sensing also opened a library focusing on this emerging strategic technology. Over the 1990s, these two libraries and the Map Resource Centre (formerly the Departmental Map Library) merged into the Geomatics Information Centre.

Over this same time period, the GSC Library opened three regional libraries to provide service to growing GSC divisions in Calgary (1967), Vancouver (early 1970s), and Sainte-Foy (1990). In addition, 1988 saw the transfer of the GSC photo collection to the library. Then in 1993, the National GEOSCAN Centre (for geoscientific information) merged with the GSC Library in Ottawa to form the Canadian Geoscience Information Centre, and this centre, in turn, merged with the Geomatics Information Centre in 1996 to form the Earth Sciences Information Centre.

The National Museums Corporation, established in 1968, comprised the National Museum of Man, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and the National Museum of Science and Technology. After more than 60 years at VMMB, in 1972, the corporate library left this location and occupied various other sites until 1990, when under the Museums Act, the three Museums became separate Crown Corporations. The library collection was redistributed again among the three museums.

Today, in 2004, the four libraries are happy to jointly celebrate 150 years of professional library services and the development of collections now recognized as national resources in their respective fields of geosciences, anthropology, natural sciences and the history and development of science and technology.