Professors Antoine Sirois and David Hayne first began to compile and publish bibliographic information in the field of Comparative Canadian Literature in the 1970s with their series of "Preliminary Bibliographies of Comparative Canadian Literature (English-Canadian and French-Canadian)", which appeared as supplements in the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue canadienne de littérature comparée from 1976 to 1986. In 1989, the Sirois team, which had expanded to include Maria van Sundert and Jean Vigneault, published the Bibliography of Studies in Comparative Canadian Literature / Bibliographie d’études de literature canadienne comparée, 1930-1987 (Sherbrooke: U. Sherbrooke, DLC), a volume which included and expanded upon the previous preliminary bibliographies and was the first comparative Canadian literature bibliographic compilation of its kind.

In 1995, work began on a new bibliography, with Professors Winfried Siemerling and Gregory Reid as new members of the team. The project obtained funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and student research assistants were hired. The traditional binary parameters of the bibliography were expanded to include other national literatures and comparisons between Canadian and Québécois literatures and foreign literatures. As well, the decision was made to include relevant studies of postmodern theory, ethnicity, translation, and cross-disciplinary studies. The basic criterion for inclusion in the database has been defined as follows: "that a study contain a significant comparison or discussion of Canadian and/or Québécois literatures, including their production, reception, study, histories, effects and influences, in relation to each other, or each or both in relation to other literatures of the world." In addition, the database includes research tools such as other bibliographies, reference works, anthologies, periodicals and histories relevant for scholars, students and other readers of Canada’s and Québec’s literatures in a comparative framework. Thus the bibliographic work done over the years has served not only to provide a resource tool for students and scholars, but also effectively to define and reflect the limits of the discipline and to substantiate this evolving field of study.

When work on the new bibliography began, it was decided that the project should produce an online research tool as well as a book publication. Thus entries were prepared for inclusion both in the subsequent hardcopy publication and in a searchable electronic database. In 2001, the team published the Bibliography of Comparative Studies in Canadian, Québec and Foreign Literatures / Bibliographie d’études comparées des littératures canadienne, québécoise et étrangères 1930-1995 (Sherbrooke: Éditions G.G.C.), which contains over 1600 entries; the same year, with the help of the project’s technician John Taylor-Johnston, the database was made available online, at www.compcanlit.ca.

The decision to develop the area of Translation Studies within the bibliography led to Professors Pamela Grant and Kathy Mezei joining the project team in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Kathy Mezei had already published a commented bibliography, the Bibliography of Criticism of English and French Literary Translations in Canada / Bibliographie de la critique des traductions littéraires anglaises et françaises au Canada (Cahiers de traductologie #7, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988), and arrangements were made with the publisher for the entries in the Mezei bibliography to be included on the project's website. Team members also started to work on updating Canadian literary translation studies entries from 1988 forward. Two other translation scholars joined the Bibliography's Translations Studies team in 2005, bringing fresh expertise: Patricia Godbout, a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, specializes in twentieth-century literary translation in Quebec; and Hugh Hazleton, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, specializes in Latin American literature as well as translation into and from Spanish and Portuguese.

The research focus of the bibliography project has thus considerably expanded from its original parameters, reflecting the evolution of the discipline. New areas include intra-national and extra-national comparisons dealing with, in particular, ethnic, aboriginal, and emerging literatures; theatre, drama and cross-media studies; and Canadian literature in relation to education and pedagogy.

Since 2009, the bibliography project has been associated with a new research group at the Université de Sherbrooke, the Research Group for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in and Quebec . Research group members will continue to work on updating the bibliography, as well as linking it with other bibliography projects with which members of the research group are affiliated, including  Zones of Tension  (Roxanne Rimstead), Culture from Below  (Roxanne Rimstead), and La littérature anglo-québécoise: institutions, textes, traductions, territorialité (Gregory Reid).