Some members argued that to represent Canada adequately at the international level a Canadian association was needed.
By the next year Letters Patent incorporating the Canadian Association for Information Science were granted, and CAIS was formally operational in early 1971.
Ultimately this structure proved to be unsustainable in the relatively small population of information scientists in Canada and the last remaining chapter closed in the early 1990s.
Corporate and government people were involved in early days of information technology implementation, and membership provided a means of learning new developments and exchanging experiences.
Today the membership is heavily weighted to academics from the library and information science faculties at Canadian universities.
Membership in CAIS is automatic for all who attend the annual conference and includes a subscription to The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science.
Simultaneous translation was provided, but federal or provincial funding assistance dried up forcing the association to drop the service in 1985.
In 1976, the association began publishing Canadian Journal of Information Science/ La Revue canadienne des sciences de l'information, as an annual publication directed at IT and library practitioners.