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Library History Conference - Abstracts

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Edmund Balnaves

The origins of Inter-Library loans in Australia in relation to special libraries

Prior to the advent of low-cost computing, union lists in special libraries were rare. In the early 1980’s a serials union list of health libraries was compiled that formed the basis for wider collaboration in Inter-Library Loans (ILL). Gratis is a network of special libraries that was formed on December 6, 1982, with 14 founding members. The immediate impetus to the formation of the group was the trebling of the cost of ILL.

A small annual subscription funds a network comprising over 250 special libraries in heath and allied fields, many of which are too small to participate in the national ILL network. Careful distribution of workload helps to facilitate participation among large and smaller libraries. This co-operative model has subsequently been adopted by law, emergency services, transport and government library networks in Australia and New Zealand.

The paper will examine the origins of the Inter-Library loans in Australia and the factors that gave rise to the Gratis libraries network, and its progressive adoption throughout Australia and the features that distinguish GratisNet from the national ILL service.

Dr Edmund Balnaves (BA, MBA, PhD), currently works as an IT specialist with Prosentient Systems. He has previously worked as an IT consultant or IT manager for a variety of organisations. He has also lectured in Arts Infomatics at the University of Sydney.

Fiona Brown

Setting a precedent: the evolution of the Australian Law Librarians’ Association 1969-2009

The Australian Law Librarians’ Association began in 1969 with informal gatherings of Sydney law librarians. It has now developed into a fully fledged national organisation with over 700 members in all states and territories. This paper examines the particular requirements of law librarianship that led to the formation of the association and assesses its success in addressing and overcoming those early challenges. The paper also examines the evolution of the association from a small informal local group into a strong national association.

Fiona Brown (BA, LLB Monash) has previously worked as a Solicitor in the corporate sector. In 2008 she completed the Graduate Diploma of Information and Knowledge Management at Monash University and is currently employed as a librarian for Vision Australia. Fiona is an Adjunct Research Associate with the Centre for Community Networking Research at Monash University. She is currently writing the history of the Australian Law Librarians Association which will be published later this year.

Peter Thompson

Challenges and Opportunities in Conserving and Using Heritage Library Collections

An important aspect of exploring Australian library history is to be able to examine and utilize the remnant library collections and records from such organizations as Mechanic’s Institutes and commercial lending libraries. This paper explores the issues involved in ensuring heritage and remnant library collections are properly conserved and documented, and examines ways these collections can be made safely available for community interest and research.

The paper will focus on case studies of actual collections, featuring many interesting examples of heritage books and records. The aim will be to relate practical information and guidance to those who may be involved in such projects.

Peter Thompson has worked as a librarian at Latrobe University in Bendigo. He has an interest in local history and is keenly interested in the problems presented by heritage collections. He has recently moved back into the business sector as a database and web development professional.

David Heardon

‘That Brilliant Track’: Dan Deniehy, the Native-Born and the Goulburn Mechanics’ Institute.

This paper examines the publicist role of our most significant first-generation republican, Daniel Henry Deniehy (1828-65), and his mentoring work when in Goulburn in founding, under fascinating circumstances, the Goulburn Mechanics’ Institute between 1854 and 1857. His speeches were superb; his politics aggressive and imposing. He died a hopeless alcoholic in Bathurst, in 1865 but was regarded by his peers, including old school friend, William Bede Dalley, as the most significant of the first generation of ‘native born’ Australians.

David Heardon is a cultural consultant and historian. Formerly Director of the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies in Canberra (1994-2004), he is now Advisor on the Centenary of Canberra in the Chief Minister’s Department, ACT Government, and Advisor to Senator Kate Lundy. Dr Heardon is a regular commentator/presenter on cultural, political and social issues on ABC radio and television (regional and national) and WIN television. Since early 2008, he has been presenting a regular segment on Canberra’s centenary history for ABC TV’s Stateline program. Dr Heardon is also a member of the ACT Place Names Committee, the Territory Records Advisory Council, and he has been Vice-President of Manning Clark House since its inception in 1997. His publications include: North of the Ten Commandments - a Collection of Northern Territory Literature (1991), The Oxford Book of Australian Sporting Anecdotes (1993), The Abundant Culture— Meaning and Significance in Everyday Australia (1995), League of a Nation (1996), Our First Republicans (1998), Makers of Miracles—the Cast of the Federation Story (2000), The Best Ever Australian Sports Writing— a 200-Year Collection (2001) and The Symbolic Role of the National Capital (2003). Dr Heardon was the project co-ordinator, editor and co-writer of the national award-winning The Griffin Legacy (2004). In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal.

Dr David Jones

John’s Gospel: Metcalfe and the writing of Australian library history’

John Wallace Metcalfe (1901-1982) had a profound influence on the course of Australian library history, playing a major part in the Australian Institute of Librarians (later the Library Association of Australia), working for the development of free public libraries, leading education for librarianship in Australia for over thirty years and making an acknowledged contribution to the theory and practice of librarianship. His writings on the development of Australian libraries attempted to provide definitive accounts and from time to time corrected what he saw as the misapprehensions of others. The cumulative effect of his published works, reminiscences, interviews, surviving manuscripts and diaries has been to foster a dominant ‘Metcalfe view’ of Australian library history. This paper uses case studies relating to the development of the Australian Institute of Librarians, the work of the Free Library Movement, the McColvin Report and discrimination against women in the Public Library of New South Wales to show how the Metcalfe view has long prevailed.

Dr David J. Jones MA (Oxon) DipLib PhD (UNSW) FALIA, worked at the State Library of New South Wales from 1970 to 2008. He was a reference librarian in the General Reference and Mitchell Libraries before coordinating the 1988 building and refurbishing project. From 1989 he led the Library’s building consultancy service and was also Manager, Building and Advisory Services, Public Library Services. His 1993 doctoral dissertation at the University of New South Wales was on W. H. Ifould and the development of library services in New South Wales. He has written widely on Australian library history, presented a paper on H. C. L. Anderson at the first Forum in 1984 and organised the 2007 Forum in Sydney.

Carmel Maguire

War between the states averted: how the New South Wales Free Library Movement’s territorial ambitions came to little

The leaders of the Free Library Movement were in no doubt that New South Wales was the premier state.. Geoffrey Remington and John Metcalfe were fundamentalist in their conviction and W H Ifould was at least a staunch convert. Remington’s crusading zeal, ignited by the Munn Pitt Report, spared no effort to win over other states to the free library idea. Not only the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the Library Group were prodded to action. Ministers of the Crown and at least one Premier were among many pursued in all States, sometimes with reference to the US alliance with the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Remington issued detailed instructions on how to proceed with founding of branches of the FLM South Australia proved resistant to the idea, the West seemed indifferent, Tasmania was slow to get started, and the FLM beachhead established with much effort in Queensland proved temporary. Victoria’s successful disregard for Remington’s instructions could have led to war without the patient diplomacy of ACER’s Frank Tate.

Carmel Maguire, MA, FLAA. Taught and researched in the School of Information Library and Archive Studies at the University of New South Walesuntil she retired in 1995. Her research interest was in innovation in information services and in the transfer of research findings to industrial applications. In retirement she is working on a biography of Geoffrey Cochrane Remington, the Sydney lawyer tireless in his pursuit of good causes, among them the provision of free public libraries and of professional management education.

Michael Birkner

“Not yet ready”: Australians University Libraries and Carnegie Corporation Philanthropy, 1935-1945

The impact of the Munn-Pitt Report on public libraries in Austria is a staple of Australian library history, with particular focus on free library movements in the respective states. By contrast little attention has been devoted to university library development between 1935 and the end of the second world war. This paper will examine the Carnegie Corporation’s initiatives at the university level in wake of the Munn-Pitt Report. It will describe how circumstances—notably administrative leadership and financial conditions at the leading Australian universities—dulled responses to grant opportunities and professionalization. As a consequence, library modernization was put on hold until after the war, by which time the Corporation’s philanthropy was targeting other issues. How and why the Adelaide University’s Barr-Smith Library proved the exception to the rule of progress delayed will be treated as part of an overall assessment of a system “not yet ready” for a new kind of librarianship. Michael J Birkner is Professor of History and Benjamin Franklin Professor of Liberal Arts at Gettysburg College in the USA. He is the author or editor of nine books and more than 200 scholarly and popular articles on American and suburban history respectively. His recent scholarship has focused on American cultural connections with Australia from the great depression through to the Eisenhower Presidency.

Mary Carroll

The role of outside agencies including the Carnegie Corporation on the development of education for librarianship in Australia

This paper will examine the role of outside agencies such as the Carnegie Corporation of New York on the development of education for librarianship in Australia. Between 1910 and the end of Wold War Two Australia and other Pacific rim countries became the focus of increasing interest to governments concerned with international diplomacy and the advancement of various political ideologies such as fascism and communism internationally. In the battle for the minds and hearts of populations libraries and librarians were seen to have a role in the promotion of democratic culture. Contemporaneous to such views were a number of developments associated with the US/Australian relations which included a shift in the diplomatic relationship between Australia and the US, a more outward looking American Library Association hoping to promote their brand of professional library practice, the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s movement away from building libraries towards funding for education and professional association for librarians and eventually the arrival in Australia of a number of librarians associated with the US Office of War Information who were seen to be influential on the Australian and New Zealand library scene through their modelling of US patterns of library practice. It will be argued that the arrival of these agencies in Australia were to clash with pre-established models of practice derived largely from the UK and would ultimately lead to a divided vision for the shape of Australian librarianship education.

Mary Carroll is a teacher in the Library and Cultural Studies Unit of Victoria University, Melbourne and a lecturer in the School of Business Information Technology at RMIT. In her earlier career she worked in various roles including as a teacher librarian, librarian, language and literacy co-ordinator and classroom teacher. She has been awarded a Victoria University Vice-Chancellor’s Citation for Teaching Excellence and e-learning. In 2008 she completed a PhD at Charles Sturt University in the comparative education of library technicians and librarians in Australia. This research investigated the forces which have shaped education for the library industry in Australia.

Peter Mansfield

Libraries on the Bellarine peninsula

Nine libraries were formed in Geelong and on the Bellarine peninsula in the late nineteenth century as local committees endeavoured to improve literary standards, to disseminate useful information or simply to overcome the ‘listless indifference of the idling class’. The Bellarine peninsula consisted on a number of small farming and fishing townships and each formed a library in an era of significant community support and an equally significant lack of council and government support – a situation made remarkable because Graham Berry, the premier of three occasions and treasurer six times, was their local Member of Parliament. This paper analyses the formation of three libraries in Queenscliffe, Kensington, Portarlington, the changing role of the committees and the compositions of the library collections.

Dr Peter Mansfield has been a manager of public libraries at Ballarat and Geelong in Victoria. His doctoral thesis was concerned with the development of libraries in Ballarat between 1851 and 1900 and he has written extensively on colonial libraries in Victoria. He is an active member of the Geelong Historical Society.

Andrew Sergeant

“To elevate the tone of Moral and Intellectual attainment”: the Braidwood Literary Institute and its subscribers, 1858-1862

The Braidwood Literary Institute was established in November 1857, along the general lines of the Mechanics’ Institute movement. Its first committee expressed the belief that it “cannot fail to have a most beneficial effect on all classes, tending as it must do to elevate the tone of Moral and Intellectual attainment in the minds of all members of the community.”

A grand building was erected in the main street in 1870 to house the growing Institute, but its fortunes sagged from around 1912, coinciding with the decline in the district’s goldfields; and it was eventually resumed from the Trustees by the Shire Council in 1958. The building remains a prominent landmark, a reminder of its former position of importance in the literary, educational, and social life of the town.

Many of the Institute’s records have survived (now housed in the Braidwood Historical Society Museum), including Committee Meeting Minute Books, Annual Reports, Subscriber and Loans Registers, Account Ledgers, and Library Catalogues. This paper will use those records to examine the early years of the Institute, and will consider the role the Institute played in the town. The social positions and reading preferences of its subscribers will be analysed, and when combined with other available resources such as census records, electoral rolls and newspaper reports and advertisements, will give an insight into the extent to which its members achieved the goal of elevating their community’s “moral and intellectual attainment.”

Andrew Sergeant is a Reference Librarian, holding a Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science) from Charles Sturt University, and has worked at the National Library of Australia in Canberra since 2000. His areas of interest include early book and printing history in Australia, library history, rare books, and Australian and British social and political history.

David Verran

Government Promotion of Public Libraries in New Zealand 1869-1935

There has been much research on the “revolution” in New Zealand libraries, which followed our 1934 Munn – Barr report. In our enthusiasm for those reforms, however, researchers have neglected the earlier contribution of mechanics’ institutes to the information needs of society, and largely ignored the earlier policy of government encouragement of public education through libraries, including direct Education Department subsidies. However, increasingly limited grants of money for books demonstrated the failure of this policy. From 1935, the new Labour government pursued a centralised approach through direct loans of books to libraries through the Country and School Library Service, later combined in the National Library.

David Verran graduated with an MA (Honours) in history from the University of Auckland and later received a Diploma from the New Zealand Library School. He has worked in public libraries in Auckland and Hamilton and is currently team leader for the Auckland Research Centre at Auckland City Libraries.

I am a member of the Professional Historians Association of New Zealand Aotearoa, the Trade Union History Project, and the Auckland Labour History group. I am also on the editorial board of “New Zealand Legacy”, which is published on behalf of the New Zealand Federation of Historical Societies. I conduct walking tours and talk to different groups on various aspects of Auckland’s history, as President of the North Shore Historical Society

Robin Wagner

Bush Book Clubs: Books and reading for women in outback Australia

This paper addresses rural book distribution in an era before free public libraries came to Australia. Well-to-do, city women established clubs, which solicited donations of “proper reading matter” and raised funds for the purchase of books for their disadvantaged (yet noble) “sisters” in the Outback. They took advantage of a well-developed rail system to deliver book parcels to rural families. In New South Wales and Queensland they were known as Bush Book Clubs. A branch of the Victoria League in Melbourne had a similar mission.

Testimonials found in the Clubs’ annual reports provide a snapshot of the hard scrabble frontier life and the gratitude with which these parcels were received. This paper looks at the relationships forged between town and country around the distribution of books and the mechanics involved in providing this service at a time before free public libraries and bookmobiles became commonplace in rural communities.

Robin Wagner is the library director at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania USA. She has worked as a reference librarian, social sciences bibliographer, and in special collections at the University of Virginia, University of Kentucky and at Dartmouth College. She is a long time member of the Association of College and Research Libraries and recently served as President of its College Library Division. During 2007 she had research leave and spent her time in Australian researching correspondence and surveys relating to the Munn-Pitt Report.

Mark Cryle

“Sound, fascinating and elevating books”: an account of the Cosme library

On 16 July 1893 William Lane and 220 colonists sailed from Sydney on board the Royal Tar to establish a utopian socialist community in the rainforest of Paraguay. Amongst their achievements there, was the establishment of a library. Lane had stressed in his writings the value of making “sound, fascinating and elevating books” available to the “workingman.” By 1901 the Cosme Monthly was able to report proudly on its library and stated that: “Reading matter on Cosme is fairly plentiful and varied”, but what was that reading matter and what role did it have to play in the lives of the colonists? This paper is an account of the Cosme library. In tracing its history we gain insights into the colony itself, the colonists reading habits and the reading culture and practices of this group of late nineteenth and early twentieth century radicals.

Mark Cryle is the manager of the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland which is the University’s Australiana collection. He is a historian who has published research on Queensland’s indigenous past and other aspects of Queensland history. He is a member of the Queensland Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He is also a musician and songwriter.

Peter Pereyra

Melbourne’s circulating libraries 1858-1974: Their demography and geography, revisited

In 1987 John Arnold observed in an article published in the LaTrobe Library Journal that ‘remarkably little has been written’ on the subject of the circulating libraries of Melbourne; and it seems that little has been written since. The available records listing those libraries have been re-examined and now provide some precision in identifying the numbers and locations of the libraries from 1858 to the 1970s. The data show that, although a large number of libraries were short-lived, many businesses were often continued through successive operators and that those operators frequently moved from library to library. Charting the library’s locations also provides some interesting geographic patterns.

Peter Pereyra has been a committee member of Mechanics’ Institutes of Victoria since 2002. He is engaged in a continuing project aimed a digitizing all historical records related to mechanics’ institutes that are held in the Mechanics’ Institute Resource Centre. He is the Mechanics’ Institutes of Victoria representative on the State Library Users Organisation Council since 2006.In recent years he has carried out research into circulating libraries in Melbourne.

Judith Dwyer

The Casey Collection at the Berwick Mechanics’ Institute

The Casey Collection was donated to the Berwick Mechanics’ Institute by Lady Casey and her family. It is a collection of magazines, novels, nonfiction books, press clippings, art works, art catalogues, paintings by Maie Casey, and other items from Lord and Lady Casey’s home ‘Edrington’ in Berwick. Original silks by Ellis Rowan, portraits by Cecil Beaton and William Dargie, gifts between Lord and Lady Casey and gifts of books from dignitaries, provide a unique glimpse into the Casey’s public and personal lives, as well as into national and international events of the time.

Judith Dwyer is a librarian with more than thirty years experience in public libraries. She is a volunteer at the Berwick Mechanics’ Institute where she is cataloguing the Casey Collection. The Casey Collection includes art works and photographs as well as books and other printed material from Lord and Lady Casey’s home ‘Edrington’ in Berwick. The Casey Collection is part of Berwick’s heritage and provides a tangible link between Berwick’s past and present. She is currently working part-time as a cataloguer with the Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation.

Susan Reynolds

Characters in Conflict at the Library of the Supreme Court of Victoria: Redmond Barry versus Robert Pohlman and George Higinbotham

As an important personage in the Colony of Victoria Redmond Barry was used to having others agree with him and getting his own way, but his power and prestige were not always enough for his wishes to be done. His personal relationships with other influential colonists were sometimes additional factors in the formal activities being undertaken. With regard to the business of the Library of the Supreme Court of Victoria two cases in point are presented with links made between the characters involved, the conflicts which arose and the consequences for all concerned. Supreme Court judge Redmond Barry, County Court judge Robert Pohlman and Attorney-General George Higinbotham are the characters and the Library of the Supreme Court is the focus of the conflict.

Susan Reynolds is an academic in Information Management at RMIT University, Melbourne. She has recently completed her PhD thesis on the history of the first thirty years of the Library of the Supreme Court of Victoria through Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. Sue commenced her professional career as a teacher-librarian with the Department of Education, Victoria before moving to California to complete a Masters degree in Library Science at San Jose State University, where she was also a graduate assistant teaching cataloguing. She has also worked as an editor for the Victorian Education Department’s Library Branch, as a library technician educator and has taught cataloguing in Vietnam at Can Tho and Thai Nguyen Universities. Sue’s main academic interests are the history of libraries, information organisation and the development of online delivery of courses in information management.

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