The first collection
The Melbourne Public Library opened with a stock of 3846 volumes. A few of these were donated—including a number of works presented by La Trobe—but most had been personally selected and ordered by Barry. Although this was in keeping with Barry’s rather autocratic interpretation of his role as Chairman of Trustees, it was at least partly by default. In an uncharacteristically democratic gesture he had advertised for suggestions from the public for works to be purchased for the Library, but having received no response, he went ahead and compiled his own list.
Such a list would inevitably be subjective and idiosyncratic, but it represented the first step towards Barry’s aim of forming a collection that would ‘lay a good foundation of works of solid learning’ and fill the library with ‘the presence of those sages who have enunciated the immutable precepts on which depend the social, moral and religious welfare of the human race’.
Redmond Barry's list
The first list contained 20 headings under which Barry noted the titles and authors for ‘a catalogue of works of established merit’:
- Natural history
- Bibles etc
- Dictionaries etc
- Architecture
- Fine Arts
- British Classics
- Travels & voyages
- Classics
- Political Economy
- Speeches
- Coins & Medals
- Metaphysics & Logic
- Essays
- Botany
- Commentaries
- Atlases Maps Globes & Biography
- History
- Sciences
- Chronicles
- French works.
Famously, the list excluded books ‘usually classed as works of fiction and of the imagination’. As the Trustees later reported in 1859, it was not the role of this library to provide popular reading: works selected for its shelves would not ‘attract the idle and inquisitive, or entertain the frivolous, but invite the scholar, instruct the diligent enquirer and detain the serious’. Reading was serious and utilitarian, the means to self improvement, to the development of the colony’s resources, and to the inculcation of good citizenship.
The list was sent off to the Agent-General in London who selected JJ Guillaume as the bookseller to fill the order. Guillaume was also instructed to provide a catalogue of the works that were purchased. The books were duly despatched and arrived just in time for the Library’s opening with Barry himself working far into the night, unpacking and shelving so that everything would be in order on the day.
Illustrations
Left: Four shelves of leather bound history books, c1910
Right: 'At the public library - Scientific study' (detail) from the Australiasian Sketcher, Feb 23, 1888 |
