The first Librarian, Augustus Tulk, was appointed in May 1856 and set to work with Barry on building the foundations of the Library’s collections. The shared qualities and principles that influenced their acquisitions have been aptly described by Barry’s biographer Ann Galbally as ‘a mental attitude combining high-mindedness and a reverence for the past with the mid-Victorian craving for knowledge and information’.
Contemporaries criticised the developing collection as replicating a ‘nobleman’s and gentleman’s library’, as being like ‘a magnificent library of a private mansion, not an institution for the people’. It was too focused on the past, on the classics, to the neglect of current works - especially those published in or about Australia.
|
But there was a practical aspect to the acquisitions. As the Trustees stated in the Library’s 1880 catalogue, their aim was to add to the collection ‘All works required to meet the demands of all ordinary readers, the wants of men of every profession, trade, calling, and occupation’ as well as ‘the desires of those who indulge in the pursuit of polite literature and of every branch of human inquiry’. And the idea of representing current works was evident in Redmond Barry’s definition of the role of a public library as acquiring ‘the copious stores of accumulated instruction which modern ingenuity, sagacity and discernment give to the world almost daily…’.
The collection grows
The great emporium began to grow. With a further grant of 20,000 pounds from the government, the second section of the building was completed in 1859. This provided a new hall on the upper floor, known as the Queen’s Reading Room, and a ground floor area to be used for a Museum of Art. The Library’s collection was expanding rapidly from its original stock of less than 4000 volumes. By 1861 it had grown to more than 22,000 volumes, and a new catalogue was ordered from JJ Guillaume. On its completion in 1862, the catalogue contained over 27,000 titles. Three years later there were 38,000 volumes and this was to double in size over the next decade.
The continued expansion of the collection during the remainder of Barry’s lifetime was greatly assisted by his indefatigable efforts at soliciting gifts of books and other material from government and private sources in Britain and other countries. By such means he hoped to achieve his ambitious plan for a national library by obtaining ‘a body of authentic official information … from the departments of the useful arts and commerce, education, crime and social and economic statistics’.
Copyright Protection Act expands the collection
Another important factor influencing the growth of the Library’s collection was the passage of the Copyright Protection Act in 1869, requiring that a copy of every book, magazine, pamphlet and map published in Victoria should be lodged at the Library by the publisher. The Act also required that a copy of each issue of all newspapers published in Victoria should be deposited at the Library within two months of publication.
In 1868 Barry’s efforts at promoting his Library received a response from America in the annual report of the Mercantile Library Association of San Francisco: 'As a specimen of what a young population can do, we refer, almost enviously, to a catalogue lately received from the Melbourne Public Library…an institution upon which, for building and books, the amount of over half a million dollars has been expended during a period of ten years...' |
