New directions for the Library
The death of Redmond Barry in 1880 marked the end of an era. It would no longer be possible for a single hand to guide and control the development of the Library. It was also the end of the collecting policies of the first decades. The grand vision represented by the collection being built during Barry's reign could not be sustained. ‘The best of everything’ was a laudable aim, but increasingly impractical, especially with the economic downturn of the 1890s which reduced the seemingly inexhaustible flow of government funding available to the Library.
In 1904, however, there was a significant benefit to the Library from Alfred Felton’s substantial bequest to the National Gallery of Victoria (at that time under the same Trustees as the Library). This enabled new acquisitions - and new forms of acquisitions: the illuminated medieval manuscripts, early printed books and other works that had been proscribed by Barry as ‘mere literary curiosities or rarities’.
In the first half of the 20th century the effects of world wars and economic fluctuations were felt by all of Australia’s state libraries, especially the diversion of resources to university libraries in the post-war expansion of higher education. The State Library of Victoria gradually lost its proud title as Australia’s greatest - and one of the world’s greatest - libraries. It was simply impossible to continue maintaining the breadth of the collection established by Barry on the principle of acquiring ‘… all the works necessary for theoretical and practical instruction in the leading Departments of Literature, Science and Art’.
Consolidating the Australiana collection
A century after the establishment of the Library, the emphasis in its collecting policies had seen an almost complete reversal. Whereas under Barry, the material on and about Australia had been given a lower priority, by the 1950s the focus was firmly on acquiring Australian material, particularly that related to Victoria. The elegantly bound volumes of classical authors, the pride of Barry’s collection-building, were confined to the far recesses of basement stacks, of little if any value to modern users of the Library.
In 1951 the decision was made to build a new wing in which the Library’s extensive but dispersed holdings of Australian material could be consolidated into a specific Australiana collection. Opened in 1965 as the La Trobe Library, the collection had as its nucleus some 40,000 volumes covering the areas of discovery and exploration, history and travel, biography, Aboriginal history and culture, language and literature. Speaking at the formal opening the Chairman of the Trustees, Sir Irving Benson, described the La Trobe Library as ‘a real treasure house holding the rich, fascinating collection of the story of our State of Victoria’.
Works that Barry had rejected as ephemeral or of no value, such as John Batman’s treaty with the Aborigines, were now regarded as treasures. Ironically, it was to be the local material compulsorily acquired by the Library through the Copyright and Legal Deposit legislation rather than the hundreds of thousands of volumes bought from England and other countries that would be most valued by Victorians in their Library’s second century.
The Library today
Today the State Library is collecting material that probably contravenes every one of the numerous rules of exclusion laid down by Redmond Barry. In keeping with the Library’s role as custodian of Victoria’s heritage, an eclectic range of contemporary material is being collected for the benefit of subsequent generations. Popular culture has been regarded as a major collecting area and items that certainly would not have got past the door of Barry’s ‘great emporium’ are being acquired: comic books, popular magazines, pulp fiction, children’s books, rock and pop CDs, posters and fanzines.
One thing that would meet with Barry’s approval is the major redevelopment of the Library begun in the early 1990s. This has created a magnificent building ‘of an order, class and magnitude’ which exceeds that originally proposed in 1853. At the heart of the refurbished Library is the great domed reading room of 1913, now housing the Australiana collection and named after Charles Joseph La Trobe. The main public reading room bears the name of Redmond Barry, a fitting memorial to the man whose passionate commitment led to the creation of a great library.
Note: The text is taken from Treasures of the State Library of Victoria. This publication is available from our online shop.
Illustrations
Left: Interior of Queen's Hall, showing the book alcoves, plaster busts and book stack on the mezzanine galler. The room is lit with both gas and electric light brackets and bulbs.
Right: Volunteers working on the Argus Indexing Project in the old Newspaper Room in the La Trobe Library building. |
