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Penny and Christina use digitized newspapers to research their guest's family or personal history. The newspapers are hosted in Trove, the National Library of Australia's online research portal.
(jaunty piano music, base part)
00:09 This podcast was recorded at the Richmond Library on unceded, stolen Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:24 (jaunty piano music, treble part)
00:35 PENNY: So, Welcome to In Those Days. This is a podcast where we talk about yesterday's news today, particularly by using the digitised newspapers in Trove, which is the National Library of Australia's online digital repository.
This is the first episode in a series, which is based on the suburb of Richmond, in Victoria. And these episodes were recorded as part of the Makerspace residency program, which is run by Yarra Council. So thanks very much to Yarra and the staff of Richmond Library for their support in using the recording facilities here and also the Local History collections in Richmond Library.
So, for the next 5 episodes, we're going to be talking about the suburb of Richmond in the olden days. We're going to be talking about maternal child health services, picture theatres, brass bands and of course, because it's my absolutely favourite thing, libraries. We're gonna have a few different guests, some of whom are friends of mine, and some of whom were complete strangers. Some of them were experts on the topics we're talking to them about and some of them of them were just experts on their own lives. So as usual, for each episode I've done some research and found some articles in Trove, which we then read together with a guest. And that's a sort of a jumping off point for our guest to share what they know about Richmond communities past or present.
02:00 (jaunty piano music - soprano part)
PENNY: Hello, Welcome to In Those Days. We are very lucky today to have a very special guest who is a proper historian person. She's the Associate Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at Charles Sturt University. I read her research papers when I was studying Information Management at RMIT and I cited her quite a few times, it's Mary Carroll. Hello Mary.
MARY: Hi.
PENNY: And the reason we've got Mary in today is because she is an expert on the history of librarianship. We are going to be talking about Richmond's libraries today with her and reading some articles from Trove. So Mary, do you use Trove much for work?
MARY: I do.
PENNY: Or for fun?
MARY: I do it for both. It's a rabbit hole that you can go down. But I do use it with caution. Cos I know that it only is like the tip of the information iceberg. So I have used it for many, many years and it gets better and better all the time, but none-the-less I also try and use other things as well.
PENNY: I often hear things, like someone will mention something and I'll go, 'Oh, I'll just look that up in Trove' and then that can almost be a starting point sometimes.
MARY: It is a starting point. And like any good information management person learns, you use other strategies to follow the information path that you're using. So Trove might bring, so newspapers are the obviously, one of the most popular. But there's all swathes of newspapers that haven't been digitised.
PENNY: That's very true.
MARY: So we have to be, this is putting my professional hat on, we have to be fairly cautious in terms of working out who has decided what gets digitised, who's provided the money to digitise what, and then what's missing and so to be cautious about that. And sometimes the fun is in finding what's missing what's not there.
PENNY: That's actually such a good point. Maybe the next podcast we'll do "Not in Trove Days". The things that haven't been digitised and why. But even what goes in the newspaper to begin with is also like the question of what gets left out as well.
MARY: There's layers of caution and privilege really. I remember going to the State Library, a long time ago now, and them pointing to these files in the corner. Big, vertical files, filing cabinets and what they were full of is the Sun Newspaper archives. And not a single one of them had been indexed or digitised at that point. Now, I think they're working on that
PENNY: Yeah, they've got a campaign to do Sun Pictorial, which I'm excited about
MARY: Yeah, so think about that, so there are gaps.
PENNY: Definitely. And we're gonna be talking about public libraries today. When you were growing up, did you go to your local public library?
MARY: Well, I lived for a long time in Port Melbourne, until I was 10. I don't remember going to a public library there but we moved to St Albans, which is right out west past Keilor and it was really under-developed, unmade roads those sorts of things. Lots and lots of migrant families. And the closest library was in Niddrie and there's, there was not public transport. So my dad very conscientiously used to drive me to the Niddrie library once a week, when he could. So that was like heaven for me but that was in the '70s, that'll tell you how old I am. The other thing though was that when I went to secondary school that was the time that the Whitlam government had just started to fund school libraries, so we actually had a proper school library with a person in charge at that point. So, I was pretty privileged that I had a family that took me to the library, which was a long way. It wasn't easy and I read voraciously. But the other side of that is that because I didn't have easy access for a long time, to a library, a free lending library, I read things that maybe kids wouldn't normally have. So my favourite book as a 10 year old was Wilkie's 'The Woman in White'.
PENNY: Christina, have you studied that book?
CHRISTINA I did study that book and I was a big fan but I was also in my early-20s.
MARY: So I can remember Mum had a set, because we were a reading family, Mum particularly. So we had a collection of those classics that are in red fake leather with gold, tiny. And I read through those but that's what inspired Dad to take me to the library so cos I read
CHRISTINA Smashing through all of the books at home.
MARY: Probably at 9 or 10. So but there was nothing else to read. And I don't know how much I understood but I was learning to read.
PENNY: And I think we still see that today, don't we that there's some areas of the state and Melbourne that are under-served by libraries there just aren't as many. Whereas in Richmond and the inner-city, you don't have to go far.
MARY: I think it's getting better. I mean have a look at where some of the really big, award-winning public libraries are like Melton. The councils are making an effort in terms of the building, the architecture. I'd be interested, I've never studied this so I don't know much about it, but I'd be interested to see if the commitment to qualified staff and collections is as high as its commitment to ground-breaking architecture. I'm not complaining about the architecture. But is it balanced, cos, you know, there are a lot of stories internationally about groundbreaking library buildings that are insufficiently funded to run properly.
PENNY: I mean the library is really the collection and the librarians. It's about the services.
MARY: I mean the building, there's a lot of work, one of my areas of interest is in how the architecture of libraries manages people so that idea that you structure your library so that people act in certain ways, behave in certain ways. It also reflects the priorities of the culture, or the society, at the time. So if you've got beg children's collections or you've got big migrant collections or whatever, it sort of tells you what we're worrying about.
PENNY: I think that's so interesting. Christina, did you go to the library when you were growing up?
CHRISTINA I did. I did go to the library quite a lot. I know mum used to have a lot of trouble dragging me away because I would take a selection of books, sit on the sunken stairs and there were also wooden beads, not like an abacus but sort of twisted pathways where you could play with the beads, so I was multi-tasking and doing that, whilst doing my reading. I was always frustrated by the limit that Mum would put on the number of books I was taking home.
PENNY: Oh really, so that was coming from your mother. Who probably did not want to have to find all the bloody books.
CHRISTINA I think it was 5 for quite awhile.
MARY: I think the libraries usually had a limit and that's because we didn't have computers so, and also the collections weren't very big. So I was only ever allowed to have three but that was a library rule. And that's interesting what you say, that's actually the architecture working on how you
CHRISTINA And then I felt very grown up when I progressed to sitting on a desk up on the top part of the library. So once I hit secondary school I felt that that was the place to be, if I had a very serious project to do. I might not actually get much done, but the fact that I was sitting there indicated
PENNY: You were above everyone else
CHRISTINA The intent to do it.
PENNY: And so, do you still use public libraries?
MARY: Not as much as I did as a child cos I have access to books and I tend to read fiction on an Ipad. So I still borrow books but I don't
PENNY: Well, you are using the library I guess.
MARY: Sometimes. Sometimes I buy them but that's more. I do go to the library, the local North Melbourne library, which is gorgeous.
PENNY: I like that one.
MARY: An old Mechanics Institute. But I struggle now, because I read so much on an iPad, I don't know about anybody else, I struggle turning the pages in a book.
CHRISTINA See, I haven't gone down the iPad path. I did download a few books, well not download, I accessed them on my phone and then I found that quite a weird experience and that was because I didn't want to wait to get a copy of whatever it was I was reading.
MARY: I think mine was more because I travelled so much and so carrying books around is not, and then I got out of the habit. But I use it for other things other than reading so for location, for meeting people for, and online. I probably use the public library much more online than I do face-to-face, which is weird really. The other thing is, because I know so many people in the library world, it's a bit daunting to walk into whatever library you walk into.
PENNY: Oh, because you get recognised.
MARY: And to have someone say, 'Oh...' That sounds a bit weird but.
PENNY: Cos most people kind of almost go to the library for privacy, or to get away from people that they know at home or whatever and you're going in there
MARY: And then I would think, 'Oh will they judge me if I borrow this book,'
CHRISTINA I just wanna read something trashy.
PENNY: Where's 'Spare'? I'm here for 'Spare'.
MARY: While we're talking I'm just thinking that actually probably is one of the major reasons, which is a ridiculous reason but it just has happened so often.
PENNY: It's what's happening.
MARY: But I don't suppose many people would have that problem, so
PENNY: Well that's great. We're in a library now.
CHRISTINA In a secret part of the library.
PENNY: A secret part of the library.
CHRISTINA The paparazzi are outside.
PENNY: We snuck her in the back entrance. We've got a car waiting for when she leaves. We're in the Richmond Library, we're in their makerspace. So we're gonna talk about the history of the Richmond Library, and the first public library, which was at the Town Hall, on Bridge Road. So in the 1870s they built the new Town Hall and there was a special room there for the library, I think before that in the makeshift town hall there had been another library, a sort of temporary
MARY: And I think there was actually one before that.
PENNY: Oh my god.
MARY: There was one in the Mechanics Institute by the time the public library was built that was moribund, it was really not functioning, so
12:43 PENNY: So the first article that we're gonna read is a bit facts and figurey. Okay we're getting into some stats. It's from The Age on the 20th of May 1874.
"NEWS OF THE DAY
On Thursday last the first annual report of the Richmond Public Library committee was presented to the Richmond town council. It stated that the attendance of readers for the year had been 26,736, comprising 21,945 males and 4791 females,"
So there were have it. Women just don't like reading.
MARY: Except that you'll probably find that the person in charge was a woman.
PENNY: Yeah, I think it was.
MARY: And that was something that really interested me, cos as I said I had a little bit of a rummage around. The librarian was female and there's all sorts of stories attached to that. You know, they were paid half as much, you know, that sort of stuff.
PENNY: And I think women just wouldn't have had as much time to go into the library of an evening and read I imagine.
CHRISTINA Just swan around in the evening.
PENNY: Doing housework in the evenings, cos that's when it was open.
MARY: Yeah, and I think it wasn't a leading library.
PENNY: It wasn't.
MARY: It was a bit later that it became a lending library. Lucky I did my homework. So one of the interesting things that I think is that in Australia it's much more, if you look at, there are lists of who goes into the libraries, particularly, what is now the State Library of Victoria. If you have a look at those lists of what the occupations of those people are, it's much more egalitarian than you would imagine. I don't know if the list lists occupations of the women, but it could be that they were people who couldn't afford to buy the books.
PENNY: That's a good point.
MARY: Teachers, young teachers. So literate, but not well-to-do.
PENNY: They had an average of 91 readers a day.
MARY: That's pretty healthy, you know.
PENNY: I tried to do a bit of a comparison to Yarra Libraries today, which is difficult because Yarra Libraries is now 5 different branches and obviously the populations a lot bigger but they were basically in 1873 they were getting about one visit per Richmond resident and now I think it's more like 5.5 visits. But people have a lot more leisure time now. And literacy levels are obviously a lot higher.
MARY: I'm not sure that they are. I think Australia had quite high literacy levels.
PENNY: Oh okay.
MARY: One interesting thing I was doing was having a look at the libraries of Port Arthur Prison and people said, could they read? And what they found was that the convicts coming to Australia at that point were much more literate than the convicts they left behind. So why I don't know, I've never gone down that path too much.
CHRISTINA: They did a testing program.
MARY: But I think literacy levels were reasonable. When did free compulsory education come in? The 1890s? Possibly.
CHRISTINA: I think so, around then.
PENNY: Christina is an assistant-principal, by the way.
CHRISTINA: So obviously well-grounded in facts.
MARY: Cos I'm so boring I did go to the Centenary of that at the Royal Historical Society they had a, they celebrate it every year, but I'm not good at dates.
CHRISTINA: I obviously haven't celebrated.
MARY: What is it? Free, compulsory and secular?
CHRISTINA: I think so.
MARY: But that might have been a bit later. So kids might have left school early. I don't know.
PENNY: I think I have heard that in the past, I think you're right. I should have probably looked it up. But anyway. Let's just go on vibes.
CHRISTINA: Seems fine.
MARY: Educated guess.
PENNY: One of the other, big things that happened with the lockdowns and covid, obviously, during lockdowns very low visitation and then afterwards it has started to come up, but I think, I was reading the Public Libraries Victoria Report, loans of physical items and visits to libraries are still down. I don't know, is that a problem? Or is it, are people just using libraries in a different way.
MARY: I don't know. I think we'd have to have a look at demographics myself, to see who's not coming anymore. Just going by my own family, getting over the age of 20, actually anyone over the age of 15 to read a physical book, actually to read a physical book at all is getting increasingly difficult so if that's the demographic that's not using the library, then it's a struggle. So age, are people aware, or is there a gap in who understands. You know, I'm still surprised about how many people don't understand that the public library is free in this day and age.
PENNY: And then even if they understand that you can go in borrow books, do they understand about all the other things that you can get for free?
MARY: That's exactly right, yeah.
PENNY: Like the audiobooks, and the ebooks and, even like subscriptions to Ancestry and stuff. Like, if you're researching and stuff, you don't have to buy your own subscription, you can come to the library.
CHRISTINA: See, I didn't know that.
PENNY: Yeah. We have to be honest, shall we be honest about your library, current library use Christina?
CHRISTINA: Look, I go in and out of the library at school multiple times a day cos it's a thoroughfare for me but apart from that, I'm not going to the library.
MARY: I hope it's got a qualified teacher librarian in there?
CHRISTINA: Look, I would say that's not happening.
MARY: So you know, this is another thing, kids aren't being nurtured to read, and then we complain about literacy levels. The research just shows that an engaged teacher librarian has an impact on literacy at school.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, absolutely.
MARY: But I would say also, life-long engagement with, whether it's reading or that sort of recreational access to libraries. So long as the teacher librarian, or the person in the library isn't a failed a teacher.
PENNY: It's not, this an issue that's across so many schools, isn't it?
MARY: It's really problematic. I started life as a teacher librarian so that's why I'm a bit over it. I also know that Sue Reynolds and I did a study, long time ago now and I don't think it's changed but only 12% of primary schools had a qualified person in them and the other thing that I thing that has increased, where it's sort of off-topic now about public libraries, but another thing that really worries me about the lack of resourcing of school libraries and engagement with them is that the places that are engaging and employing and supporting them are already privileged so what you're doing is creating a situation of compounding lack of privilege.
PENNY: I did my placement at Brunswick Secondary College.
CHRISTINA: I did my teaching rounds there.
PENNY: It's a great school. The teacher librarian was also teaching and she had a year 12 class and she had a homegroup and she was the librarian. And I have never seen anyone, she was just constantly running. I mean, you probably see teachers running around like mad things all day. And she kept saying, 'And now I've gotta go run the lunchtime such and such program, and then I'm doing this and doing this.' And then on Friday she's like, 'Well, I run the footy tipping competition as well, so I've gotta get everyone's tips in.' And I was like, 'This is too much.'
CHRISTINA Too much.
MARY: And then you might across the road to a very privileged school and this is not a judgement, I think they're doing the right thing, but they might have seven staff in their school library. You know, running book clubs and reading hours and
CHRISTINA: And curating special displays on topics
MARY: And working the teachers on projects and delivering I.T. type training. And so, I don't know whether the public library has capacity to make up for that lack.
PENNY: And also, the thing about the public library is you've gotta go there, whereas every kid goes to school.
MARY: And that's sort of coming back to demographics I guess, it'd be interesting to see who is taking advantage of the public library. Are they people who have come from places where they didn't have public libraries and they go, 'Oh my God, this place is fantastic'. Is it people who are highly-educated and bring their kids there. Is it people who've heard that story-times are really good for kids’ literacy but never come back again once the kid gets to 3 or something. That sort of demographic stuff, would be. There's not enough work done on that.
PENNY: It's not just the total number, is it? Doesn't necessarily tell you much. I'll keep reading with the stats:
"There were 1500 volumes in the library, selected from the best authors, and comprising ancient, modern, and natural history, the arts and sciences, voyages and travels, biography, poetry; fiction, works of reference, together with a large and chosen collection of books on various subjects treated popularly for youthful readers".
Well now, Yarra Libraries has about 150,000 physical items in the collection and about 25,000 e-books. Which I think might surprise some people, that proportion. I think some people might think it would be more ebooks than that. But certainly 10-15 years ago they were really predicting that collections, but hard-copy books have remained quite popular.
MARY: I think there's a report in the US a PEW report, now I, you'll have to check my sources, I'm sort of half making it up. But I think they've found that in the United States, and we haven't got the equivalent here, the highest proportion of users of public libraries are those, contradicting what I was saying, but that's why the demographics are really, would be interesting, are those between 18 and 35 because it's financial, they can't afford to buy the books, they can't afford to. If that's the same here, which we don't know, that's the problem, that's why research is so important, you know, it'd be really interesting to see if that same demographic is using our libraries. Wandering through here today, I'd say no. But it's the wrong time of day. Now, I don't know where I was going with that in terms of the size of the collection.
PENNY: Proportion of ebooks. Because you're an ebook reader.
MARY: Yeah, I'm an ebook reader. But the collections that libraries have, that's why I was saying I don't always, are fairly limited and because they're so costly and because the publishers have put so many restrictions around the licensing so that the range is not there. And then they have found that younger people, for example in terms of textbooks, prefer to read hardcopy. So maybe people are preferring, still to read hardcopy but they're not borrowing the items. But then the e-collections are inadequate to say the least, or maybe people are curating when they use what.
PENNY: I'm very hybrid. If I'm travelling I'll get ebooks. If I need it fast, like you were saying Christina, I'll get the ebook. And if I have time, I'll go into the library and borrow it.
MARY: So the important statistic would be have loans completely gone down or is it there's been a bigger shift to hybridity in terms of what people are using.
PENNY: And just, this next bit is very relevant to demographics:
"One peculiar and interesting feature during the year had been the regular attendance of youths. Their good behavior, cleanly appearance, and care with the books deserved great praise. To retain them, and also to encourage the attendance of others, the committee, the report said, would endeavor to supply a further instalment of works of an attractive and instructive nature."
MARY: I want to know what attractive is.
PENNY: Yes, this is an attractive one. You know it when you see it. So this library was focused on young readers. Was that typical at the time?
MARY: I have done a little bit of work on this recently cos I was trying to find out something about the North Melbourne Library and women. I was doing a paper on women employed in libraries in the 19th century and in the United States and the UK there was very much a feel that it was good to employ a woman in the library so that there is a link here, because she brought to the library those things that women are good at. You can't see my inverted commas. And so that idea of nurturing the young, teaching them to read those sorts of things. So if you have a look at a lot of the literature around why these public libraries were established you'll find that in some instances, say in Footscray or Prahan the first library, public library was for children. That was their first priority and then over time you see that emphasis on children but it was sort of a two-edge sword I think, cos you've alluded to it, it was about nurturing literacy but it was also about nurturing good citizens and cultured people, people who complied to the mainstream, so that educative function could potentially have a trying to homogenise the population a bit more by presenting them with good books, that reflected a certain viewpoint of the world.
PENNY: Yeah, so there would have been some books left out, let's say.
MARY: Yeah, and probably lots today. I don't know if either of you attended the talk at the State Library recently with the woman from the ALA, American Library Association.
PENNY: No.
MARY: And she was talking about what was happening there. The banning of books there. But there's also soft censorship where you just don't buy the books.
PENNY: Well, that's the most common thing, isn't it? Which happens all the time.
MARY: I imagine it was fairly, well it was common in the public libraries in the 19th century and it probably is relatively common today, even though we wouldn't acknowledge it.
PENNY: Well, there has to be a decision. There's always a selection criteria for acquisitions. Sometimes it's just cos someone wants it, but not always.
MARY: And then school libraries the same. So I think the emphasis on children though. So when we're talking about children. State Library Victoria, when it opened was 14 and over with clean hands.
PENNY: Clean hands. I was gonna say that.
MARY: And then I did read somewhere in my little bit of research that this library it was 10.
PENNY: I think you're right. I think I saw 10.
MARY: Which is really early. And then the other thing that I have, completely coincidentally, was looking at the public library in North Melbourne. They established really strong links in the early 20th century to the local schools, who had no libraries. So the public library was lending books to the schools. So I think the whole youth thing was pretty big.
PENNY: And would you say there were any groups. Cos, public libraries were in some ways with their ideas that, anyone can come in you don't have to pay to come in blah blah. But do you think there were any groups that were kind of excluded, not welcome, apart from the under 14s or under 10s.
MARY: If you had dirty hands.
PENNY: Dirty-handed people.
MARY: I think that's a really important question that no-one's ever answered. I would love someone to do some research. I had an American academic ring me, or email me a few years ago saying, 'Can you tell me, is there any equivalent to what happened in the South with public libraries in Australia?' Which is the Jim Crow laws. So his argument, there's a fantastic book, just been published about it, really interesting. Like the selection of books, the passive segregation of populations in the library, which happened there and while the librarians didn't actively support it, they didn't stop it. Sort of passive support. I don't think I have ever read anything about the history of the usage of public libraries by Indigenous Australians. I have no idea about statistics about that. It could be just that I haven't gone down that rabbit hole but I would be interested in that.
PENNY: I remember when the State Library, the opening event, I read a Trove article about, with the speeches, I think it was Redmond Barry who was talking. Or maybe it was laying the foundation stone, anyway, some event. And he was like saying, 'Think about it, only 20 years before this was an uncivilised wasteland' basically. So even if Indigenous people were allowed to come in and read books, certainly their knowledge is absolutely excluded.
MARY: If we think of book reading as part of the infrastructure that allows, or supports egalitarianism, privilege, education and civil society then knowing who's excluded. Even the fact that it's only 4000 women as opposed to the large number of men. And then once again getting back to the demographics, which women. And Barry's really interesting, Redmond Barry, because in spite of all his oddities and hanging Ned Kelly etc he was very much about anyone using the library so I was talking to Sue Reynolds about this the other day in which he said, 'We don't have to call our' he was in the United States, at a conference having a fight with Melville Dewey.
PENNY: So it was the most librarian thing that's every happened in the history of the universe
MARY: And he was arguing, there was a little appendixes at the end, which said, 'We don't need to call our library the Melbourne Free Public Library because it is free.' It's essentially saying, it's redundant, whereas in America you do. So there is a strong tradition there of open-access but we don't know, I don't know much about who's excluded and I think that's something, I mean, we've made efforts, haven't we. We've got large collections of non-English language materials, they did have quite awhile ago where they would move the collections, I don't know if that still exists, the hardcopy collections. Say the Vietnamese population moved from Footscray to Springvale, well the libraries cooperated to move their collections.
PENNY: Makes sense, where they're actually gonna be used. The last little stat that I have is basically on how much money they got. They got 377 pounds and 19 shillings from the government for the year. Now it's very difficult to compare money when you go back that far. The estimator I used said somewhere between $42,000 and $350,000 in today's money. Which is quite a difference. But nevertheless, it's still definitely less than they spend now. In 2022-23 $5.5 million for Yarra's five branches. But as we say, more people are using the library, collections are bigger.
MARY: There's other licensing things. That sort of stuff.
PENNY: So it's basically, almost meaningless to compare I would say.
MARY: I don't think you can.
PENNY: Do you think public libraries get enough money now?
MARY: They'll never have enough. I think if, I've always got a concern, I have a concern that even when the money goes up the libraries are being asked to do more of what was done by other community organisations and they're certainly not picking up the funds that that organisation was getting.
PENNY: Right.
MARY: So I'm just thinking, advice, or giving out COVID things, or whatever it happens to be, community health type things. Aging, community advice, business advice, you name it they're being asked to do it. Not in a combined sense. I just did a survey a little while ago with public libraries asking them what they thought was their responsibility. There was a bit of a tension between the parameters of what the public library could do and what they were being asked to do.
PENNY: Did that change with how long people had been a librarian for?
MARY: Age had a little bit to do with it. We were looking for what level of education and their age. There wasn't a strong correlation between the two.
PENNY: I guess because some people come into librarianism later than others.
MARY: Yeah, most do. It's a profession, it's a change of occupation, largely. In my day you used to go from school to librarianship but that's a thing nearly gone. So, I actually, it sounds like a negative but those parameters I think are perhaps really important in terms of defining the profession itself. Saying this is within my professional remit, it's not that I'm unwilling, I'm very will to assist or promote but I suppose some of this comes up when we talk about social work in libraries.
PENNY: Yes absolutely.
MARY: Yes, so those parameters. Asking ourselves, what does our profession mean. What is our boundaries of it? When, and it sounds like siloing, but it's not. We can do harm if we step into areas that we don't have expertise in, for example, like you're medical advice, for example.
PENNY: I was listening to the Charles Sturt podcast. One of them was on Yarra Libraries and the under-served communities and the way that the social worker program at Yarra came about seemed to be sort of the reverse, which does sound good to me where staff were being asked to deal with a whole lot of stuff that they weren't qualified for so then they got those services in
MARY: Ground-up is completely different.
PENNY: That seems positive.
MARY: As long as the professional boundaries are. I'm just thinking. I was a special ed teacher for a very long time so I had very clear ideas where my educational role stopped and the psychiatric nurses, for example, job started. But I could have just blithely gone around and given random advice.
CHRISTINA: Unsolicited advice.
PENNY: That must be an issue for teachers as well.
CHRISTINA: Look, it is a huge issue. My particular portfolio is welfare and inclusion at a very large school. And under me are whole lot of people within allied health professions. So I have GPs working for me, social workers, OTs, psychologists, I've got a paediatrician and then bringing all of these people together and making it clear whose remit is what and then also being fully aware that I'm not qualified in those areas but I need to have a really strong grasp of where they sit. It is really complicated and there's a lot of teachers that feel that by giving their own advice based on their own life experience that they're really helping kids with mental health stuff, and they're really not.
PENNY: People don't always understand how different someone else's experiences might be.
MARY: That comes to the point of the professionalism. Understanding what your profession is. So it's not about not helping.
CHRISTINA No, absolutely not.
MARY: And being unwilling to engage and bring those people into the environment. But it's about understanding your own limitations.
CHRISTINA And not holding onto something that sits well and truly and outside of your area of expertise. It's actually quite dangerous.
MARY: So I probably agree with you, I do agree with you that when it's, when there's an identified need. And I'm completely supportive of it. It's just keeping an eye on what's imposed. And I know schools are the same.
PENNY: Cos I can totally imagine a situation where they'd be like, 'You guys are gonna do this now. You're gonna have half a day's training and then you'll be fine.'
MARY: And reinventing your role, within professional boundaries, but where the education of the person, where their professional education, becomes really important. And that's where you stumble if the people that are there are not qualified. I'm not saying they're not enthusiastic, happy, willing.
PENNY: Willing.
CHRISTINA Meaning well.
PENNY: Good natured.
MARY: But where do they get those parameters.
PENNY: The next article is from the Argus. It's the second of July 1879. It's also about the Richmond Public Library but it's a very different perspective cos it's written by a visitor coming into the library and they're describing what the library is actually like:
"The Melbourne Public Library has a large family of children, and so far as my observations and inquiries have extended, they are, for the most part, a credit to their parent, on whom they are only to a limited extent dependent."
We've really found that in this era, why say something in 10 words if you can use 100?
CHRISTINA: No, be as flowering as you need.
MARY: Love it.
PENNY: That's what commas are for.
MARY: Turgid prose, it's always beautiful.
PENNY: "Generally speaking, the municipalities in which they have settled in life have provided them with a local habitation, as well as with a name, and the same roof which covers the suburban or provincial parliament shelters also a collection of books which can be read or consulted by all comers."
What that means is, the library is in the Town Hall.
"The Richmond Town Hall includes its free library. A room on the first floor, about 40ft long, and 20ft wide,"
CHRISTINA: I did want the specifics.
PENNY: I don't know how big that is and I didn't look it up but let's imagine a room.
MARY: Don't forget these people didn't have television.
CHRISTINA No, that's true.
PENNY: That's right:
"with a southerly aspect, contains upwards of 2,000 volumes of books in nearly every department of literature. It is lighted on the one side by four windows, and three of its walls are pretty well covered by book-cases."
So it does sound quite nice. It's got big windows.
CHRISTINA: It's not dark and dingy.
PENNY: No.
"Four large tables afford accommodation to the frequenters of the institution, who vary in number according to the season of the year, the day of the week, the hour of the evening, the weather, and the existence or absence of counter attractions elsewhere."
CHRISTINA: They've covered it all! I love it.
MARY: Has anything changed? That's what I'd ask.
PENNY: "Youthful visitors pre-ponderate,"
So we've still got the youths.
"and I notice that books of boyish adventure of foreign travel, and of explorations among savage tribes are in demand. Thus much is evident from the tarnished bindings, broken backs, and generally well thumbed aspect of such works."
Well I mean that is the thing. The books aren't going to stay pristine and that's a good thing isn't it, basically. If a book's being used.
"From these and other indications I am inclined to think that an adventurous spirit is being developed in the rising generation of Victorians, and that the restless and enterprising character of our forefathers, the vikings of Scandinavia, and of the Drakes, the Frobishers, and Hawkinses of a much later period, has not been lost by the migration of our race to a brighter country and a softer climate."
So very much seeing themselves as one race at this point, which I guess you would expect.
"I notice also that the Rev. J. G. Wood's portly volumes on natural history show traces of considerable usage, and I am very glad to see it. But as a general rule works of fiction and of light literature command the preference with the majority of the habitual frequenters of the library. Mental recreation and relaxation are more sought after than solid information and instruction, but then this is equally true of the great majority of middle-class and well-to-do people who subscribe to Mullen's."
I think Mullens was a book seller. So there is a bit of judgement here, kind of happy that people are coming in and reading the books but also a bit tsky. About, you should be reading more improving books. Do you think there is a tension between public libraries desire to get people in and give them what they want and their education role?
MARY: Well, I think that's, school libraries are exactly the same. So the two philosophies are, we're happy if they read anything, we don't really care what it is, so long as they're reading. Or, we need to read stuff. And I think, I'll throw Mills and Boon into the conversation. If I send to you, 'We need to spend ten thousand dollars on Mills and Boons cos that's what people read' I reckon maybe your faces would screw up a wee bit?
PENNY: Actually, no. I've got a story about this. Because I did
MARY: Your face did!
CHRISTINA: Look I sat in a judgement state.
PENNY: I had a very educating experience. I did Year 10 work experience at the Castlemaine Library. I think I was covering Mills and Boons or something and I made a face. And he said to me, 'Penny you have to remember not everyone finds it as easy to read as you do, so these are the books that people want to read. We're a public library, we're meant to be providing books for everyone so these books are just as valid and important.' But had I not ever had that conversation I think I would have screwed up my face.
CHRISTINA: You know what, I think it's important to remember, no matter what your actual intellectual achievements or current capacity is, you can still enjoy something really trashy.
MARY: Absolutely. I love a good piece of trash.
CHRISTINA: As indicated by my current watching on TV.
MARY: I'm sure I can compete.
PENNY: But then ten thousand dollars does sound like an awful lot, and that's probably what it would cost.
MARY: So if you read the very first Library Association of Australasia, their conference proceedings. There is a lot of time spent debating fiction in the public library. That tension has been real for a long time. Where I was going, is it probably hasn't gone away. That the worthiness of what we read is important and this is where once again I'm going to go back, professional education comes in. Thinking about, being asked to think about what judgements am I making about what I'm selecting and who am I making the judgements about. But they were completely, but there were men at that conference delivering papers about the value of fiction in the library and it's okay to have that fiction. But they were arguing the case for it but at the same time they were saying, 'but it has to be something that's intellectually challenging.' And then they'd list all the things, I'll tell you some of things that weren't. Female authors, you know the gothic novels they were very much frowned upon, which is what made me think of Mills and Boon so.
PENNY: And that's the thing, who knows in Mills and Boon, maybe in 200 years people will like studying this, see the themes and the tropes. We don't know which books will be considered the
MARY: But that tension was very real. So you know, in terms of budget, what the libraries were for. I mentioned before I'd done some stuff on that Port Arthur and the libraries there.
PENNY: Yes of course.
MARY: The argument with Captain Maconochie who wanted the library, this is for the Boys Prison and they didn't want to buy any fiction and then they said what's his name Scott Waverley novels, they'd be okay. And Maconochie argues, really fiercely for other things that might teach them about the world. All those things that you just spoke about, travel, all of that. But there has been constant arguments. We know that 18th century fiction was really considered only for women and it was light-reading and it was supposed to damage your brain.
PENNY: And now if you saw a teenager reading that you'd be like, 'Oh my gosh, you're a genius!'
MARY: So it hasn't gone away really. I think it may be gendered a bit.
PENNY: Oh yeah, women's books.
MARY: But crime fiction is a bit like that too. People apologise for reading crime fiction. I was reading some social media the other day and they were saying 'I hate to say this but I've just read such and such crime novel and it was terrific. It's just what my dead brain needs and have you got anymore suggestions?'
CHRISTINA: Don't apologise if you enjoyed it.
PENNY: One of my favourite books ever, which I haven't read for a number of years but I've read so many times is 'Circle of Friends' and for years I was, 'I won't tell anyone that I love this book'. Bit of Maeve. And then someone on the ABC's Book Club brought that as their favourite book and then I think Marieke Hardy said she liked it as well or something. And then all of a sudden I was like, 'Oh, it's okay.' I needed that legitimation.
MARY: So why have we got shame about what we read?
PENNY: It's very odd.
MARY: So it hasn't gone away. It's not an argument that's changed so I don't think. And if you wanted to know why they opened up public libraries for kids it was often, as I said before, it was often along those moral, enculturing them, making sure that they understood where they came from as in terms of their cultural heritage. So you'd have your, I want to say Choose Your Own Adventure, not Choose
PENNY: No they were trash, you weren't allowed to read them.
MARY: Scouts Own Adventure or whatever. So that two edged sword of providing reading but making sure it's the right reading, that's what that gets to the heart of really.
PENNY: I'll continue with this article:
"And granting that a good deal of the mental pabulum consumed inside the Richmond Public Library is innutritious, the occupation of reading it is surely preferable to that of half a dozen young hobbledehoys"
We don't say hobbledehoys enough anymore.
MARY: It's a good word though.
PENNY: You'd have some hobbledehoys at your school?
CHRISTINA: Plenty of hobbledehoys loitering around.
PENNY: "Half a dozen young hobbledehoys whom I pass an hour after-wards on the Bridge-road, seated on a window-sill, smoking short pipes, imposing a continuous strain upon their salivary glands, and indulging in coarse and feebly sarcastic commentaries on the wayfarers who come along that way."
CHRISTINA: It'd be vaping now.
PENNY: They'd be vaping. And look, give them a Graphic Novels if it's gonna get them off the vapes.
MARY: So is he saying, when I read that I wasn't sure if it was the same youth?
PENNY: No, they're different youths. These are short-pipe hobbledehoys.
MARY: The hobbledehoys are the louts outside not
PENNY: The nice boys inside.
MARY: That's the other thing, a lot of public libraries were built, in particularly in the United States and the UK to. So, I remember going to a talk, it was good fun, when they were building the railways along, in the United States, this person was researching, often there were taverns or pubs or saloons, that's what they are in the United States, couldn't remember the word. So the incentive was to build a public library right next to the saloon so that they didn't go in there they went into the library.
PENNY: Lured in by the
CHRISTINA: Maybe they put double-doors at the library as well.
MARY: Same agenda. So you could flick yourself in. I was really interested in that. That idea of trying to deflect people away from things. And I remember reading recently here, not that recently, maybe two years ago. One of the public libraries in Melbourne running late-night programs like videos or talks or whatever to redirect people away from gambling. But when you were reading that the idea of nutrition comes up a lot. You read Redmond Barry he talks about feeding people's mind, nutrition so it's all about this idea of feeding.
PENNY: You're not supposed to eat the books are you?
MARY: No.
PENNY: Okay, I'll continue on with the description of the library.
"In the reading room all is silence and decorum; the former, indeed, is so intense that the ticking of the dial on the mantel-piece is almost painful in its distinct and loud monotony."
So that sounds nice. It's kind of the stereotypical image of the silent library. But they're not generally super-quiet anymore, are they? But were they always quiet in the olden days?
MARY: I don't know. I wasn't there. Believe it or not. But I imagine not. Because if you're talking about, say, the Mechanics Institutes they had lectures there they had talks there, they had activities. If you look at the pictures of the reading rooms for the newspapers they don't, from the State Library, I don't know whether they're just very active looking pictures but I don't think they would have been, they don't look completely silent. But I don't know how much you can judge from a sketch in a newspaper. If they were concentrating on little kids, I don't reckon you can keep them quiet. So I dunno about that. But I reckon there would have been quiet spaces, just like there are now.
PENNY: Yeah, that room sounds a bit intense. I'll keep reading:
"One table is set apart for the ladies, and there are half-a-dozen young girls there who are amusing themselves by inspecting the wood-cuts of some bound volumes of the Illustrated London News. I run my eye along the shelves and buy a catalogue of a rather austere looking old lady who occupies a sort of high pew just inside the door,
So that's like me, that's what I do. I sit up on my pedestal and look down.
MARY: You reckon that's the librarian?
PENNY: I think that's her.
MARY: I like the idea of those ladies’ reading rooms. I read a really good book recently, I'm always reading something, about the early public libraries in Victoria. It was written by some academics in Dublin but one of the writers talks about the positioning of women in the library, so a lot of them had ladies reading rooms, but the Mechanics Institute did, or they had separate areas for the women to read. And what this author, whose name I cannot remember, was saying that they also curated the collections around those spaces so that they were suitable for women. And I wonder if we went into a girls school, or a boys school.
PENNY: Oh my goodness. It would be so great to get a comparison.
MARY: We like that we're better or different and I don't know how much like.
PENNY: And so this article, for this visitor, very, very positive about the Town Hall Library really, apart from the ticking clock and the innutritious reading. But overall, he's happy with it, I'm assuming it's a man.
MARY: But all of that, there's so many areas that we don't know about. I think that's why I go down that rabbit hole of history. Even though I was a practising librarian for many years and a teacher librarian. But you can see how knowing what happened before sort of kicks you up, we need to keep an eye on our own privilege.
PENNY: I think that's right and cos so often there's a tendency to want to present things as new and because and a because that helps you get funding and b because it's exciting
MARY: Whatever's fashionable.
PENNY: It's exciting. Often there are echoes or things that happened in the past that are similar, maybe with different words though. They just described it differently.
MARY: And public libraries are in themselves the whole concept of a public library is revolutionary. So that's why in my view they have to be guarded so hard, because we're losing other institutions that provide free service to us. The idea of giving people books for nothing and letting them have it and take it home and then bring them back, or whatever it happens to be, it doesn't have to be books.
PENNY: I mean when you think about it, you can go into the library and just take armfuls of hundreds of dollars worth of things home.
MARY: And you take them home and so if you think about how revolutionary that is in terms of it as a concept. I think it fits very well into whatever time period you're looking at. So it serves us well to remember what we're dealing with is an institution that in its ideal is super radical and remains so.
PENNY: Is there any trends in libraries at the moment that you think are genuinely new?
MARY: Probably in execution, yes. But they're driven by a whole notion of why you exist. So it's just how they execute the idea. I think one of the little articles you sent was about lending PCs out.
PENNY: Yeah it was a takeaway computer.
MARY: Well you know that was really revolutionary at the time. But it was about making sure people had access. Providing free internet is about making sure people have access to knowledge and information and aren't disadvantaged. So it's working out whether the concept, the mission or the professional ideas have changed, which I don't think they have. That's what we have to hold onto, and then how we actually enact them is what is changing. But I think even in the execution it's just maybe the technology that's changed.
PENNY: One thing that really changed the way I thought about libraries is the idea that a book is a piece of technology, it's just that we're so used to them that we don't think about it like that anymore. But actually books in that form were invented
MARY: I'm sure Sue showed you that German Monk with the very first time he saw a codex instead of a scroll, so he didn't know how to open it. How do you get to the next bit? I could talk all day about libraries all day.
CHRISTINA Thanks so much.
MARY: Lovely to see this room. I did the research. You can't say I didn't.
PENNY: I told you she was good.
PENNY: (Jaunty piano in background) Next time on In Those Days we talk to Damian Callinan, star of stage and screen about what used to be on the site of the Richmond Public Library.
I reckon you would have been really good in the vaudeville era. Do you feel that? Can you sing?
D: No. I can dance.
PENNY: You can dance.
CHRISTINA But can you do what I call character sing? I reckon you could character sing.
D: Yeah I call it dickhead bravado and character sing is about right.
PENNY: (jaunty music in background) And we also talk to an old friend of the pod, Tim Carruthers and he helps us bring some of old music from Trove to life again.
(Tim and Penny singing badly to piano).
T: That was excellent.
PENNY: That was really good, wasn't it?
T: That was good. See we sound just like a couple of Broken Hill miners in a pub in 1930 something.
PENNY: Absolutely.