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A History of the State Library of Victoria

The Beginning of the Library

The State Library was the very first public library in Melbourne, and come to that, in the entire state of Victoria. Built twenty years after the founding of Melbourne (founded by both John Batman and John Fawkner), the library’s first section was opened on the 11th of February, 1856, with Sir Redmond Barry as its founder. A competition was held to design the building, and Joseph Reed won (he later designed both the Melbourne Town Hall and the Royal Exhibition Buildings). Known then as the Melbourne Public Library, this first section (designed by Joseph Reed), consisted of an entrance hall and a first-floor reading room and was officially opened by Acting Governor, Major-General Edward Macarthur. The Library was freely available to all members of the public over the age of fourteen (this wouldn’t include Sherin now as she is thirteen).

Major contributors to the building fund and the planning of the Library not only included Sir Redmond Barry, the Library’s founder, but also Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe and politician Hugh Eardley Childers. With the introduction of the Appropriation Bill by the Treasurer of Victoria (Hugh Eardley Childers), the government put 10,000 pounds towards the building of the Library, and an extra 3,000 pounds for the Library’s collections of books and paintings. The Library opened with a total of 3846 books. A few of these volumes were received by donation, but most of the content was personally chosen by Sir Redmond Barry himself.

The original collections of the State Library excluded books classified as either works of fiction or the imagination. Trustees later reported in 1859 that it was not the Library’s role to provide popular reading to Victoria’s population. As quoted, it was not to ‘attract the idle and inquisitive, or to entertain the frivolous, but to invite the scholar’. Redmond Barry comprised a list of the criteria that each of the Library’s books had to meet. He detested works of fiction, novels in particular, and being the founder, wouldn’t allow any material other than the ones he approved of on his list to be stored and available to the public at the Library.

Bellow is footage of the State Library from 1959.

Redmond Barry’s List: media type="youtube" key="Vzbneis8yVw?fs=1" height="462" width="572" align="right" · Natural History · Bibles · Dictionaries · Architecture · Fine Arts · British-Classics · Travels/Voyages · Classics · Political Economy · Speeches · Coins/Medals · Metaphysics/Logic · Essays · Botany · Commentaries · Atlases/Maps/Globes · Biographies · History · Sciences · Chronicles · French Works

The Library Grows

The first librarian, Augustus Tulk, was appointed in May 1856 (three months after the Library opened), and was sent to work with Redmond Barry on the Library’s collections. With an extra 20,000 pounds granted by the government, the second section of the Library was completed in 1859. This included the addition of a new hall on the upper floor (known as the Queen’s Reading Room), and a ground floor area, which was to be used as a Museum of Art, where the Library would showcase its treasures.

By 1861, the Library’s collections had grown to over 22,000 volumes, and a year later, in 1852, a new catalogue was ordered, having over 27,000 titles. The Library had grown by over 5000 books in the space of a year. Three years later, in 1865, the State Library held over 38,000 books, and that nearly doubled in size over the next decade.

In 1869, the government passed the Copyright Protection Act. It stated that every book, magazine, pamphlet and map that was published in Victoria needed an additional copy to be stored in the Library by the publisher. The act also required a copy of every newspaper published in the State of Victoria to be stored in the State Library within two months of its publication.

Another influence on the Library’s growth was the death of Redmond Barry in 1880, twelve days after he, being the Judge of the Supreme Court, sentenced the outlaw Ned Kelly to death. Sir Redmond Barry was 67 years old when he died. This meant that the Library was no longer controlled by a single hand, nor was it restricted by the guidelines of Redmond’s list.

By the 1880s, the State Library of Victoria was the largest Library in all the Australian colonies, but it still remained purely a reference library.

The Library as we Know it

By the 1950s, the Library’s main focus was on collecting Australian material, particularly Victorian literature and art works. After a water leakage in the La Trobe Reading Room in 1959, the dome’s skylights were coated in copper due to insufficient funds. The copper was later removed, and the roof was fixed during the major redevelopments that took place during 1990-2004. Designed by Ancher Mortlock and Woolley, the refurbishments cost the Library approximately two hundred million Australian dollars.

Today, most of the library’s material goes against the exclusions laid down by Sir Redmond Barry way back in 1856. Even the band Faker filmed their music video ‘Hurricane’ in the La Trobe Reading room, using all the original furniture as props (This would have gone against all Redmond’s ideas of a library). Remaining a custodian of Victoria’s heritage, as originally planned, the Library now holds many new materials, including comic books, popular magazines, pulp fiction, children’s books, rock/pop CDs, posters and fanzines. Also, no age limit restricts access to the library (otherwise, this project wouldn’t have been possible).

From being Melbourne’s Public Library, to becoming our State Library, the Library has influenced many lives, both past and present. I’m sure, as we’ve done now, that we’ll be able look back in fifty odd years or so, and note all the influential changes that the site has been through over the years, adapting to the times. But for now at least, it remains Victoria’s State Library.

By Nicola

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