How to research the history, development, architecture, collections and management of the State Library of Victoria.
After the establishment of the Library, conundrum faced by Trustee President Redmond Barry and Chief Librarian Augustus Tulk was how to share Library resources beyond the grand building.
The Library has always been a research collection, only purchasing single copies of books. Many of the books initially purchased for the Library were also very costly. Our copy of Gould’s Birds of Australia , for example, cost £140. As Redmond Barry pointed out, this precluded lending.
He acknowledged though “the value of private or collective reading at home, and the saving of distance in bad or winter weather when going to or returning from the reading room” and from the time the Library opened we have been looking for ways to connect everyone, across Victoria, with the Library. [Quotes from Edmund Armstrong, The Book of the Public Library … 1856–1906, The Trustees, Melbourne, 1906, p.4.]
The first initiative to take our Library to citizens who couldn’t come to the building was the establishment of a “Travelling Library”, or, officially, the Duplicate Book Loan System (DBLS). This service, claimed to be the first of its’ kind in the world, commenced in 1860, distributing duplicate collections of books to Public Libraries (such as existed at the time), Mechanics or Literary Institutions, Athenaeums or Municipal Corporations, for periods extending over 3, 4, or 6 months.
The Library holds several of the purpose built book cases including one of the last dispatched before the closer of the Travelling Library in the mid-1960s, after 100 years service. This cases contains the books distributed at that time. See a list on our catalogue.
From the mid-19th century, free public lending libraries had begun to be established in the United States and England, and in April 1883, Head Librarian Thomas Bride produced a report urging the establishment of a lending library, with a collection separate from that of the Reference Library.
I am of the opinion that an important function of the library will be left unfulfilled if a lending library be not established ... If the aim of public libraries be not only to preserve but to diffuse knowledge as widely as possible, every facility should be afforded for the encouragement of healthy reading and it would seem that the system of lending libraries is a most potent agent to this end. Argus 24 April 1883 p.6
Bride pursued this project tenaciously, and finally, on 8 August 1892, the Lending Library opened. It was an immediate success. In 1893, there were 93,608 loans. Concerns about the safety of books were dispelled: during that year only six books were lost, of which four were paid for. Report of Trustees....1893 p.10
Originally the Lending Library occupied two temporary locations, the Swinburne Building basement on Little Lonsdale Street, and then in 1893 within the Great Exhibition Hall.
In 1899 the Exhibition Hall was declared unsafe and demolished and replaced by temporary buildings which housed the Lending Library until it found a more permanent home, in 1908, in the Buvelot Gallery (now the Arts Library, Swinburne Building).
Initially Library users didn't have access to the book shelves. There was an indicator which was a wooden frame, containing small oblong pigeon holes, into which are fitted numbered blocks representing the books in the Library. One end is red (book on loan), the other white (available). (See Australasian library conference Conference proceedings, 1896 p.51)
The indicator was removed in 1899 (see The book of the Public Library, Museums, and National Gallery of Victoria, 1856-1906. pp.79 and 80) when the books were classified by Dewey and the public could access the shelves directly. The item appears to have been discarded at the time of its removal.
In 1946 the Lending Library moved to its final location, on the ground floor of the North East wing (now the Mr Tulk cafe).
The Lending Library continued for nearly 80 years, closing on 27 February 1971
Interior view of lending library 1955 H40290
Interior view of lending library 1955 H40292
Interior view of lending library 1955 H40293
Interior of the Lending Library ca, 1910 H4664
Some resources on the development of free libraries in Victoria
