In 2025, James Cook University celebrates its proud legacy in historical research, writing and publishing through the Studies in North Queensland History Collection. In partnership with the JCU College of Arts, Society and Education (CASE), the Library has made available online free digital versions of a selection of diverse works – both published books and unpublished theses all originating from the JCU History Department. To complement this showcase a series of blog posts provides a fresh response to each work through the contemporary lens of a prominent practicing historian.
In today's post, Associate Professor Mary Carroll (Charles Sturt University) writes about "An Institution of Help and Education": The Development of Free Public Library Services in the City of Townsville, 1866-1981, by Richard Sayers, who completed his Honours thesis in 1996 for the JCU Department of History and Politics.
Surrounded as most of us are by accessible and vibrant free public libraries, it's hard to imagine the dire state of Australian public libraries in the 1930s. Only major capital cities such as Melbourne and Sydney provided anything resembling a contemporary public library service. Free local municipally supported libraries were scarce or non-existent, and their predecessors, the libraries of the Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts, while more numerous, had fallen out of favour and were considered outdated and moribund. Into this environment stepped library experts Ralph Munn and Ernst Pitt, whose report Australian Libraries: A Survey of Conditions and Suggestions for Their Improvement (1935) was to galvanize public library development in Australia.
Travelling throughout Australia, Munn and Pitt were scathing in their assessments of the country's libraries, including those in Queensland, infamously advising 'anyone wishing to carry away a favourable impression of the Public Library of Queensland should never make the mistake of entering it' (1935, p.61). Other Queensland libraries fared little better with their report noting that 'there is no municipal library of any kind' in the State (1935, p.66). The report had a far-reaching effect on attitudes towards the provision of free public library services to local communities in Australia. It is against this backdrop that, in 1938, Townsville was to establish Queensland's first free public library.
Richard Sayers' thesis "An Institution of Help and Education": The Development of Free Public Library Services in the City of Townsville, 1866-1981 is available online at JCU Library. It sets out to tell the story of this institution from its origins as part of the early Schools of Arts' Movement in the 1860s until its transformation into a modern municipal library the 1980s. In the thesis, Sayers aims to identify critical moments in the library's development and highlight the significance of its achievements. The thesis, however, gives us more than a dry chronological account as, in telling the story of this one Townsville institution, he also gives us insight into the values, priorities and politics of a particular community over time, which contributes to our wider understanding of post-colonisation Australia.
In his thesis, Sayers also reflects on the significance of the Townsville library within the
wider discourse about the provision of free public libraries. In so doing he provides
something which unfortunately is too rare—an insight into the significance,
impact and value of libraries on communities, not just in Townsville but nationally.
This, as Sayers notes, is rare because:
libraries
have not been the focus of detailed historical research. Consequently, there
exists little public understanding of the historical development of Australia's
public libraries. (p.3)
This, unfortunately, remains the case today, so a history like this continues to make a
valuable contribution in shoring a gap in our history.
Incidentally, though unavoidably, the thesis also brings into focus the contrast between a predominantly male cohort of politicians, administrators and powerbrokers and the women employed to manage the library (see Figures 1-3). Rarely do we hear the story of women librarians, but this thesis is rich with interviews and reflections on the women who were to shape and lead the Townsville library service throughout its history.
These women included Mrs Mabel Classen (pictured in Figures 1 and 2) alongside other members of her staff. Her story, and her 43-year tenure at the library and its predecessor, is one worth contemplating. As Sayers outlines in his notes, Classen was employed in August 1921 as Secretary Librarian of the Townsville School of Arts, later going on to manage the Townsville public library at its establishment in 1938, working there until her retirement in March 1964. Sayers particularly notes her role in mentoring the young women who worked at the library and in advocating the need for professionally qualified staff for the library against some resistance from council (p.62).
Classen was to be followed by other women librarians who continued to lead the library throughout the twentieth century. They instigated change and innovation during their tenures including partnerships with schools and expansion of the library—including the establishment of a children's library (see Figures 4 and 5), which Sayers concludes had, by the 1960s, 'become an integral part of the city's cultural, educational and recreational infrastructure' (p.77). Sayers' history therefore provides a glimpse of a much wider story: that of women and work in Australia.
Like other library historians, Sayers spends some time reflecting also on why the histories of libraries, such as found in this thesis, are of interest and relevant to broader historical studies, and why these stories are worth telling. To paraphrase and summarise his reflection: he concludes that access to a free public library by the community has never been a neutral or passive objective. Advocating for free public libraries is values laden, variously linked in Australia to ambitions for an egalitarian society, universal education and democracy through an informed citizenry—or alternatively considered Trojan horses for the transfer of conservative cultural values and colonisation (pp.38-41). Sayers also notes the valorisation of the library building, rather than its people in historical works stating that:
It
is common for libraries to be defined by their physical circumstances, much
like
museums, art galleries or even churches. This is unfortunate as libraries are actually the products of their collections and those whom they exist to serve. The net worth of an individual library cannot be gauged simply from its building. (p.6)
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