ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49

News from the Chair

Welcome to the Summer issue of the LIHG newsletter. While we wait for news on when in-person events may again be possible, this issue contains two features which encourage us to reflect on the success of our online events. Having regaled us with an excellent talk at our last work-in-progress session, Alistair Black has contributed an article that further explores the depiction of librarianship in post-war cinema. Eleanor Kelly has provided a write-up of Alice Ford-Smith’s virtual “Lonely hearts…” walk, which was a wonderful way to spend a virtual Valentine’s day evening.

This issue also has us looking forward to our annual conference on Saturday 3rd July, again taking place online. Please consider joining us if you can. Many thanks in advance to all our speakers, and to Angela Platt for putting together such an excellent programme.

Finally, this issue also throws a spotlight on other ways in which LIHG supports research into Library and Information history – the essay prize, and the James Ollé award. Please share these with others who may be interested. Jill Dye Chair, CILIP Library & Information History Group

Table of Contents What can the film Only Two Can Play (1962) tell us about post-war public librarianship in Britain? ...... 2 Library History Essay Award 2021 ...... 5 Lonely hearts, wedding bells and illicit pleasures: a far from sentimental journey into how London loved in print ...... 6 James Ollé Awards ...... 7 Power and Resistance in Library History: ...... 8 CILIP LIHG Conference 2021 ...... 8 Events ...... 9 SIG Library History Oral Histories Project ...... 9 Publications ...... 10 Author Query ...... 10 Historic Libraries Forum (HFL) statement on cuts to staff and services in libraries with Unique and Distinctive Collections (UDC) ...... 11 Back Matter ...... 11

1 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 What can the film Only Two Can Play (1962) tell us about post-war public librarianship in Britain?

Figure 1. Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling in a scene from Only Two Can Play (1962). Courtesy of STUDIOCANAL.

Since roughly the middle of the twentieth century, light on the periods in which they were created, rich the development of history as a subject has seen as they are, as the historian Arthur Marwick a commensurate diversification in the type of reminds us, in their potential to not only record primary sources investigated and referenced by everyday practices but also reveal contemporary historians. This widening conceptualisation of what “attitudes, assumptions, mentalities, and values”.2 constitutes a legitimate primary resource has Librarians and the library have been making included feature films.1 Treated with appropriate appearances in films since the early days of methodological care, cinematic productions throw cinema. However, the vast majority of roles 2 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 allocated to what Tevis and Tevis call “reel” amateur dramatics group and she is looking for librarians or libraries have been of the “backdrop” books on medieval Welsh dress to lend or “cameo” kind.3 Classic and much cited authenticity to one of the group’s upcoming examples of films that display such roles include productions. Unable to satisfy her enquiry, a young It’s a Wonderful Life (1947), Breakfast Club (1985), female library assistant calls John, her senior and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Television colleague, over to help. Flirting ensues and a productions that fall into this category include Buffy romance between the two is born (Figure 1). the Vampire Slayer (seven seasons, 1997-2002) However, it is a romance doomed to failure. John and The Librarian (3 films, 2004-08), neither of and Elizabeth never manage to get into bed. Each which are primarily about the institution of the planned tryst in the film ends in comic disaster and library or the occupation of the librarian. Listings of “failed consummation”, portrayed in scenes that such productions are many,4 and in 2007 the make the most of Seller’s slapstick skills set. contents of such lists were brought to life in the The romance between the two is complicated documentary The Hollywood Librarian.5 By by John’s decision to apply for the vacant post of contrast, very few films have featured the librarian sub-librarian (“deputy librarian” in other library as a main protagonist or librarianship as a major settings). Elizabeth is married to a colourless, driver of the plot. The very few films that fall into muted businessman, Vernon. He is a local this category include Storm Center (1956), Desk councillor and serves on the council’s public Set (1957), Party Girl (1995), The Public (2018), libraries committee. Elizabeth is thus able to pull and, if a slight stretching of the parameters is strings, to John’s advantage. Although uncertain allowed, The Music Man (1962). about applying, being disillusioned with the You don’t need to be a film buff to know that monotony of work and an unfulfilling career, John these five productions were set in the United is ultimately persuaded to do so by his long- States. The only film set in a British context that suffering wife, Jean (played by Virginia Maskell), in can be identified as belonging to the category in the hope that the family can earn the extra money question is Only Two Can Play (1962).6 Directed needed to escape their dreary surroundings and by Sidney Gilliat and a success at the British box lives. John and Jean have two young children. office, Only Two Can Play was a production of They live in three cramped and grubby rooms on British Lion Films, a cornerstone of the post-war the top floor of a Victorian terraced villa converted British film industry. British Lion Films’ catalogue into flats. They share a bathroom with other flats included such famous films as The Third Man and have to put up with the intrusive gaze of an (1949) and Lord of the Flies (1963). Among its interfering landlady. So, we see that the Lewis comedy productions were I’m All Right Jack (1959) family is not poor, but they are hardly “well off”. and Heavens Above! (1963). Both these films “Hard up” would be a fair description of their starred Peter Sellers, who also fronted Only Two situation. At the end of the film we find that John, Can Play. It too was a comedy but, like the other having turned down the job of sub-librarian, has two, not one of the “laugh out loud” kind. opted instead for a peaceful life on a mobile library, In Only Two Can Play, Sellers plays the visiting country villages where, away from city life character John Lewis, a librarian in the fictional and the drudgery of life in the central library, the Aberdarcy Public Library. The town of Aberdarcy temptations offered by women other than his wife was based on Swansea, where Kingsley Amis, the can be presumably be resisted. author of the 1955 novel That Uncertain Feeling John’s sexual and career frustrations, played (1955) that gave rise to the film, lived between out in a framework of light comedy, drive the 1949 and 1961, working as a lecturer at the storyline forward. What gives the film an university. Many of the exterior scenes in the film undoubted impact, however, is that its central were shot in Swansea. character is a librarian. Audiences at the time In the scenes that precede the opening would have largely expected a librarian to be credits, John, our leading protagonist, is shown to sexually conservative. They would also expect a have a wandering eye for the opposite sex. In the librarian to enjoy a comfortable standard of living. scenes that immediately follow these credits, his Even if they were not comfortable in this regard, credentials as a lothario are firmly established. the expectation would have been that they were One morning, the character of Elizabeth Gruffydd- cheerfully engaged in their vocation due to a Williams, played by the Swedish actress Mai certain intellectual motivation. The fact that John Zetterling, comes into the library. Elizabeth, a does not fit this formula lends the film dramatic glamorous local socialite, is involved with a local power.

3 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 Such an analysis suggests the idea that the the art gallery over the road from the Victorian, film, though fundamentally a form of entertainment, Italianate Swansea Central Library that was used contains hidden meanings of interest to the to represent Aberdarcy Public Library. historian. Cultural products both portray and betray In other ways, the use of a building around half meaning.7 Regarding these, we can ask, a century old, furnished with utility shelving and respectively, what is intentionally and adorned with classical busts, is entirely unintentionally revealed by the film’s “authors”, by transparent. It symbolises a library world stuck in its screenwriter, producers and director? The gap the past, yet to be touched by the promised and between “authorial intent” and what is “unwittingly” planned post-war revival in public library conveyed is critical to understanding what the film provision.9 More mundanely, the film offers a ultimately means. window into the public library’s past that faithfully For example, if one takes the enduring reflects reality. On display in the film, even if only question of the image of the librarian, about which fleetingly, is the Browne book issue system; the much has been written,8 what the film portrays is inter-library loan service; book banning; the library arguably an anti-stereotype. Despite some staff room; and a mobile library of the time. episodes of foolishness and clumsy ineptness, Audiences were also given an insight into staffing John comes across as socially and sexually structures (the difference between library confident and, at times, even suave. There are assistant, assistant librarian, sub-librarian, and numerous hints in the film as to his promiscuity. He chief librarian); salary levels (John’s promotion is a seducer and a charmer. John is not afraid of would give him an extra £150 a year); professional social engagement. He appears comfortable training (John tells us he has a degree and has among party people and, as theatre critic for a local passed other exams); and governance (the paper, he is civically invested. It might be interview for the sub-librarian post by the library convincingly argued that the anti-stereotype was committee occupies a significant segment of the required to deliver comic and dramatic effect. But film). All these serve as prompts to the enquiring in choosing the anti-stereotype for this reason, the student of post-war public library service. Indeed, film makers in fact betray their awareness of a it is worth noting at this point that such “facts” of strong stereotypical image of the librarian public library history both intrigued and informed circulating in society—the librarian as reserved, the students of my “Libraries in Film” module, reclusive, serious-minded, other-worldly, and prompting them to dig down into the important monk-like, traits to which John returns at the end minutiae of everyday library life. of the film when he openly surrenders his A further faithfully constructed reality in the philandering. film is the debate about popular culture and the A further example of the “portrayal-betrayal” “right” balance that was sought at the time in the concept can be seen in the film’s depiction of the complexion of the book stock and, it followed, in Aberdarcy Public Library building. In terms of its institutional philosophy and purpose. This “culture design, what is portrayed is a building in the wars” theme runs as a major thread throughout the Edwardian baroque style. It could be argued that film. A notable theme is the library’s delivery of the film makers’ choice of building and style was both high-brow non-fiction and light (including sub-conscious, because they thought that’s what a romantic) fiction, and the tension between the two. library should look like. In other words, they There is also coverage of the social width of the instinctively bought into the notion of “libraryness”, library’s readership, from the working classes and which in terms of physical appearance demanded the morally suspect social outsider, to the the deployment of historical references, libraries intellectual and the socially connected and well-to- being fundamentally historical institutions do. preserving knowledge through the ages. The Such realities (although maybe not exactly the impression we get of the library is that we are in a same ones) about the history of the post-war public dusty place where culture and books are in a state library, are also visible in Amis’ That Uncertain of decay or, at best, in a time warp. By the early Feeling, the genesis of the film. What the film and 1960s, there certainly existed a selection of the book don’t share, however, is commentary, or libraries fashioned in modernist styles, or even in a observations, on John’s political beliefs. In the stripped classical mode, from which to make a book, John exhibits a radical streak. Despite his selection. It is not as if the film makers were college education and professional status, he is committed in some way to depict the central library distinctly hostile to Welsh middle-class culture, not in Swansea—because they were not! In fact, it was least because of its tendency to embrace English

4 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 traits. In the film, by contrast, John’s class politics the international journal Library History (2004-08); are sanitised. This is not surprising, given the need North American editor of Library and Information for the film to attract a mass audience. History (2009-13); and Library Trends coeditor Interestingly, however, the absence of politics in (2009-13) and editor (2013-16). Presently, his the film corresponded to the prevailing massified research focuses on the history of corporate libraries approach to library provision. The dominant and staff magazines and the design of public libraries philosophy in public librarianship and public library in the 1960s. policy after the war was to build, once austerity had faded, a significantly expanded service, reaching References sections of the population previously “unserved”. 1 V.R. Schwartz, Film and History, in J. Donald & M. Renoy Critically, this was to be achieved on a universal, (eds.), The Sage handbook of film studies, London: Sage, 2008, “one size fits all” basis. Not until the 1970s, with the pp. 199-215. origins of community librarianship, did ideas about 2 A. Marwick, The new nature of history: knowledge, evidence, a redistributive library service—one that prioritized language, London: Red Globe Press, 2001, p. 168. 3 R. Tevis and B. Tevis, The image of librarians in cinema, 1917- the socially excluded and alternative and marginal 1999, Jefferson, North Carolina: MacFarland, 2005. See, also, L. cultures—gain traction.10 Marcus, The library in film, in A. Crawford (ed.), The meaning of the library: a cultural history, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015, pp. 199-219. Alistair Black 4 For example, E. Smart and S. Currant, The 10 best librarians Professor Emeritus on screen, British Film Institute, 2019, available at: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-best- librarians-screen [accessed 2.6.21]. 5 The Hollywood librarian: a look at librarians through film, Alistair Black is the author of the following books: A Overdue Productions, 2007. New History of the English Public Library (1996); The 6 I first became interested in Only Two Can Play in the context of Public Library in Britain 1914-2000 (2000); and the methodology of history when I devised and taught a course Libraries of Light: British Public Library Design in the entitled ‘Libraries in Film’ in the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. Long 1960s (2017). He is co-author of Understanding 7 L. Back, Portrayal and betrayal: Bourdieu, photography and Community Librarianship (1997); The Early sociological life, The Sociological Review, 57(3) (2009), pp. 471- Information Society in Britain, 1900-1960 (2007); and 90. 8 Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), a For example, A. White, Not your ordinary librarian: debunking the popular perception of librarians, Oxford: Chandos, 2012. socio-architectural history of early public libraries in Also, see Reference Librarian, 37(78) (2003) for a special issue Britain. With Peter Hoare, he edited Volume 3 on the subject. (covering 1850-2000) of the Cambridge History of 9 A. Black, The public library in Britain, 1914-2000, London: The Libraries in Britain and Ireland (2006). He was chair British Library, 2000, pp. 111-40; T. Kelly, A history of the public library in Great Britain, 1845-1975, London: Library Association, of the Library History Group of the American Library 1977, pp. 327-425. Association (1992-99) and of the IFLA Section on 10 A. Black and D. Muddiman, Understanding community Library History (2003-07). He also served as editor of librarianship, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.

Library History Essay Award 2021

The Library History Essay Award is an annual prize for the • Chair of the LIHG best article or chapter on library history published in, or • Awards Manager of the LIHG pertaining to, the British Isles, within the previous calendar • External Assessor at the invitation of the LIHG year.** Introduced in 1996, the award is organised and Committee sponsored by the LIHG and aims to support the publication of Nominations (and any queries relating to the award) should be research into library history in the British Isles. The prize is sent to the Group's Awards Manager: £350. Dr Dorothy Clayton, Awards Manager, LIHG Submissions should contain original historical research and Tel: 0161 826 3883; or 07769658649 be based on original source materials if possible. Evidence of Email: [email protected] methodological and historiographical innovation is particularly welcome. Library History Essay Award **2021** Authors may put themselves forward for the prize but may Due to Covid-19 and the difficulties experienced by make only one submission per year. Any member of CILIP researchers, libraries, record offices, and publishers, the 2021 LIHG Essay Award will be made to the author whose writing may also nominate a published essay for consideration. The was published in 2019 or 2020. entries will be identified and judged by a panel of three: Deadline for submitting articles is 30 September 2021.

5 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49

Lonely hearts, wedding bells and illicit pleasures: a far from sentimental journey into how London loved in print

The New Swell's Night Guide, ca. 1847 (British Library) Public domain image from: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-new-swells-night-guide

Alice Ford-Smith’s (Jarndyce Antiquarian also highlighted Senate House Library’s more Booksellers) virtual tour on Valentine’s Day 2021 recent contribution to the discourse on literary love, gave fascinating insights into how love, passion, the 2018 exhibition ‘Queer Between the Covers’, and marriage were found, nurtured, and exploited which showcased over 250 years of queer in London. Consisting of eleven stops, this literature. A short virtual walk south-east took us to thoroughly enjoyable tour offered the chance to Bloomsbury Square and back to 1742, where we engage with London’s printing heritage from the heard how publications helped younger brothers to comfort of your own home. Whilst the Covid navigate the marriage market. A master-key to the pandemic might have prevented an in-person tour, rich ladies treasury, or, The widower and the lack of the usual sights and sounds of a tour batchelor’s directory by a Younger Brother (1742) did not prevent you from being fully transported to assisted younger brothers who, unlike the eldest the highs and lows of love in London. Alice’s vivid son, would not inherit the family’s fortunes in descriptions and helpful map references fully finding potential marriages to ladies with reputed characterised each stop. fortunes. Our third stop took us to the British Museum on Great Russell Street to consider the Beginning in the heart of London’s literary subject of obscenity. The Private Case, formed in landscape, Bloomsbury, our first stop was to the 1850s and now housed in the British Library, Senate House where we learnt how Sir John contains material thought to be too indecent for the Betjeman’s encounter with Joan Hunter Dunn in main collection. The inclusion and exclusion of 1940 inspired his poem "A Subaltern's Love-song", certain texts provides a fascinating insight into the and a friendship that lasted over forty years. Alice historic attitudes towards erotic material.

6 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 The theme of illicit material continued throughout for his indecent publications that “Curlicism” was the next three stops. The fourth stop at Drury Lane synonymous for literary indecency. highlighted Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, an annual directory of “ladies of pleasure” which No Valentine’s day tour would be complete without was published from the middle to the end of the cards, and the ninth stop on Gerrard Street delved eighteenth century. At the next stop, the into the history of Valentine’s Day cards. Unlike Magistrates Court on Bow Street, Alice highlighted heart-felt, cute, twenty-first century cards, Vinegar John Clemand’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure Valentine’s, popular in the nineteenth and early (1748). Popularly known as Fanny Hill this was twentieth centuries, were sent to ridicule the thought to be one of the most banned and recipient. prosecuted books. Censorship of this text continued into the 1960s when Mayflower Books The penultimate stop of the walk was Shaftesbury published an uncensored paperback edition in Avenue, and featured Paul Pry’s For Your 1963, which was later banned under the Obscene Convenience: a Learned Dialogue Instructive to all Publications Act 1959. The Strand was stop six, Londoners and London Visitors, first published in and continued the theme of publications on 1937. In addition to describing the location and promiscuous women, this time detailing The New state of public conveniences in London, reading Swell's Night Guide, early nineteenth century between the lines, this book can be considered the guidebooks highlighting the various venues where first Queer city guide. sex workers could be found. The virtual tour concluded at 84 Charing Cross Alice’s next step brought us back to the twentieth Road with the book of the same name. This heart- century where, further along the Strand, she warming story of the 20 year-long correspondence highlighted the publication of the London City Gay between Helene Hanff, writing from New York, and Map in 1982 by Spartacus International, thought to Frank Doel, manager of Mark & Co. antiquarian be one of the first times a mainstream publisher (in booksellers in Charing Cross finished off the this case Bartholomew and Sons) permitted their journey perfectly. Alice’s tour undoubtedly cartography to be used in this way. highlighted the role that printing has played, both historically and recently, in London’s amorous Stop eight on Rose Street, Covent Garden focused literary heritage. on dubious eighteenth-century bookseller and publisher Edward Curll, who became so notorious Eleanor Kelly Assistant Librarian, St Hilda’s College Library

James Ollé Awards

James G. Ollé (1916-2001) was an active teacher and distinguished writer in the field of library history; the Library and Information History Group has offered awards in his memory since 2002 with the intention of encouraging a high level of activity in library and information history.

Individuals may apply for an award of up to £500 each year for expenses relating to a library history project. Examples of what an Award might be used to fund include: • Access to primary resources, e.g. travel, procurement of scans/photographs, one year’s subscription to databases or credits for sources such as birth/marriage/death records. • Procurement of secondary sources e.g. key reference texts, inter-library loan fees.

Please note that the award is not intended to support conference attendance. Anyone with a keen interest in Library and/or Information History is encouraged to apply, regardless of academic affiliation, but recipients must be members of the CILIP Library and Information History Group (already, or willing to join upon receipt of an award).

James Ollé Award recipients will be asked to write a report (maximum 1000 words) of the work undertaken for inclusion in the LIHG's Newsletter, and may be invited to present a short paper at an LIHG conference or meeting, such as the AGM. To apply for the award, please send a short CV, statement of plans and draft budget to the LIHG’s Awards Manager. Applications may be made throughout the year. Potential applicants are welcome contact the Awards Manager with any queries about the award, or to request sample statements/budgets to help with their application.

Dr Dorothy Clayton, Awards Manager, LIHG Tel: 0161 826 3883; or 07769658649; Email: [email protected] 7 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49

Power and Resistance in Library History:

CILIP LIHG Conference 2021

This event will take place online via Zoom on Saturday 3 July 2021, 10am – 3.30pm. Joining information will be sent to registered participants the day before the event.

Professor Alistair Black Power + Resistance = Negotiation: A Functional Equation for the History of Libraries?

Daisy Stafford Access for all: Tensions Between Reform, Recreation, and Exclusion in the History of Public Libraries, 1850-2021. Dr Colin Higgins The Revolutionary in Disguise: Lenin and Mao as Library Workers. Victoria Stevens Knowledge is Power: A Case Study of the Rise and Fall of a Kent County House Library in its Wider Social Context.

Dr Max Skjönsberg Reading Politics in Eighteenth-Century Subscription Libraries. Professor Mark Towsey Subscription Libraries, Empire, and the Wider World: Participation and Resistance. Dr Sophie Jones Social Libraries and the Formation of Political Loyalties during the American Revolution.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/power-and-resistance-in-library-history-cilip-lihg- conference-2021-tickets-156518865139

8 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49

Events SIG Library History Oral Histories Project As outlined in its Action Plans from 2019 the SIG Libraries Without Borders Library History has embarked on what some might 10-12 June 2021 think are a very ambitious set of projects on the oral https://sites.google.com/oakland.edu/libhistsem histories of our librarians past and present. As the project develops a number of streams reveal LIHG Chair and Library & Information History themselves and those we can report activity on are: Editor Jill Dye will be speaking at a panel on Friday 11 June at 2pm Eastern US time (7pm in the UK): Recording the oral histories of IFLA’s Past Presidents, Secretaries General and Getting Your Historical Research Published: Q&A Personalities. The goal of these three aspects is to with Journal Editors get as many recordings as possible done for IFLA’s https://www.eventbrite.com/e/library-history- centenary in 2027 and through negotiation and seminar-xiv-libraries-without-borders-tickets- support from IFLA the projects have now 149151493131 commenced. And how fortunate the SIG is to have a convenor for each component, with the Section on History of Libraries Preservation and Conservation volunteering to look 1 June 2021, 5.30-7.30pm after the IFLA Presidents aspect; and SIG “Committee” members Peter Lor and Polly Boruff- Memory, Reason, Imagination: Subject Jones putting their hand up to convene the other Classification in the 1789 Catalogue of the Library two. The IFLA personalities component is an interesting one and some IFLA colleagues have Company of Philadelphia emailed me with suggestions. If you have a James N. Green suggestion then please email me so that I can check

the list we have to see if they have been included. This talk is about the Library Company of Philadelphia’s 1789 printed catalogue and its Oral histories of library educators: what has been innovative subject arrangement, which was done and what needs to be done? This project is in derived from d’Alembert’s classification of human its infancy and progress will be reported as it knowledge according to the three fundamental happens. faculties of the mind: Memory, Reason, and Imagination. The catalogue inspired an enigmatic Oral histories of librarians from around the allegorical painting that the Library Company world. This is an aspect that I took on as I dream of commissioned in 1792, which has startled and having an IFLA Map of the World showing which confused generations of visitors. countries have made and/or are making oral histories of their librarians. After a post on the Library History https://www.history.ac.uk/events/memory-reason- e-list I did hear from some countries, but there remain imagination-subject-classification-1789- many gaps. So please get in touch with me if you catalogue-library-company-philadelphia have not already done so, if you have such collection/s in your country so that they can be Bloomsbury’s Lost Libraries recorded on the list that I am preparing. 23 June 2021, 6-7pm The SIG has gained approval for its session: Librarians learning from the past to inspire, include This virtual walk will carry you back through and sustain at the IFLA 2021 online conference. The Bloomsbury’s history to long-forgotten libraries, SIG had invited papers that covered issues on readers, librarians and collectors. Alice Ford-Smith librarian oral history/ies for the Dublin 2020 (Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers) will reveal conference and as those accepted fit with the theme some of the links between the area’s past and of the SIG’s 2021 session, we are now arranging the present book collections and the tales of session. enterprise, obsession, and destruction that are often behind them. By Dr. Kerry Smith and Anup Kumar Das https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/study-training/study- [email protected] weeks/london-rare-books-school/bloomsbury’s- www.ifla.org/library-history lost-libraries-walk-through-some

9 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 Publications Adang, Camilla, Jewish-Muslim Intellectual History Entangled: Textual Materials from the Firkovitch Collection, Saint Petersburg (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020).

Buckland, Michael K., and Masaya Takayama, Ideology and Libraries: California, Diplomacy, and Occupied Japan, 1945– 1952 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

Clapinson, Mary, A Brief History of the Bodleian Library, rev. edn (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020).

Dick, Archie L., Reading Spaces in South Africa, 1850–1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

El Shamsy, Ahmed, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

Murray, Simone, Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture: Books as Media (London: Routledge, 2020).

von Zitzewitz, Josephine, The Culture of Samizdat: New volume opens the book on Liverpool library Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union (London: Bloomsbury Academic, The First Minute Book of the Liverpool Athenaeum, 2020). 1797–1809, ed. David Brazendale and Mark Towsey, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 157 (2020)

The Record Society’s latest volume sheds detailed light Author Query on the intellectual and commercial concerns that motivated eighteenth-century Britons. The first minute book of the Liverpool Athenaeum reveals the thoughts Kate Thompson is a journalist and author and motivations of the people who founded a writing a novel for Hodder & Stoughton set voluntary subscription library, while pointing to the in an Underground Tube shelter library important of books, news, coffee and social space in during the Second World War. Her book is daily life at the turn of the nineteenth century. From fiction , but it is inspired by the real-life the first meeting on 27 November 1809, when Thomas wartime library at Bethnal Green Martin was Chair, the records uncover the relationships and concerns of the merchants, doctors, Underground and the central protagonist is bankers and lawyers of Liverpool. Among the hundreds a Library Assistant. She would like to of books that are detailed in the minutes are “Stewart’s interview as many library workers past and Letters to Mansfield on the Douglas Cause”, which we present as possible. are told was a “cause celebre” in which the female heir to the title had twins “in dubious circumstances”! The Please contact the author via her website editors of the volume, David Brazendale and Mark if you would be happy to be interviewed: Towsey, introduce the text with a fascinating insight into the founding of an ambitious and long-lasting institution. www.katethompsonmedia.co.uk

10 ISSN 1744-3180 Summer 2021 Series 3, no. 49 Historic Libraries Forum (HFL) statement on cuts to staff and services in libraries with Unique and Distinctive Collections (UDC)

This statement, from Chair of HLF and Secretary to LIHG Danielle Westerhof, forms part of a review in how the organisation responds to libraries at risk.

We are alarmed by the growing number of reports about large, often publicly funded, cultural and heritage institutions with libraries holding nationally or internationally important unique and distinctive collections (as defined in RLUK 2014) proposing to make library and archives staff redundant. Whether or not a consequence of many staff in specialist libraries being furloughed over the last year, the proposed redundancies highlight a concerning perception of library and archives staff as being “non-critical” to the mission of the parent organisation.

Library and archives staff fulfil an essential role in managing collections to internationally recognised standards, safeguarding collections for the present and the future, and providing intellectual (whether digital or physical) access to those collections to their colleagues as well as the wider public. The obligation to manage, safeguard and provide access to collections is particularly strong where those collections are held in trust for the nation.

Without the specialist skills and knowledge that library and archives staff bring to an organisation, there is an increased risk to culturally valuable UDCs being neglected or worse: sold and dispersed for short-term financial gain. It reduces the capacity for curators to interpret objects with complex histories in their care, which in turn risks a severe loss of opportunity for the public to engage with these histories and objects.

We fully understand that in the current financial climate, adversely affected by the global pandemic as well as Britain’s exit from the European Union, difficult decisions must be made by cultural and heritage organisations of all sizes.

However, we would call upon the leaders of these institutions to carefully consider the severe and possibly irreparable loss of specialist skills and knowledge the cuts to libraries and archives staff and services would create, as well as the risk to national and international reputation that would follow from significant UDCs being neglected or sold.

We urge leaders to work with recognised professional bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, the Archives and Records Association, and the Museums Association, as well as smaller specialist organisations such as ourselves to understand the full implications of proposals beyond immediate financial savings.

Text from: https://historiclibrariesforum.com/2021/03/16/statement-on-cuts-to-staff-and-services-udc/

Back Matter

The LIHG newsletter is produced twice a year. It contains short articles, news items, exhibition and conference announcements, notices of awards and bursaries, and reports on conferences, exhibitions, and site visits. We also highlight a selection of new publications. We are always looking for feature articles in the field of library and information history; descriptions of little-known historic libraries; information about projects with a significant historical component; new resources (print and digital); news items; and calls for papers. We also welcome reports on conferences on any subject in library and information history and reviews of exhibitions. Recent graduates are invited to submit brief descriptions of their research projects. Please contact the editor, Eve Lacey, if you would like to have news, events, exhibitions or calls for papers included in the newsletter: [email protected] Proposals for feature articles (length of article max. 2000 words) and descriptions of graduate research projects (max. length 750 words) should be accompanied by short CV. Deadlines for contributions:

15 October 2021 (Winter 2021) 6 May 2022 (Summer 2022)

Information about events, conferences and bursaries is also disseminated via the CILIP website: www.cilip.org.uk/about/special-interest-groups/library-information-history-group

Follow us: Twitter: @CILIP_LIHG Facebook: facebook.com/groups/5645439476

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