Macquarie University ResearchOnline

This is the published version of:

Griffen-Foley, Bridget. (2002). Confessions of a library user part 2. LASIE, Vol. 33, No. 1, p. 17-24.

Access to the published version: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/77226/20071011-0000/www.sl.nsw.gov.au/lasie/aug02/aug02.pdf

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Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s. People who come to work in research libraries are involved in exchanges of information and ideas. In this presentation I address how authors and academics move between research libraries to compile and assess the original material that forms the basis of major works of scholarship, particularly in the humanities. I look at how researchers disseminate their findings to the wider community, not just in the form of books but in articles, lectures and documentaries. By referring to my own work on the Packer media dynasty, I consider how libraries such as the State Library of New South Wales can help compensate for yawning gaps in corporate archives; the role played by experienced, specialist librarians in the successful completion of projects; and the ways in which researchers themselves can contribute to research libraries.

CONFESSIONS OF A LIBRARY USER PART 2

Dr Bridget Griffen-Foley Historian and Biographer Department of History University of Sydney

It's a great pleasure to be here today, although Photographers obviously find it hard to make I must say I do feel like a rather poor academic writers – especially non-fiction writers! – look substitute for the best-selling author John interesting and glamorous, and during the Birmingham, who was originally scheduled to shoot John relayed some hilarious stories about speak in this spot. Actually, the last time I saw even more bizarre things he had been asked to John was in this very library, when we were do to promote his books. We survived the both sprawled out on large cushions in the photo-shoot, although I can't say I noticed a Shakespeare Room in the Mitchell wing. I spike in my book's sales in the weeks after the should explain: John, Mark Whitaker and I article appeared. had been selected to feature in a magazine article about young(ish) Australian non-fiction While this was probably my most surreal writers. The journalist who had proposed the experience here, I've been and done many article felt that non-fiction writers got rather things in the State Library over the years. less attention than young and sexy first-time When I was asked to speak here today, I tried novelists, and I was quite happy to go along to cast my mind back to my first contact with with this until I walked into the Shakespeare this library. I worked out that I had had my Room for a photo-shoot and saw the cushions first encounter with the library at a very young artfully arranged around the floor. age. When I was 3 years of age, my father was

LASIE August 2002 17 taken to nearby Sydney Hospital after how most academics and postgraduate collapsing with a heart attack. I have only dim students, particularly in the humanities and memories of the hospital waiting room, but social sciences, and freelance historians and my clearest memory is of my mother, my twin independent scholars based in Sydney view the brother and I walking back to the family car library. The State Library services the parked in Macquarie Street. The day I am international, the national and the local thinking of was bitterly cold and blustery, and community, and it is as a local reader—as an my brother's beanie blew off and around the academic and author working in Sydney—that corner. We all chased the airborne beanie, I have been asked to speak here today. I will capturing our prey near the old Mitchell leave it to other participants in this colloquium Library steps. to consider the historical development of library and archival resources, the challenges of There are other childhood memories. As we new information technologies and the made weekly visits to the eastern suburbs to (undoubtedly vexed) questions of funding and visit relatives, we would come off the Cahill sponsorship. Expressway and drive past those steps. My mother would point to the library and tell my I specialise in Australian media and political brother and I that that was where we would history and biography. My Honours thesis, study when we went to university. Well, we did which was researched almost completely in this both go on to university, and by 1992 I was library, examined how the press portrayed the doing Honours in Modern History at Labor politician Dr H. V. Evatt (who some of Macquarie University. I became a regular at the you may know was for more than two decades State Library, often walking past the sculpture president of the library's board of trustees). I of the hog outside Sydney Hospital that had so subsequently wrote a PhD thesis and then a fascinated me as a child. Over the last decade book on the history of Australian I've conducted a great deal of research in the Consolidated Press, one of Australia's largest State Reference and the Mitchell libraries; and most influential, but little studied, media become a member of the Library Society; empires. Following the publication of The attended conferences and book launches here; House of Packer, I wrote the first full-scale organised my own conference in association biography of the company's co-founder, Sir with the excellent Rosemary Moon; met with Frank Packer, and I am now completing a new publishers, editors, colleagues and friends in the book on the relationship between Australia's café; gone to exhibitions; attended the Friday four major media companies and politicians afternoon meetings of the New South Wales and political parties. Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography held upstairs; and, on one occasion, While ACP celebrates publications such as the visited and become lost in the stacks. Bulletin and the Australian Women's Weekly as Australian icons, there is no in-house archive In his biographical note for this colloquium, or Packer manuscript collection. When, as a John Birmingham referred to the State Library probably rather naive postgraduate student, I as his 'second home', and that is, of course, first considered writing a company history, I

18 LASIE August 2002 put in an ostensibly quite casual call to the Theodore's secretary, before they were lodged ACP library and was informed that the firm's in the National Library of Australia. records had been sent to the State Library. This Incidentally, when one of Theodore's came as something of a shock as I thought I daughters was considering writing a memoir had thoroughly searched all the electronic and and she rang ACP, she was also told that the card catalogues. Feeling that I must have firm's records were housed here! overlooked something very obvious, I excitedly bounced back into the library. At the end of a So while I would not have the luxury of frustrating day, various librarians and I working on an 'Australian Consolidated Press' concluded that all ACP had 'sent' to the State manuscript collection in the Mitchell Library, Library was a run of its principal newspaper the holdings of public and private (non-ACP) and magazine titles. repositories were obviously going to be crucial for a study of the Packer dynasty. Soon after The Packer family is well known for fiercely embarking on the project, I made my way into protecting its privacy, and when I wrote to the archives of the John Fairfax group, for Kerry Packer explaining my interest in the decades ACP's principal rival in Sydney. At history of ACP, his office politely declined to that time – 1993 – Fairfax employed a full- be involved with the project. Only recently, time archivist, and I discovered that the while going through a manuscript collection archives housed a great deal of material – that had just been established here, I came minute books, personnel files, wonderful across a letter written by Richard Walsh, an correspondence and just plain gossip – of ACP executive, in 1993. Lamenting a directive direct relevance to my project. It was here that, from Al Dunlap, the former chief executive still uncertain whether a history of ACP was officer and managing director of ACP, Walsh even viable, I experienced a frisson of wrote: excitement as I saw my first letter written by Frank Packer. I can't remember what the letter You know how much it saddens me that this place was about, but this was the first opportunity I lacks any real sense of history and refuses to had to at least see the Australian Women's archive its records. I guess that kind of incipient Weekly's original letterhead and see how Packer cultural vandalism reached its apotheosis in the signed his name. As my research continued, of Late Great Al's famous memo instructing senior course, I came across many other, more staff to destroy all records that were more than six important, letters written by Packer preserved months old. Fortunately few obeyed, which is in the Fairfax Archives, the Mitchell Library lucky for us legally apart from any other and other repositories around Australia and consideration. overseas.

Early in my research I became very enthusiastic And while my work on the Packer dynasty about working on the papers of Frank Packer's presented particular challenges, there is a business partner, the former Labor politician broader problem with corporate archives. E. G. Theodore. I quickly learned, however, There is no longer an archivist at Fairfax; I that the papers had been culled, apparently by have been able to negotiate some access to the

LASIE August 2002 19 records in recent years, but the situation is It was here in the Mitchell Library that I saw a obviously less than satisfactory for the general rather scurrilous memo suggesting that Frank scholarly community. There is no News Ltd Packer's father, the journalist and editor R. C. archive, although a retired company secretary Packer, was confined to bed with an 'acute who is working on a history of the company contusion of the testicles' after making has managed to preserve a small amount of advances to a young French teacher; a directive material. The minute books of The Herald & from Frank Packer to the editor Donald Horne Weekly Times are not open to outside declaring that a cover of the Bulletin looked researchers and correspondence files do not like a 'mass of after-birth'; a memo from seem to have survived. Research libraries have Horne begging for extra petty cash so the staff a vital role to play in encouraging corporations could buy things like bras for magazine cover to preserve their records and, where possible, models; employees of one magazine taking over the extant records of some complaining that the windows of their companies – I understand the State Library is building had never been cleaned and there was currently engaged in negotiations with Fairfax. no hot water; and an animated letter from a woman journalist speculating about the Public libraries also give researchers access to relationship between Packer and the Irish alternative sources of material. The Mitchell fashion designer Sybil Connolly. Gems like Library and the National Library housed the this, together with items (both intriguing and manuscript collections of several editors, mundane) gleaned from other repositories, journalists and lawyers who worked for ACP. helped me to build up a picture of the life and Between them, the Mitchell Library and the times of ACP and its co-founder, the National Library preserved the collections of parsimonious, volatile and highly the New South Wales and the federal offices of interventionist Frank Packer. Fashioning a the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, and history of an institution or an era or an idea, or there was material in all illuminating how ACP writing a biography of a previously neglected variously championed, supported, angered or subject is, in some respects, like putting frightened politicians and political apparatchiks. together a jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw pieces are The voluminous files of journalists' and uncovered as a result of lateral thinking and printers' unions housed in the Noel Butlin suggestions from experienced librarians whose Archives Centre in Canberra allowed me to knowledge of, passion for and curiosity about explore workplace relations and working the collections in their care are indispensable. conditions at ACP. The records of government Serendipity plays a role, too; gems really can departments in the National Archives of turn up in the unlikeliest of places if you have Australia documented negotiations and disputes the time, and are given the opportunity, to about censorship and newsprint supplies, and browse. the records of individual companies in the Australian Securities and Investments Working on original material in a research Commission and the Australian Stock library induces a sense of excitement and a sort Exchange proved useful, if tricky – and at times of voyeuristic thrill that is difficult to put into rather costly – for the 'lay person' to negotiate. words. A. S. Byatt's superb novel, Possession: A

20 LASIE August 2002 Romance (1990), deals with academic rivalry day. There are moments, such as when I and obsession, and the possession of the observed elderly people pointing excitedly to biographer by his or her subject. One of the cables between Prime Minister John Curtin central characters is Roland Mitchell, a part- and General Douglas Macarthur at an time research assistant working on a major exhibition at Old Parliament House, that I am study of the poet Randolph Henry Ash. reminded that most people don't have the sort Roland is frequently to be found in the same of privileged access to original material that we spot in the Reading Room of the London do. While I don't wish to sound like a talkback Library: radio host, with privilege comes responsibility. As writers of non-fiction, we have a The London Library was Roland's favourite responsibility to represent the thoughts and place. It was shabby but civilised, alive with activities of the individuals and groups we history but inhabited also with living poets and encounter as fairly as possible. To skew the thinkers who could be found squatting on the evidence, to quote material out of context, to not make an attempt to look elsewhere for slotted metal floors of the stacks, or arguing counterbalancing material, would be to betray pleasantly at the turn of the stair. Here Carlyle the people we are writing about. Most of our had come, here George Eliot had progressed subjects are dead, unable to defend themselves. through the bookshelves. Roland saw her black silk skirts, her velvet trains, sweeping compressed For we are, indeed, often dealing with the between the Fathers of the Church, and heard her innermost thoughts and experiences of firm foot ring on metal among the German poets. individuals and groups. Working in libraries Here Randolph Henry Ash had come … there and archives over the years, I have been was a pleasure to be had from reading the amused, delighted, frustrated and moved to sentences Ash had read, touched with his fingers, tears by manuscript material. In the Australian scanned with his eyes. War Memorial the World War I diaries of George Warnecke, who went on to become the It was immediately clear that the book had been founding editor of the Australian Women's undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even Weekly, recorded in harrowing detail his since it had been laid to rest. The librarian experiences in the trenches of France. In letters fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the to a friend in the interwar years, the journalist dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust … and poet Edgar Holt wrote of his almost Roland undid the bindings. The book sprang transformative feelings for his fiancé, who was apart, like a box, disgorging leaf after leaf of living interstate: 'my love for her is the finest faded paper, blue, cream, grey, covered with rusty thing I have yet known in life: greater writing, the brown scratches of a steel nib. emotional experiences I could not wish for'. Roland recognised the handwriting with a shock The letters of another journalist, housed in the of excitement … Mitchell Library, unexpectedly revealed that he and his wife were advocates of voluntary People like Geoffrey Bolton and I become euthanasia. The collection contains a suicide accustomed to reading the writings of note by the journalist to be used if he and his 'important' people on 'important' issues of the wife were found dead.

LASIE August 2002 21 The Mitchell Library actually holds less usually one place, determined either by the original manuscript material of direct nature of the holdings or the proximity to relevance to my current work than does the home or work, that forms a 'second home' and National Library. After countless trips down for me that place is the State Library of New the Federal Highway for week-long research South Wales. Since joining the History raids, I was awarded a Harold White department at the University of Sydney in Fellowship to the National Library in 2000. 1997, I have probably spent more days in the The fellowship gave me an office, access to the library than I have in my own office. Even stacks (where I managed not to get lost) and though other academic commitments and a free photocopying for three months. I spent looming publisher's deadline have recently most of that time working on the manuscript forced me to acquire the services of a research collections of journalists, politicians and assistant, I have resisted dispatching her to political parties and oral history interviews for Macquarie Street as I relish doing research, and my new book on the media and politics in catching up with people, here. Australia. That experience gave me the opportunity to work in a more orderly and Newspapers and magazines are the lifeblood of comprehensive way on the National Library's a media historian, and it is the State Reference collections and to get to know the manuscript Library that I come to to work on periodicals. and oral history staff better and to benefit from Most in-house newspaper libraries operate on their knowledge of their collections. In these a commercial basis, offering to go through and difficult times for universities, with cuts to copy clippings files for clients in return for operating grants and burgeoning class sizes, substantial fees. In-depth press history research collegial morning teas have become a thing of is obviously very time-consuming, particularly the past and even staff clubs are disappearing; as it is often conducted without the assistance I picked up a lot from the enthusiastic and of an index. Press historians working in committed librarians over morning teas. I was research libraries need not only patience, but also, I hope, able to impart something of my enough room to spread out with large volumes knowledge of the particular collections I was and access to efficient microfilm readers and working on when I presented a seminar paper copiers. The importance of the specialist for the staff and then a public lecture at the expertise of librarians cannot be overstated. National Library. Amalgamations and take-overs mean that newspaper titles often change and it can be Unless a 'serious' researcher is fortunate enough confusing to record all previous titles on to have access to a vast in-house repository or computer catalogues or in hard-copy lists of one large and rich central manuscript newspaper holdings. Librarians who have been collection, he or she moves between a working with newspapers for years can often multitude of libraries and public archives and help trace elusive issues, and can advise the holdings in private hands. Research trips to researcher on things like whether the Sunday Canberra and Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, edition of a newspaper is likely to be bound or Singapore and New York, London and Paris, filmed with, or separately from, the daily are common. But for most researchers, there is edition. While it is I suppose desirable for

22 LASIE August 2002 librarians to be trained across a range of fields, As I research individuals for my books or for I do think that a core of experienced, specialist Australian Dictionary of Biography articles, I librarians needs to be maintained in places like check genealogical details in the Family the newspaper section of the State Reference History section of the State Reference Library. Library and, of course, in the Mitchell Library, This is clearly one of the most popular sections with its precious collection of Australiana. of the library, so it has been pleasing to see the area physically enlarged in recent years to As my first two books were about a Sydney accommodate the remarkably enthusiastic and publishing firm, the range of periodicals and dedicated genealogists who come to research books held in this library was particularly there. As I don't visit this section terribly useful. Here I might give a couple of examples. often, I tend to forget exactly how some lists, No interviews, and almost no correspondence, registers and databases work and usually have with Frank Packer's first wife Gretel have to ask the librarian at the information desk for survived. As a result, I had to find other ways assistance. Most of these librarians are very to try to reconstruct her life. By going through helpful, although I do have the impression every issue of Home, a sort of art and society (perhaps wrongly) that they change shifts fairly monthly magazine which was published in often, so maybe longer shifts could be Sydney between 1920 and 1942, I was able to considered to ensure continuity for researchers find scores of references to the activities of the visiting for, say, a morning or an afternoon. beautiful Gretel Packer and her three sisters as they became engaged, got married, went to the The development of the PICMAN database, Easter Show and the Melbourne Cup, watched which lists material from the manuscript and polo, organised charity balls and dined in pictorial collections, has been wonderful for fashionable nightclubs. This research, coupled researchers. Even as a Sydney resident, I find with work in the Ascham School Archives, being able to access the contents lists for entire helped me to re-create Gretel Packer's social milieu in my biography of her husband. I also manuscript collections from my computer at wanted a feel for Sydney's eastern suburbs in work terribly convenient. I use images from the early and middle decades of this century as the Mitchell Library's pictorial collection not the Packer family moved between Point Piper, just for my books, but for journal articles and Darling Point and Bellevue Hill. I have never conference presentations. Jennifer Broomhead been able to find a photo of 'Cairnton', the deals sensibly and considerately with any mansion Frank Packer moved into in Bellevue copyright queries I have about photos in this Hill in the 1930s, although as the family home library (and sometimes elsewhere). When I expanded into what is now invariably was asked to deliver two guest lectures this described as a 'compound' newspapers have week – on the Australian Women's Weekly and taken aerial shots. Work on council rate books the history of television – I raided my files and in the Woollahra Local History Centre and pulled out a handful of magazine images local histories and old photographs and street copied here over the years to make overheads directories held in this library helped enhance for the students. And being able to order in my understanding of life in Bellevue Hill in material in advance from stack over the phone the interwar years. is a great advance. Academics under mounting

LASIE August 2002 23 pressures are, I suspect, finding it increasingly all, he came up with the title of my first book! difficult to visit research libraries in person, Being in something of a rush, I said that my and time is money for independent scholars talk could be entitled 'Confessions of a library and postgraduate students, so the less time user part 2'. But as I thought about this paper, spent waiting for material to appear from stack, I wondered whether 'user' is the best word for or for someone to come upstairs to the photo- what people like us do. As the great cultural copying room to fix a paper jam, the better. studies scholar Raymond Williams would argue, language is important. People who work Difficulties in the Australian tertiary education in libraries certainly aren't, and resent being sector make the role of the research library called, 'clients'; lawyers and travel agents and even more crucial for the researcher. While I prostitutes have clients, doctors have patients, have done absolutely no research into this, my libraries have – what? I think 'readers' or impression, as someone who has been at the 'researchers' suits us best. To be a 'user' university coalface since the late 1980s, is that suggests that you have a one-way relationship less multiple copies of books are being with a library. People who come to work in purchased, more recall notices are being issued libraries, particularly research libraries, are so that students desperately needing books for involved in exchanges of information and their courses can have some access to them, ideas. Library collections aren't really of much books and journals sit longer on trolleys for re- import until they are accessed and something shelving, titles get mishelved more often, and of what they reveal is disseminated to the more photocopiers and microfilm printers wider community in the form of books, carry 'out of service' signs. Most academics journal articles, newspaper articles, public have been asked to nominate journal titles that lectures, university lectures, documentaries should no longer be acquired by their library. and films; a person who works on a All libraries, of course, have to grapple with the manuscript collection for the first time can implications of the slump in the Australian compare its significance with other collections dollar and the proliferation of new in the same library and institutions elsewhere; information technologies, but university a reader can advise library staff if a newspaper libraries do seem to be struggling more than or journal issue is missing; a researcher can give their state and national library counterparts. feedback on changes to a catalogue, make The occasional volume does go astray in the suggestions for subjects for oral history State Library, but at least I know that when I interviews, create personal connections come in here the vast majority of the titles I am between libraries and organisations, and after will appear from stack and most machines encourage individuals and organisations to will be working. lodge their papers with the library. And so, as a State Library reader and researcher, I thank When I was invited to participate in this you for the opportunity to speak here today, colloquium, I learned that Geoffrey Bolton and hope that scholars can continue to work in was calling his presentation 'Confessions of a and with the library in a spirit of cooperation library user'. I thought that sounded rather and collaboration. nice and Geoffrey is good with titles – after

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