Friends Welcome to the Second Edition of the Friends Newsletter for 2010

Fof theriend National Library of Australias June 2010 1 Message from the Chairperson Dear Friends Welcome to the second edition of the Friends Newsletter for 2010. The past three months have been quite busy, with regular Friends’ events such as the Canberra series lecture by eminent architect Dr Enrico Taglietti, and Friends activities such as the ‘Behind the Scenes’ visit to the library at the Australian War Memorial, and the weekend trip to Galong, near Yass. The Friends Book Club and the film group continue their regular meetings. Elizabeth Kennedy There are more exciting events scheduled for later in the year. I am delighted to announce that the Kenneth Myer lecture for 2010 will be given by Maggie Beer, Senior Australian of the Year, restaurateur, cook and providore. For the Friends Celebration towards the end of the year, we will honour the contribution made by Peter Cundall, Australia’s best-known gardener. Perhaps our most significant news, though, is the relocation and refurbishment of the Friends Lounge. As work begins on the Library’s new Treasures Gallery on the ground floor, we will move to a new location on the fourth floor. This is close to the existing Conference Room, but with a magnificent view over Lake Burley Griffin. Our new quarters are accessible by lift, and are about one third larger than the existing ground floor Friends Lounge. We expect the move to be completed at the end of June. A plan of the new Lounge is on display in the current Lounge. The plan shows a better use of space, with discrete areas for the kitchen and a small dining area. It will be possible for different activities to take part at the same time in various parts of the Lounge, without disruption. There will be more desks, and plenty of power points and wi-fi access for those wanting to use their laptops in the Lounge. However, it is not all ‘out with the old, in with the new’. We will retain the beautiful antique bookcase, and most of our existing furniture — refurbished and reupholstered in some cases — in a colour palette that we are told is ‘sympathetic to the Friends style’. Overall, our new quarters will retain the character of our existing Lounge but with more space, and a view. When all is complete and ready to be occupied, we will celebrate with an opening party and I look forward to seeing you there. With best wishes, Elizabeth Kennedy Friends of the National Library of Australia Inc. Canberra ACT 2600 Telephone: 02 6262 1698 Fax: 02 6273 4493 Email: [email protected] 2 People Treasures at the National Library: Jan Fullerton, Director-General (This is the fifth of our series of pen portraits of some of the highly talented and professional staff of the National Library.) Jan Fullerton always wanted to be a librarian. She still remembers the shelf of books at her primary school in rural Queensland that helped shape this early ambition. Jan grew up in Beerwah, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the daughter of pineapple and citrus farmers. She attended the local primary school and then Nambour State High. Jan studied for an Arts degree at the University of Queensland, majoring in history. She followed in the footsteps of her three gifted brothers, all of whom were high academic achievers and, like herself, had won Commonwealth scholarships. Jan’s parents, who did not have the educational opportunities that they provided for their children, were completely supportive of Jan’s educational and career choices. University was an exciting adventure for a young woman from the country. Jan shared a flat with her cousin in the Brisbane suburb of Toowong and enjoyed all the fun and social life that the city had to offer. Jan worked during her holidays picking tobacco, rising at four o’clock every morning. She enjoyed her job and became so good at it that rather than just ‘stringing’ (a job usually reserved for women, involving tying tobacco leaves to sticks), she was engaged as a picker, then a male-dominated activity. Jan, quite unusually for those times, was paid the male wage rate. Upon completing her degree, Jan wrote to a number of libraries inquiring about available positions. The State Library of Queensland advised her to seek admission to the ‘Librarian in Training Program’ at the University of New South Wales, in which students combined academic training with ‘on the job’ experience at a library. Also responding to her letter, the National Library offered her a position, but this was unfortunately too late for her to enrol in the University of NSW training program. Luckily, a National Library participant in the Program dropped out and Jan took their place. Jan started at the National Library on 6 March 1967, initially only working there during the University holidays, beavering away in the basement of the Administrative (now John Gorton) Building. Her first task was accessioning the Onions Collection on English philology. Jan’s next engagement was in the Library’s Film Division (now the National Jan Fullerton at the National Library in Film and Sound Archive), located in Civic, where, in her own words, as ‘a the 1970s raw inexperienced librarian’ at the tender age of 21, she managed 13 staff in the lending section. When the Library moved to its permanent home by Lake Burley Griffin in 1968, Jan occupied an office on the third floor. After a year in the Film Division she moved to the Australian Cataloguing section. Jan recalls that the library staff was incredibly excited about the move to its new home after years of less than optimum, often ramshackle, accommodation. During its early years in the new premises the Library had plenty of unused space which was unlit, and staff moving around the building would carefully pick their way through the lit areas. Many years later, Jan was very proud to be able to participate as Director-General in the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Library building. Friends of the National Library of Australia Inc. Canberra ACT 2600 Telephone: 02 6262 1698 Fax: 02 6273 4493 Email: [email protected] 3 After several years at the Library, Jan sought some overseas experience and in 1973 spent a year in London where she worked in the library of the Department of the Environment. Amongst her many responsibilities at the National Library over the years, Jan played a key role in the development of the Australian National Bibliography 1901–1950, the long-awaited companion to Sir John Ferguson’s Bibliography of Australia 1784–1900. Jan emphasises that this and other major library projects, including the production of an electronic library catalogue, have benefited from the Library’s early insistence on adherence to strict cataloguing rules which facilitated conversion of the records from one medium to another. When her predecessor as Director-General, the late Warren Horton, restructured the Library in the mid 1980s, Jan was appointed General Jan Fullerton 1999 Collections Manager, the responsibilities of which included acquisitions, cataloguing, interlibrary loans, the stacks and reference services. Jan served as Acting Deputy Director-General for 18 months until her appointment as Director-General in August 1999, the first woman to occupy this position. It was a role to which she had never consciously aspired and for which she had not in fact applied. The Selection Committee had asked her to consider the position after an international search had failed to produce a suitable candidate. Jan remembers particularly the support she received from James Bain, then Chairman of the Library’s Council. At the forefront of her ambitions in her new position was her commitment to significantly enhance public access to the Library’s collections. She spelt out her philosophy in this regard in an address in 2003: As a sector we need to look at the services we are providing to our users from the user perspective. We must move away from systems and services that can be used comfortably by library staff but that leave our users mystified and ultimately dependent on the mediation of library staff to find and get information resources. The Library has always been a pacesetter in its use of the Internet and Jan herself was instrumental in the development of digital initiatives at From left to right: Jan Fullerton, Director- the Library, including the establishment in 1995 of the PANDORA archive General and Margy Burn, Assistant and the PictureAustralia service launched in 2000. Under Jan’s leadership, Director-General, Australian Collections the Library has developed a sophisticated web presence that allows its and Reader Services with Rupert Gerritsen using the new e-CallSlip system users, both near and far, to interact with its collections and librarians, in in the Petherick Reading Room ways hitherto unimaginable. The latest innovation is the launch of Trove, the much anticipated single portal for access to the rich digital archives of not only the National Library, but also those of cultural, business and educational organisations and major international digital collections. Another of the major achievements during Jan’s time at the helm was the ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions that have brought to the Library a whole new audience. The 2001 Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries exhibition was a trailblazer in this regard, and the parallel exhibition, National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries, mounted in 2005, was the first to tour each State and Territory. The Library is constantly striving to grow and fill gaps in its acclaimed collections. Jan points to the Patrick White papers, the Ducie First Fleet watercolours and, more recently, the Peter Porter Papers and Marcie Muir children’s book collection, as some of the acquisitions of which she Friends of the National Library of Australia Inc.

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