Significance of the Legacy Collection

Significance of the LMI Legacy Collection

Locally

In terms of its significance to local historians, the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute was clearly of central importance to the Northern Tasmanian community, and those parts of the legacy collection now professionally maintained as part of larger working collections by LINC Tasmania, Launceston LINC and QVMAG are widely recognised and used as a valuable resource.  As much of the collection, however, is not generally accessible its significance is largely unknown. The recent valuation placed upon one part, the nonfiction lending collection, by Mitchell Librarian Alan Ventress was a consideration primarily of its commercial value, not the potential it has for local historians if it is integrated within the whole LMI legacy collection. 

Nationally

It has been pointed out earlier that Munn and Pitt in their Australia-wide survey in 1934 thought the only comparable mechanics’ institute collection was in Ballarat, and that Launceston’s MI was strongest in nonfiction and reference.  It was the national uniqueness of the popular fiction component, however, that caught the attention of Stephen Murray-Smith; once it was catalogued that opinion was more generally endorsed. It is now possible for researchers to access titles held nowhere else in Australian public collections. In a recent assessment of the collection Alan Ventress excepted the popular fiction from his disparagement of materials in stack on the basis that it was catalogued and known more widely.

Preliminary comparisons of the LMI’s legacy with other rural centre’s collections suggest that it is indeed highly significant nationally.  It would need those familiar with other collections to review the Launceston materials to pursue the question.