A tribute to Mary Dent

After a lifetime's contribution to librarianship and local history research in Launceston, Mary Dent passed away on 15 July, and was honoured by family and friends at a ceremony on 19 July.

Mary Dent, 1975

She was born Sheila Mary Wilson on 25 June 1929 in Birmingham in the UK, to parents Alfred (Alf) and Laura (Phyl). When she was less than two years old the family migrated to Tasmania; her sister Margaret was born here in 1932. They lived and farmed near Smithton and North Motton, where Phyl kept a small library for local borrowers.  When the family moved to Launceston, Mary went at first to West Launceston Primary School, then to Broadland House as a boarder during the war years. 

After matriculating, with university not being an option financially, Mary began work at 17 at the Launceston Public Library in the old Mechanics’ Institute building. It was in her first year there that, remarkably, she fulfilled an ambition to learn to fly an aeroplane. The war years had been full of tales of heroes like Guy Gibson and the Dam Busters, and they renewed a popular interest in flight. Mary became one of those enthusiasts, and it took great dedication to follow it through. Her father had to lend her the money required – 10 shillings a time – and Mary had to cycle out to the Tas Aero Club at Western Junction for lessons; in fact it wasn’t until her 40s that Mary actually got her car driving licence. Eventually she passed her solo pilot’s test and flew locally; she remarked later that she followed the railway lines to avoid getting lost on the way home. She entered an Examiner competition for a scholarship for further training as did two other girls, but it was one of the many male applicants who won it.

In her first year at the library, Wal Sutherland, the Assistant Librarian, saw her promise and encouraged her to undertake training at Sydney Public Library. In 1948 it had an associated Library School, so she gained valuable experience in a large city library and training in librarianship. She later reminisced on having a wonderful time, let loose as a youngster to explore the city. Wal had come up to Sydney at one point ostensibly on library business, but was there, she felt sure, also to check up on her. At the end of the year she was awarded a Preliminary Certificate in Librarianship. She returned to work in the Reference section and was appointed Assistant Cataloguer under Thelma Masters. Because her duties involved typing up catalogue cards she was trained in touch typing in Launceston. Unfortunately the time away in Sydney broke her contact with flying, and she never went back to it, though she kept her helmet and goggles, which her grandchildren, in time, wore for dress-ups.

In 1952 she married Bruce Dent, and they bought 40 acres in Underwood. The following year they moved to Geeveston where Bruce had been appointed a Horticultural Extension Officer in the Agriculture Dept. At her departure Wal Sutherland gave her a glowing reference, praising her intelligence and character, as well as her work skills. When Bruce left his job at Geeveston they moved back north to settle on their property in Underwood, where Bruce established a nursery growing apple seedlings for Tamar Valley orchardists. They later diversified into birch seedlings and shrubs and flowers.

They had two daughters, Sarah and Penelope, and in 1960 when the children were still very young, Mary started back at the Launceston Public Library part-time at two days a week. She and the girls would take the school bus to Launceston where the girls went to a crèche in the house which is now a doctor’s surgery in Civic Square, and later to Broadland House. The family also ran a very small general store from an addition to the front of their home in Underwood, and like her mother, Mary started a small library where local residents could borrow books. She was never away from librarianship!

It was shortly after Mary returned to Launceston that Phil Leonard, who had owned a farm in Kenya, came to Tasmania. Well-read and drawn towards librarianship, though without professional qualifications, Phil became a member of staff, beginning as a relief Bookmobile driver in 1962. He studied librarianship part-time alongside his full-time duties, becoming the Reference Librarian in 1967, and on Wal Sutherland’s death in 1970, City Librarian. He was in the role when the old Mechanics’ Institute was pulled down in 1971 and library services were provided in the brand new, purpose-built Northern Regional Library. It is still in current use and now almost 50 years old.

After her initial library training in Sydney, Mary worked under the highly-respected Assistant Librarian, Miss Masters, in the Reference Library, and increasingly moved from cataloguing towards local history. After Miss Master’s death, Mary shared the management of the Local History area with Val Walkem, both part-time.  When the changeover to the new premises occurred they had an office on the Second Floor in a fine blackwood-panelled room with glass-fronted cabinets and a portrait of Sir Richard Dry. It is now the Phil Leonard Room. It became her domain and she was particularly proud of it, especially after her previous dark and dingy quarters in the old Mechanics’. She trained up others in local history to share her role, including Nell Joyce and Dorothy Rosemann. In the later 1970s Mary took on demanding in-service studies through the Australian Library Association and gained her full professional qualifications in 1981. 

Mary in the new Local History Room, 1971

It was in her role in the Local History section that she gave vital support and guidance to history researchers. She put a huge amount of time into maintaining a card index and cuttings files which were the basis of a reference source for many well-known historians, authors and broadcasters such as Dr Clifford Craig, Hawley Stancombe, Jack Branagan, KR von Stieglitz, Max Oldaker, Brian Plomley, Patricia and Eric Ratcliff and Dennis Hodgkinson. She also gave invaluable assistance to many visiting scholars who were drawn to Launceston Library by its rich collection of rare Australian books. Mary particularly remembered the visits of Sir John Ferguson who was compiling his standard reference work on pre-1850 publications, Bibliography of Australia.

In addition to her work in the Library Mary prepared indexes to several important Tasmanian books that until then had lacked them, most notably West's History of Tasmania, Button's Flotsam and Jetsam, and Tasmania's North East by AW Loone. These indexes have been lifesavers to many librarians over the years. She typed some of Clifford Craig’s books, earning his acknowledgment, like this one in 1982: 

I also wish to thank Mr P F Leonard, Librarian of the Northern Regional Library, Launceston, and his staff, particularly Mrs Mary Dent of the Local History Collection. In her professional capacity, she found and described many new prints. In her own time she has typed the manuscript with great care more than once. Indeed she cannot be given enough praise for all that she did in seeing this book to the press.

Mary fiercely defended the local history collection that had been established in the Mechanics’ Institute days of Alex Johnson and Joe Forward. They had a remarkable history of custodianship from 1860 to 1945; in the latter years Thelma Masters carried the banner and passed it to Mary, who valued highly the remarkable collective legacy created by the city, for the city. Phil Leonard, whose leadership was greatly respected by staff and the public, fought tooth and nail to thwart the State Library’s wish that these unique resources be located in Hobart. His tenacity prevailed with Mary acting as guardian on watch. Mary undertook the enormous task of compiling a schedule of the significant items in the Launceston Library whose ownership was to remain vested in the Launceston Corporation after the transfer of library management from the City Council to the State Library of Tasmania in 1974. It was a task which took her two years to complete in addition to her usual duties at the library.

Mary retired in 1988, after giving more than 40 years’ professional service to the Launceston Library. She settled back on the farm at Underwood until 1993, when it was sold and she and Bruce moved to Launceston. In 1994 they moved to The Manor when it was first built. She became its librarian, and continued to help researchers.  She attended the chapel there and was for many years the Secretary of the Residents’ Committee; she was also a member of Probus. She lived at The Manor for the last 27 years of her life, more than half of it after Bruce’s death in 2003.

Mary working with the FOLMI volunteers in 2015. An 'Examiner' photo

In 2013, Mary became a founding member of the Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute. She played a key role in recording the surviving collection of the Institute and indexing its records, giving many hours of voluntary work to the group over the next eight years. Mary's extraordinary memory and her readiness to share her knowledge of the Institute made an invaluable contribution to the work of FOLMI. Through the group’s efforts the nationally significant collection has survived to be conserved in Launceston together with the heritage materials kept in the Local Studies Collection in Launceston Library and the Institute’s records in QVMAG.

From her many friends, colleagues, history researchers and collaborators over two generations Mary will be remembered with great affection. Always direct and clear-sighted, she was loyal to her principles and loyal to the goals of her profession. The fields in which she worked are the richer for her contribution, and Launceston the beneficiary of her dedication to librarianship and local history.

Contributed by Friends of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute

A version of this tribute was published in The Examiner, 17 August, 2021, p10.

Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute

Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute Inc.

Reports presented at the Annual General Meeting, June 8 2018.

President's Report 2017-18

Introduction

It is a privilege to present this report to members on the occasion of our fifth Annual General Meeting. I take this opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved in the past year and to lay out our plans and aspirations for the coming year.

Membership

Membership has remained constant in the past year.  I would like to acknowledge the contributions of our committee members, our hard-working volunteers, and the support of all members, in what has been achieved.

Achievements This Year

As foreshadowed at our last meeting the past twelve months has been a period of consolidation primarily, with a focus on cataloguing and conservation work. Our energies have been largely directed to these ambitious projects which have required large amounts of time and effort.

Our Cataloguing Project has been outstandingly successful and a great credit to the team dedicated to making our collection more accessible. The support of the Plomley Foundation, through its Funding Grant, and under the auspices of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, has been the enabler of the project. But it has been the many hours of voluntary work undertaken by the cataloguers, largely in their own homes, that has made this project such a remarkable success.

Our Conservation Project has operated in parallel with the cataloguing work, and has concentrated on the non-fiction component of the collection. We met the targets we set in our application for funding from the Community Heritage Grants program, and our final report and acquittal was submitted in December, and has been accepted in very complimentary terms by the National Library as administrator of the Grant.  The Grant has set us up with the skills and a very useful inventory of equipment and materials for our ongoing activity in cleaning, treating and preserving the collection. It must be acknowledged however that a great deal remains to be done for us to work through the entire collection.

Other activities have included some additional work on the LMI Records held by Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the ongoing dispersal of out-of-scope books, and incremental progress in developing a better understanding of the collection through research and interpretation.

Promotional Activities

A highlight of this year was our participation in an international conference held by the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, in Hobart last year – "Connecting the Colonies: Empires and Networks in the History of the Book". As an ancillary event to the conference the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) and the Friends of Launceston Mechanics' Institute (FOLMI) offered attendees a tour of their respective library collections on the Saturday afternoon following the conference, 25 November. We were honoured to host an illustrious group of academics and researchers from around the world for the tour, to hear their responses to the collection, and to explore its research potential with them.

We have curated a new exhibition on the Bell's Poets set of 109 volumes which has recently been placed on display in the foyer of the University of Tasmania's Launceston Campus Library.

Our online presence has continued in terms of content and reach, albeit at a slower rate than the previous year. Visits to our blog numbered around 6000 in the past year. Facebook and Flickr pages continue to attract followers. We have expanded our contribution to TROVE by developing lists on their site of digital content relating to the LMI and including a TROVE search facility on our web site which links directly to our collection.

Our very supportive friends at Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria have continued to promote our activities through their newsletter and more widely.

We have explored interesting linkages between our respective Institutes with a member of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and look forward to a visit from Jane Sparrow-Niang in November.

The Year Ahead

The Cataloguing project will be completed by the end of 2018, and a concerted effort will be needed to progress the work of the Conservation Team. This will become our priority task for the coming year.

Additionally we intend to complete the reorganisation of the LMI Records and produce a guide to them.

An invitation has been received from the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand for us to submit a proposal for a publication relating to aspects of our collection. A proposal will be developed in the near future as this would be a valuable opportunity to engage with a group of specialist researchers.

We will of course continue the search for a permanent home for the collection – this being the greatest challenge we face as an organisation.

Acknowledgements

Firstly I want to record my thanks to the University Library staff, and in particular to Wendy Hoyle, the Campus Librarian and acting University Librarian, and Prue Senior, Senior Client Services Officer, for their ongoing support, advocacy and interest in our project.

I also want to acknowledge the National Library and thank their Community Heritage Grant team for their contribution. This is an outstanding scheme, exceptionally well-organised and very supportive of grant recipients. With their support we have been able to take an accelerated path through their carefully staged grants process, completing what is usually a six-year program in just three years.

I also thank the management and staff of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston LINC and the State Library of Tasmania, for their ongoing assistance and support. We are particularly indebted to the Plomley Foundation for their financial support of our cataloguing project.

Peter Richardson, President, 8 June, 2018

PROJECT REPORTS

Conservation Group

Much of the work done over the 2017-18 year was done in the convivial (and warm) domain of the welcoming Ross Smith at QVMAG. There were up to six members of the Group at a time on Friday afternoons beavering away at constructing phase boxes and 4-flap folders, creating Mylar covers and encasing books in boards tied with tape. With practice, especially by the teams dedicated to specific kinds of construction, we became more adept at measuring, bending & cutting, wielding bone folders and Stanley knives, and turning out presentable and effectively conserved books, each with its own appropriate treatment. 

The primary step for the conservation of all items was cleaning. This, and the follow-up treatment for mould and red rot, were conducted in D007 at UTAS observing the health and safety parameters demonstrated by Noni Zachri in her training workshop in February 2017. After treatment, books were placed back on the shelves in Dewey order, working backwards from 999. We’re presently into C20th British History in the 940s. It’s fairly careful and repetitive work, and it’s not surprising that progress has been slow in 2018 with fewer members able to attend working bees or come in independently. 

The numbers of books so far treated are:                                            

Cleaning: 1095                   

Mylar sleeves: 63                             

Clarkson wrappers: 28                                            

Boards & tape: 89   

Red rot: 64                                   

Mould: 20                                                          

These cleaned and treated books represent about 11/3 rows, shelved at the back of D007.

I’d like to thank all members contributing time to the project, and to make particular mention of Julieanne Richards who has cycled out to the Uni on many occasions to work alone.

If we’re to make much headway in this really time-consuming task we’re going to have to re-invigorate the way we tackle the project. I’d welcome any suggestions.

Facebook Page

It has been a quiet year. Sue McClarron has put in 6 posts, including links to specific FOLMI blogs, articles in the Examiner and items of general interest. There are now 64 followers, double the number of last year. Sue invites comments and stories from all members of FOLMI.

Displays

We’ve mounted three displays. The first was on Charles Darwin, of which the LMI had a rich, varied and at times humorous collection of holdings. It was mounted both at the LINC and the UTAS Library in the handsome display case made by Toby Mitchell.

The second is presently on the 2nd Floor of the newly-renamed Library; it commemorates the 100th  anniversary of the final year of World War 1 from a perspective made possible by the rather tattered and well-thumbed books and periodicals now surviving from the original Mechanics’ Institute collection of that time.

The third, recently mounted in the UTAS Library, displays the 109 miniature volumes of Bell’s Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, published in London between 1776 and 1784. Our set has first, second and later editions of the works, all produced between 1778 and 1788, and was purchased for the LMI in 1843. Our set had earlier been owned by Joseph William Wright, as the original bookplates show.

Report from the Cataloguing Group 

This time last year the Cataloguing group was coming to the end of doing the Non-Fiction books in the LMI Collection. There were about 7000 titles in that area of the collection.

Since the Non-Fiction was finished we have been working away at the pre-1914 Fiction collection and to date have added 4420 books.

Our Trove total now is 11,219 titles.

There have been some unusual titles along the way: ‘The garden of resurrection: being the love story of an ugly man’, ‘Winning a wife in Australia – a story drawn from actual experiences’,  ‘The shady side, or life in a country parsonage’ and ‘Queer chums: a narrative of a midshipman’s adventures’. There have also been many, many melodramatic endings and illustrations!

Progress has been hampered by illness and other commitments of members of the group. Dorothy Rosemann has had several stays in hospital but is back doing cataloguing now. Di Worth broke her ankle badly and is slowly recovering. She is our expert cataloguer and does those books that aren’t as straightforward or can’t be found on the two databases the rest of us have access to.

We thought we were nearly at the end of the Victorian and Edwardian fiction – those dated up to 1914, but the a check of the list of books catalogued by the state library in that category in the 1990’s shows there are many books unaccounted for. Some of these may be in Launceston’s Local Studies collection or in the Phil Leonard Room, or in Hobart. We will follow this up when all the books we have in our possession at present are all added to the Libraries Australia database

We have found that about 11% of the books are not originally part of the collection but have been added later, probably for safe-keeping. Some of these were from Longford Library and have been given to QVMAG for their collection, as have some of the others which were originally school or Sunday school prizes. Many of the remainder have been given to Friends of the Library for their annual Book Sale.

We still have the fiction from 1914-1945 to be added to the database. This will bring both fiction and non fiction up to 1945. Some members are working on creating a spreadsheet for the cataloguers to use when adding this group of books to Libraries Australia, so that we keep our own record of what we have added.

We are grateful that the Plomley Foundation has agreed to us using part of the grant money to extend our subscription to Libraries Australia for another year and we hope this will be sufficient for us to finish our task.

We are able to do our work by taking boxes home from D007, working on the books and then returning them to the great stack at the southern end of D007. There’s quite a lot of hefting boxes around but it is very convenient to do it in this way.

Hundreds of hours have been expended in this task and I thank the members of the group for their continued support and hard work.

Prue McCausland

Our New Display Case

Introducing the latest addition to our collection, a display case designed to house travelling exhibitions featuring the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection and the activities of FOLMI.

Our commission was beautifully executed by Tony Mitchell of TJM Woodturning and Joinery who cleverly married a secure perspex display case with an old cedar table frame to produce this very attractive and easily moved unit.

We are most grateful to Arts Tasmania, and particularly the Lynne Stacpoole Caring for Your Collection program, for their financial support.

Watch out for our display at Launceston LINC in 2016.


Prior to 1891 the Launceston Mechanics' Institute also maintained a museum collection. The illustration below, a detail from a drawing by William Charpentier held in the QVMAG collection, shows one of the Institute's original display cases. It would be fascinating to discover the identity of the figure seen squatting in front of the exhibit.

Community Heritage Grant 2015

I am pleased to advise that we have been successful in our application for a grant of $6127 to undertake a Preservation Needs Assessment of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection. 

This year's round of Community Heritage Grants were announced in Canberra last night and a full list may be viewed at;
https://www.nla.gov.au/chg/community-heritage-grants-recipients-2015

The National Library's media release may be found at;
https://www.nla.gov.au/media-releases/2015/10/26/community-heritage-grants-awarded

Tasmanian supporters will be pleased to see that it was a bumper year for the state with a total of seven grants awarded to Tasmanian organisations.

 

NLA's wonderful Community Heritage Grants program has funded 338 preservation needs assessments (PNA)s, (previously called preservation surveys). In each case, an external consultant was appointed to conduct the PNA. The aim of a PNA is to look at the physical condition of a collection, the suitability of current housing and storage facilities and to make recommendations for the development of a conservation program.

 

Negotiations are under way with an exceptionally well-qualified consultant to undertake the Preservation Needs Assessment on our behalf, including a site visit before the end of the year.

Peter Richardson
President
FOLMI

President's Report 2014-15

Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute Inc.

President's Report 2014-15

Introduction

It is a privilege to present this report to members on the occasion of our second Annual General Meeting. I take this opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved in the past year and to lay out our plans and aspirations for the coming year.

This group was formed at a public meeting on 18 October 2013. The group had its ownership of a major part of the LMI Collection confirmed by a Launceston City Council resolution in November 2013, and began to take delivery of the collection early in 2014. Since our last AGM that process has been completed and we now have approximately 22,000 volumes in our collection.

One of the goals adopted by that meeting were to establish and maintain a working research Launceston Mechanics’ Institute Collection, by:

1. Locating, selecting, organising, cataloguing and preserving existing materials once the property of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute between 1842 and 1929;

Since adopting those goals, and in the light of further research, the closing date for the collection has been revised to 1945, the year in which Launceston City Council assumed responsibility for library services in the city.

Membership

FOLMI currently has over 60 members, and membership continues to grow as supporters are made aware of our activities.

Achievements This Year

Reviewing the goals set out at last year's AGM it is pleasing to see that we achieved all that we set out to achieve and more. As foreshadowed we:

•             Produced an electronic version of the LMI Accession Registers.

•             made substantial progress in recording all Launceston Mechanics' Institute items still held in the State Library of Tasmania's reference and heritage collections and in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery's collections.

•             started work on producing an inventory and photographic record of all surviving objects associated with the Institute, but will only be able to complete this when renovations at Launceston LINC are finished.

•             scoped a cataloguing project with Libraries Australia and TROVE, developed a budget to undertake this work and established a group of five volunteer librarians who are willing to undertake the copy cataloguing project.

•             Investigated local options for a permanent home for the collection.

By far the most important achievement in the past year has been the completion of the Significance Assessment process and the receipt of Dr Susan Marsden's final report which will be formally tabled at this meeting.

Dr Marsden's assessment has confirmed our belief in the importance and value of saving the collection in the strongest possible terms.

This significance assessment has confirmed that the size, quality, scope age and provenance of the LMI collection places its importance equal to or above any similar collection in Australia, and hence its national significance. The LMI Collection is not only the most substantial and comprehensive Institute library to have survived in an Australian regional centre from before 1850, but appears to be the most substantial and comprehensive library collection to have survived from the entire period of the flourishing of mechanics institutes in Australia, between the 1840s and the 1940s.

Based on the Report we have made further applications to the Community Heritage Grant program for;

1.            A Preservation Needs Assessment

2.            Cataloguing the collection and adding it to the National Bibliographic Database and TROVE.

During the year we also received a Grant of $1000 from Arts Tasmania from the Lynn Stacpoole 'Caring for Your Collection' scheme, for the purchase of a display cabinet.

In terms of energy expended the biggest task undertaken this year has been the recording of all of the uncatalogued books in the non-fiction and popular fiction collections. We have had a dedicated team of eighteen volunteers working on this project and they have recorded over 12,000 items which will facilitate the cataloguing of the collection when the time comes.

It has also been exciting to see our online presence growing, both in terms of content and usage. The blog now has 59 posts and has received nearly 6000 visits, our Flickr site has been expanded to seven albums and is even more heavily used, and we have a Facebook presence thanks to Sue and Emily McClarron. All of this activity increases our outreach and awareness of the project locally, nationally and globally.

We have made substantial progress in creating electronic archives of the Institute's Annual Reports and Printed Catalogues, which has greatly increased our understanding of both the Institution and its Library Collection.

Individual members have undertaken research projects of enormous long-term value, including Dorothy Rosemann who has spent many hours at QVMAG working through the Institute records to record the role played by women in the Institute, Sue McClarron who has researched the history and many changes in the way the library collection was organised, and Anna Lynde who has identified and recorded a substantial collection of books by the intrepid lady travellers and explorers of the nineteenth century.

We have also worked with QVMAG to establish and reassemble their collections of the surviving books from many smaller libraries in the region, most notably those of Evandale, Longford and Deloraine.

The Coming Year

The central priority in the coming year must be to support the two major projects (if funded) of completing a Preservation Needs Assessment and managing the cataloguing project. We were able to manage the Significance Assessment process very effectively and learnt a lot in the process. That we were able to complete that project on budget and eight months ahead of the deadline should give both FOLMI and the Community Heritage Grants team confidence in our capacity to deliver.

We will also use this year to build our network of support in the community and to reach out to communities of interest, especially academic research projects who could benefit from access to the collection (e.g. University of Sydney, Librarianship students). Our Significance Assessment Report offers a strong foundation for publicising the collection in the local community and we are working on a plan to achieve this.

Through the coming winter we will be working with the staff at QVMAG to reorganise the Institute's records into a more user friendly archive.

Acknowledgements

In conclusion I acknowledge the contributions of our committee members, our hard-working volunteers, and the support of all members, in what has been achieved to date.

I take this opportunity to record my gratitude to Dr Susan Marsden for the thorough, professional and timely completion of her report. It was everything we could have hoped for and more, and a most cordial and productive collaboration. We were indeed fortunate that someone of Susan's calibre was willing to undertake the brief.

I also thank those members and supporters who met with Dr Marsden, gave their time to supporting her site visit, and provided input to the report.

I also want to acknowledge the National Library and thank their Community Heritage Grant team for their contribution. This is an outstanding scheme, exceptionally well-organised and very supportive of grant recipients.

I thank the management and staff of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston LINC and the State Library of Tasmania, for their ongoing assistance and support.

And again I thank the members of Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc. for their advice, guidance and their enthusiastic support this past year.

Peter Richardson, President, 22 May 2015

FOLMI Newsletter No. 3

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Friends of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute is holding its AGM on 22 May 2015 at 5:30pm in the Adult Education Buildings, 8 High St.  Everyone interested in FOLMI’s activities is welcome. The agenda has the necessary and customary items, beginning with confirmation of last year’s minutes, then:                                                          

• President’s Report; 

• Treasurer’s Report, which will be followed by a motion that, because of the small amounts of money handled by the association, we will avoid the cost of auditing (currently about $600+) by taking up the Dept. of Consumer Affairs & Fair Trading offer to apply for exemption from audit;                             

•  Election of officers and committee (all of those currently holding positions are willing to continue, but of course new nominations are encouraged and will be called for on the evening);                             

•  Setting of annual membership fee – currently $0; there are no plans to change this;               

•  Any further business.

There will be a less formal meeting and general discussion afterwards to talk about the events of the last year, answer questions and plan for the coming year, especially major projects.

SIGNIFICANCE ASSESSMENT

Well, we couldn’t have asked for more from our CHG-funded Significance Assessment of the LMI Collection.  Dr Susan Marsden of Adelaide was really enthusiastic about the Collection, spent several days looking over it and meeting with members and staff at QVMAG and Launceston LINC before writing a VERY commendatory report. It came in time for us to continue with the CHG round of 2015 applications outlined below. We’re planning to print off a dozen copies of the 44 page report to present to Council. LINC and others interested in the fate of the collection, as well as keep a copy for reference in D007 at UTAS.

You can access an electronic copy of the report, plus its appendices, via the FOLMI blog at: http://launcestonmechanicsinstitute.blogspot.com.au/.  We will have a copy at the AGM on 22 May.

Dr Marsden made quite a few recommendations to preserve and promote the collection, including:

•             establish a suitable permanent home in Launceston, with public access to it;

•             continue cataloguing and digitising of items;

•             develop projects (such as work on assessing items) and training programs for volunteers;

•             increase public knowledge and use of the Collection as a whole, as well as of the most significant items;

•             offer non LMI books to QVMAG;

•             negotiate with LINC to restore the Australian and Tasmanian titles and related publications to the LMI Collection [now that’s ambitious!];

•             use her significance assessment (SA) as a planning document.

One of the most useful aspects of a successful significance assessment is that it allows us to make further applications for support for our work, especially in asking the Community Heritage Grants scheme to fund a Preservation Needs Assessment – in fact it seems that such a step is almost guaranteed by the scheme.  As well we’re looking for support for cataloguing the collection, and applications for both projects went in to CHG on 3 May.  Again there’ll be a long wait to find out what we’ll get, and it won’t be until November 2015 that we’ll have official notice of getting a preservation needs assessment (budgeted at $6,127) and perhaps funding for cataloguing training and registration costs with Libraries Australia (budgeted at $6,370, with opportunities for five members who are qualified librarians to receive specialist training in this form of cataloguing).

BLOG 

The latest information on our blog has some great new items posted by Dorothy Rosemann and Peter Richardson, including:

•  a deal brokered in 1920 between the Commonwealth Parliament librarian Arthur Wadsworth and the LMI librarian Joseph Forward to obtain a complete set of the Historical Records of Australia – the only ones to be found outside a capital city;

• Anthony Trollope’s works in the LMI fiction collection and the famous author’s visit to Tasmania; and

•  publications by the Institute, especially in the C19th.

FACEBOOK

Sue and Emily McClarron have set up a Facebook account.  It’s an even more immediate means of keeping up with news and members’ interests. Its most recent pages  are on the Brindley organ (to mark Mothers Day 10 May); a 1917 children’s book The Young ANZACs; Anthony Trollope’s 200th anniversary; and an ABC OPEN posting of St John St as it might be now if the 1971 demolition of the Mechanics’ Institute hadn’t occurred.  The Facebook address is: https://www.facebook.com/launcestonmechanicsinstitute

RECENT AND CURRENT PROJECTS

Inventory of nonfiction – Some sixteen members of FOLMI have been involved in compiling an inventory of the nonfiction books shelved in D007 at UTAS. They worked from November 2014 to April this year, usually in teams of two, to record in long-hand the publication and accession details of approximately 8000 titles.  The recording sheets are filed in ring binders kept on the northern wall of D007.                                                                                                                                                          Creating an inventory has been a most important step in the long-term task of cataloguing the collection as a whole. We can use it to check via Trove which items are held elsewhere in Australia; where that’s the case, we can access full publication and physical details of these books.  It will be a great saving in time in cataloguing, as we can merely indicate in the National Union Catalogue that we hold a copy, and to extract those details for use in our own collection catalogue. It also gives us an opportunity to add LMI Collection titles that aren’t held elsewhere in Australian public collections onto the Australian National Bibliographic Database.

Inventory of popular fiction – Two of the inventory teams have continued to record details of the Victorian & Edwardian Fiction Collection inherited from Launceston LINC. The State Library back in the early 1990s created a catalogue for the fiction up to 1914, but it had a number of limitations.  It included quite a few books published before 1914 but had never been in the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute collection; they came from donations from the public or other libraries all over Tasmania, and seem just to have been included on the Stack shelves in Launceston because they were of a similar venerable age. Also, as we’ve learnt that the LMI certainly still existed partly under that name until 1929, and until 1945 administered by the once-LMI Board, any items transferred to the State Library in 1945 as part of the collection as it existed then we now consider as part of our collection.  

So some members have been separating out books that were never owned by the LMI and adding in the ones after 1914 that were, and the recording teams have continued filling out inventory sheets for them to include with the nonfiction when the big copy-cataloguing task begins. Quite a few of the weeded books, like those from Evandale Subscription Library, Longford, Deloraine and other local libraries, and those presented as Sunday School Prizes, will go to QVMAG, who are adding considerably to their holdings of books with regional affiliations.  Others, like those from Ouse, Green Ponds, Port Esperance and Bushy Park have been offered to local history groups elsewhere in the state who’ve shown strong interest in recovering items that offer insights into their past. It’s hoped that this part of the cataloguing project will be finished and reported on at the 22 May AGM.

Lady travellers – Anna Lynde has been compiling a bibliography of works in our collection by intrepid lady travellers and explorers of the nineteenth century. This was clearly a subject of great interest to LMI members.

Catalogues published by the LMI - Sue McClarron has been analysing the many printed catalogues produced by the Institute for the convenience of members. Sue is looking at the ways the collection was organised and how it evolved over time.

Women’s roles and contributions to the LMI – Dorothy Rosemann has been working through the Institute's records now held at QVMAG, recording the level of membership and involvement of women in the Institute.

Flickr project – Peter Richardson has developed an extensive online collection and exhibition of Institute bookplates, binders' tickets, booksellers' stamps and other ephemera found in the LMI books at https://www.flickr.com/photos/launcestonmechanicsinstitute/

FUTURE PROJECTS

It’s our hope that discussion and the Q&A session after the AGM on the 22nd will open up new avenues for members to initiate projects and to indicate their interest in participating in those that are suggested.  Come along and join in!

Mike McCausland

Secretary, FOLMI