Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute

 We invite you to a meeting to form FOLMI

You are cordially invited to a meeting to inaugurate an incorporated volunteer community group, Friends of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute Inc. The meeting will be held on 18 October 2013 at 5pm in the Phil Leonard Room of Launceston LINC.

The goal of the new incorporated association is to establish and maintain a working research Launceston Mechanics’ Institute Collection.  More specifically this will entail: 

i) locating, selecting, organising, cataloguing and preserving existing materials once the property of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute between 1842 and 1929; 

ii) liaising with local, state and national government and professional agencies and with relevant interest groups to promote the significance of the LMI Collection; 

iii) establishing a permanent home for the LMI Collection, in particular those parts not integrated with local and state government collections;
iv) providing broad public access to the catalogue of the LMI Collection and enabling direct access to researchers needing to use the Collection.

Six months ago it appeared that over half of the once-LMI Collection, about 12,000 nonfiction books, might be disposed of, so Friends of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute (FOLMI) was formed to muster support for retaining all extant LMI materials.  Recently the Launceston City Council and LINC Tasmania have been in discussion about ways of retaining the whole collection, but it is dependent on there being an incorporated body to take responsibility for the parts of the collection not lodged in the working collections of QVMAG or Launceston LINC.

At the 18 October meeting FOLMI will adopt its constitution in a form allowing for incorporation.  This means appointing a public officer and office bearers (there are volunteers already prepared to take on these roles) and accepting the standard Rules for Associations governing meeting procedure, financial probity etc. required by the Office of Consumer Affairs and Fair Trading.

The founders of FOLMI wish to welcome new members into this foundation group and to invite interest groups such as historical societies and other ‘Friends of’ groups to indicate their support for retaining the LMI Collection. Most welcome of all, of course, are those who may be able to participate in the archival work to be undertaken from January next year in unpacking boxes of LMI books, sorting, and later cataloguing them.

If you are interested in being involved in FOLMI, please contact either of us, and come along to the meeting on 18 October at 5pm in the Phil Leonard Room.

If you are unable to attend but would like be involved in FOLMI please let us know prior to the meeting.

If you know of others who might be interested in this project we would be most grateful if you would pass on this invitation.

Peter Richardson

Mike McCausland

launcestonmechanicsinstitute@gmail.com

Events at the Institute

The Mechanics' Institute was of course much more than a Library. It was a social and educational hub for the community hosting a busy programme of lectures, concerts, entertainments and exhibitions.
Here is a selection of entry tickets to events held at the Launceston Mechanics' Institute.

The first is of particular historical significance as it marks the initial public appearance in Tasmania of Frederick Matthias Alexander (born at Wynyard, Tas in 1869) following his move to Melbourne in 1889. The subsequent career of F M as the originator and teacher of the Alexander Technique in England and the United States was followed with great interest by Tasmanians.

 Alexander's recital was previewed by the Launceston Examiner as follows;

ELOCUTIONARY ENTERTAINMENT. - Mr F. M. Alexander, an elocutionist who comes to us with good testimonials from Melbourne, will make his initial bow to a Launceston audience at the Mechanics' Institute on Thursday evening. The entertainment will be given under the auspices of the Mechanics' Institute committee, and as an interest in the very necessary but lamentably neglected art of voice culture has been aroused in our midst of late, there should be a satisfactory attendance. Mr Alexander was a pupil of Mr Hill, and carried off first prize in a recent elocutionary competition in Melbourne. His tutor is a son of the late Mr T. H. Hill, author of that well-known work "Hill's Oratorical Trainer," and probably the best teacher of elocution we have had in Australia. On Thursday evening Mr Alexander will present to his audience the choicest selections from his extensive repertoire, the majority of the items being new to Launcestonians. He will be assisted by several of our best known musicians, and altogether an enjoyable programme may be looked forward to. The press notices Mr Alexander has received from the Melbourne papers are most favourable. Should sufficient inducement offer the probabilities are that he will make a sojourn in this city. (Launceston Examiner, 7 May 1894, p5)

A SELECTION OF OTHER EVENTS HELD AT THE INSTITUTE

MIV Newsletter No.32 - Winter-Spring 2013

The latest issue of Useful Knowledge, the newsletter of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc., is now available. The newsletter features a two-page article headed "Launceston Mechanics' Institute's nationally significant remnant book collection".

The illustrated article charts the development and survival of this remarkable collection, and highlights the opportunities for serious research afforded by its preservation.

MIV Inc. was formed in 1998. It aims to foster the preservation and restoration of the social, cultural and physical heritage of Mechanics' Institutes through the development of information exchanges and systems of mutual support.

Membership is open to groups and individuals with an interest in the MI movement, particularly in Victoria.

Since its formation MIV has:

• Staged the first National Mechanics' Institutes Conference in Melbourne in 2000 and published its proceedings.

•  Facilitated the publishing of the 350 page book If the Walls Could Speak: A Social History of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria.

•  Assisted the publication of The Libraries of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria.

•   Secured a round of Government grants for some of Victoria's MIs.

•   Produced two Travelling Exhibitions Remember the Mechanics? and Mechanics'... And Proud of it!

•  Staged Regional Meetings in country Victoria.

• Established a Mechanics' Institutes Resources Centre (MIRC) and database at Prahran MI.

•  Staged the First International Conference Mechanics' Worldwide in September 2004.

•  Launched MIV's Historical Plaques Program in 2003 have to date issued over 30 plaques statewide.

To discover more about Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc. and to obtain a copy of the newsletter visit their website at; http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mivic/index.htm

Other Mechanics' Institutes in Tasmania

In addition to the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, and the less successful Hobart Institute (1827-1871), institutes were established in many smaller Tasmanian centres.

Stefan Petrow has identified Mechanics' Institutes at Franklin, Huon, Don, Waratah, Port Esperance, Ellesmere (later Scottsdale), Emu Bay, Ringarooma and Queenstown. The word 'mechanics' did not form part of the name of the Bellerive, Campbell Town, Devon, Glenora, Green Ponds, Hamilton-on-Forth, Lefroy, Oatlands, Sorell, Stanley and Wynyard institutes, but they had similar aims to mechanics' institutes.

Related but short-lived societies included the Tasmanian Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Launceston, 1831), the Tasmanian Society for the Acquisition of Useful Knowledge (Hobart Town, 1845), and the Mechanics' School of Arts (Hobart Town, 1850).(1)

Two collections which have survived in part are those of the Bothwell Literary Society (founded 1834) and the Evandale Subscription Library (1847).

(1) The Companion to Tasmanian History (Hobart, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, 2005), p232.

What happened to many Institute libraries in Australia?

Geoffrey Burkhardt contributed a very interesting article on the collections of Mechanics' Institute libraries to the Book Collectors of Australia blog in September 2011. This extract from his article demonstrates the vulnerability of Institute legacy collections;

The demise of the Schools of Arts and Mechanics’ Institutes from the 1930s onwards was largely due to the rise of the movement for the establishment, by local government councils and municipalities, of free local and regional public lending libraries in Australian towns and suburbs. This development, together with the discontinuation of state government subsidies to the institutes, led to the closing down of many country district institutes, whose halls reverted to local government ownership and management in many cases. With the exception of some of the large state capital institutes, mentioned above, and a few surviving country institutes, many institute book stocks were subsumed into the local municipal public library. This was the case with the libraries of the Queanbeyan School of Arts and the Goulburn Mechanics’ Institute which in the 1940s became part of the Queanbeyan Public Library, and Goulburn Regional Library respectively.

It is now hard to find many of these former institute library books in these public library collections today, as repeated weeding of public library stocks of “old” and seldom borrowed books has resulted in the discarding of most of the former institute stock.

With many smaller institute libraries, the books were simply thrown out due to lack of use and interest, or sold off to local secondhand dealers, or local citizens. An example of this was the sad case of the sometime esteemed library of the Braidwood Literary Institute. The remaining library books were given to a local service club for a huge “white elephant” auction held in 1971. I attended this sale, where many boxes of books containing many rare and scarce items of Australiana were auctioned off at $5 and $10 per box, until all the Institute’s library books were disposed of. Other institute libraries, such as the Grafton School of Arts Library, in store at South Grafton, were destroyed in a flood that struck the town in the 1960s. The institute library at Cathcart was damaged beyond recovery when a roof guttering overflowed, discharging torrents of water into the library reading room and down all the shelving, soaking all the books. Other libraries were destroyed in earlier decades by fire when local institute halls were burnt down during bush fires, or through unfortunate accident.

Although the large majority of book collections once held in the libraries of Schools of Arts and Mechanics’ Institutes have long been dispersed or destroyed, the few original libraries which have survived and been preserved may be regarded as valuable historical artefacts and sources for the study of the Australian bibliographic history.

Burckhardt, Geoffrey, The Libraries of Schools of Arts and Mechanics' Institutes: Time capsules of Australian Book Collections, http://bookcollectorsaustralia.wordpress.com/, September 8, 2011. 

A Collection of "National Significance"

An assessment of the importance of the LMI collection by Professor Wallace Kirsop

I was first introduced to the LMI collection by Phil Leonard in February 1973. At the time I marvelled at the fiction. I am glad that it has been properly recognized as an indispensable national resource. Since 1973 I have had a good deal to do with mechanics' institute libraries, not least through my role in Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc.
 

1. The Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection, despite all its vicissitudes, is clearly the most substantial one to have survived in a regional centre from before 1850. Indeed Adelaide is the only other one of comparable longevity and it is, of course, metropolitan. Ballarat and to a lesser extent Bendigo offer collections of impressive scope begun in the second half of the nineteenth century. Consequently Launceston has claims to be unique, and its collection is vital in my view to the heritage of the whole country. After all we have lost the holdings of older institutes in Hobart, Sydney and Melbourne, not to mention Geelong. In short Launceston is a special case of national significance. 

2. If -- and it is an eventuality I view with dismay -- the non-fiction part of the Launceston collection is discarded, every item should be examined and recorded for evidence of provenance (London and colonial booksellers, earlier local collections -- public and private -- etc.). The work is of such potential importance that I am prepared to volunteer to help in it.

Wallace Kirsop: Adjunct Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University; Honorary Fellow, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne; Editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies, 1968-2002; first President of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1969-1973; sometime Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge, 1980-1981.

The Future of the LMI Legacy Collection

A brief statement concerning the future of the LMI Legacy Collection

1. In terms of significance of the LMI holdings in comparison with other remaining Mechanics' Institute collections in Australia, it appears that the LMI holdings are one of only two such highly valued large collections, the other being the Adelaide Circulating Library Collection housed in the South Australian State Library. But the largely intact Launceston MI Library Collection is dated from the 1840's when the other significant Mechanics' Institute Library Collections remaining in Australia date, at least from the 1850's. Surely this renders the Launceston Collection as highly significant?

This typical Mechanics' Institute Library Collection is very special indeed in a national context as  the earliest  entire and complex literary remnant of the influential Mechanics' Institute Libraries Movement , which flourished all over Australia. Collections such as these form the basis upon which our present public library  and technical education systems were based and are an essential narrative to the understanding of our cultural, educational, literary and early European settlement in Australia.

2. I feel strongly that parts of this collection not be sold, that the collection be catalogued and assessed and that ultimately the collection be retained in total as a discrete collection. It is of utmost importance that it remains and is cared for as an invaluable unique and important Tasmanian as well as Australian cultural heritage.

Pam Baragwanath.

Author: If the Walls Could Speak: a social history of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria, 2000. (Currently being revised for publication in 2014.)