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NLA News - home March 2006 Volume XVI Number 6

For the Love of Libraries

click to enlarge
Max Dupain (1911–1992 )
Portrait of Harrison Bryan 1985
b&w photograph; 5.8x3.8 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an22842705

Edgar Crook pays tribute to a
former director-general of the
National Library, Harrison Bryan

It is now 20 years since Harrison Bryan ended his term as the director-general of the National Library. Prior to his being asked to run this institution he was a successful and able university librarian for 30 years. Not surprisingly therefore, the National Library has within its collection a large range of material which stands as a reminder of the formidable role he played in Australian librarianship.

Apart from his years of war service, Bryan spent all his working life as a librarian. He gained his Library Certificate from the Library School of the New South Wales Public Library in 1948 and started work at the University of Queensland Library as assistant librarian the year after. In a stroke of luck for Bryan (though not so much for others), the route to promotion lay open the next year as the university librarian resigned due to a nervous breakdown, and his deputy was hospitalised with a stroke. Thus, in 1949 at just 26 years of age, Bryan became almost by default the very youngest of university librarians.

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Unknown photographer
Portrait of Allan Fleming,
National Librarian 1971
b&w negative; 5.5x5.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an22842266

 

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Unknown photographer
Portrait of George Chandler 1975
b&w negative; 5.5x5.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an22842679

Bryan was lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, though critics may say that his being a former student of history at the university, with his father also holding a professorship there, may have had something to do with it. Nonetheless, Bryan grew in the job, becoming the consummate professional librarian. The library that Bryan took charge of was not the large and impressive one that we know now. Then, it was a relatively small library with an equally small collection. Bryan struggled to get the library up to what he considered was a suitable standard for a growing university. By the time of his departure he had managed to treble library stock and to bring to the university establishment a wider understanding of the role and utility of a well-resourced library.

In 1963, Bryan became librarian of the University of Sydney, the oldest and largest university library in Australia. His skills had been recognised by the retiring librarian, Andrew Osborn, who told the university’s registrar, who was charged with finding a replacement, that ‘There is no-one else in Australia who ought to be appointed’.

Bryan served the university for 17 years and in his time brought many enhancements, improvements and initiatives which maintained the library in the forefront of Australian librarianship. Bryan saw early the role that technology would play in libraries and thus his library was the first to introduce widespread automation in its functions. However, Bryan was not a slave to just what was new, as he also had an interest in that most traditional of book practices—hand printing. Thus he also established Piscator Press at the library to produce beautifully crafted small volumes of work.

The National Library’s Manuscript Collection was the beneficiary of Bryan’s donated papers and within them there is a wealth of information on almost every facet of Australian librarianship, particularly in the years between 1960 and 1990.

Bryan was a prolific administrative letter writer and, in what is always a benefit to future historians, he not only kept letters sent to him, but also copies of his own outgoing mail. Bryan’s correspondents include the pantheon of Australian librarianship: Jean Whyte, Sir Peter Crisp, Robert Sharman, Allan Horton, Allan Fleming, Ali Sharr, John Balnaves and Sir Harold White all appear. In fact there is no major library figure of the 1960s to 1980s that does not appear at least once in Bryan’s correspondence.

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National Library building one day after the fire, 9 March 1985
Pictures Collection

There are a large number of files covering Bryan’s involvement in the Library Association of Australia, which he joined in 1948. Over the years, on a voluntary basis, he served the Association in many capacities. He was on the general council for more than 25 years, was chairman of the Board of Examiners (overseeing librarianship qualifications) for 10 years, edited The Australian Library Journal and was finally president of the Association in 1973 and 1974. His service to the Association and its members over many years was such that he was awarded its two highest honours, a Fellowship and the HCL Anderson Award.

His correspondence
showed how much time he took to promote librarianship as a valuable and important social good. It demonstrated that he believed in the importance of a skilled and professional body of librarians to promote Australian research and learning. To this end he also served on academic, government and international committees and forums representing Australia and Australian libraries.

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Shadow Minister’s visit on 14 March 1985 after the fire.
(Left) Mr David Connolly, MP, Shadow Minister for the Arts, Heritage and Environment with Harrison Bryan, National Library
of Australia Director-General
Pictures Collection, NL35884

Bryan’s papers do not include much of what we would call personal correspondence. There is little of his family life depicted; although given his workload many would suspect that he had none. On the contrary, Bryan managed to fulfil his many responsibilities and still have a life outside of librarianship. Bryan married Florence Jolly in 1948 and together they had four children. Bryan later regretted some of the time he spent away from his family, especially the amount of time he spent flying between Australian cities attending meetings for the numerous committees in which he was involved. However, his family did join him in some of his activities. Whilst Bryan was university librarian in Sydney, Florence worked for the University Women’s Group. Florence and the children also managed to go along on some of Bryan’s study trips. Florence and Harrison’s life together is told in their cowritten work of family biography of which the Library has a copy.

Recorded in Bryan’s papers is one failure that he deeply regretted. In 1958, whilst librarian at the University of Queensland, he was asked to write a history of the university for its upcoming silver jubilee. Bryan worked for two years in his spare time on writing this history. However when he had finished, the manuscript was rejected by the university. This came as a blow to Bryan as he wanted to celebrate the university where he worked, had studied and where his father was one of the first students and a long-time professor. Although still unpublished, the work, in two volumes, is within his papers.

Also within the papers are the typescripts or copies of some of over 280 articles, speeches and book chapters written by Bryan that were published in Australian and international library literature. Together with the voluminous administrative material he wrote and his varied correspondence, it would seem that he must have worked unceasingly. Amazingly, however, he also found the time to write a good number of books, all of which the Library holds in its collection.

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National Library’s asbestos removal on the 4th floor,
8 August 1984
Pictures Collection, NL35804A

Bryan’s path to the position of national librarian of the National Library was not without incident. In 1970, Allan Fleming gained the position and the title was changed to director-general. Fleming was not a librarian and there was some unhappiness amongst professional librarians over his appointment. Fleming soon won over critics of his placement with his outstanding abilities, but Bryan’s correspondence records the activities of the Concerned Librarians Group which was intent on seeing that only a trained librarian would fill the post in future. In 1973, Bryan was at the forefront of Australian librarianship and was predicted by many as the natural successor to Fleming. Having been for a number of years the librarian of the largest university library in Australia, Bryan applied with some expectations. However, in 1974, Bryan was to see the position go to Dr George Chandler, an imported British librarian. Chandler’s years as director-general were not without incident and Bryan’s correspondence again records the dismay that some of Chandler’s decisions caused amongst the ranks of Australian librarianship.

When the position of director-general became free again in 1980, Bryan was offered it without his even applying. His promotion was widely seen as a good move for the Library. The previous appointments had been effective managers, but Bryan came with a great deal of goodwill brought about by his unceasing work in numerous library committees and organisations.

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ABN (Australian Bibliographic Network) became an operational system within the National Library on 31 March 1981 and a publicly available service on November 1981
Pictures Collection

Unfortunately for Bryan his period at the Library was fraught with difficulties not of his making. In 1983, asbestos was discovered in the building and, although it was not deemed an immediate risk, industrial action took place and its removal was decided upon. During its eventual removal in March 1985, the worst type of tragedy for a library took place as a fire in the roof was somehow started. Due to swift and concerted action by librarians the damage to the library and its collections was not great, indeed it was estimated by Bryan that of all the damaged materials (primarily from water rather than fire) there was only one book damaged beyond repair. Another more significant loss during Bryan’s stewardship was the transfer from the Library of the majority of its film and sound archives. A concerted push to see a separate institution devoted to these materials was brought about by some Library staff, and in 1984 the National Film and Sound Archive came into being. Relations between the two bodies have remained strong since its inception, but many in the Library at the time viewed the loss of these media from the collection with some regret. A measure of Bryan’s success as director-general could be taken from how he managed to steer the Library successfully through these tough times.

As Eric Flowers, librarian of the University of Newcastle, wrote about Bryan:

At a very difficult time in the Library’s history, and late in his working life, he took himself and his basket of abilities into what he knew would be a testing milieu. While he was not enough in himself to solve completely all of the problems inherent in that Library’s organisation and operation, we should be thankful that he was there. Given the territory, none of the rest of us could have hoped to achieve near as much.

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NLA film stacks, 1981
Pictures Collection

The Library did have some notable achievements under Bryan, the most prominent being the launching in 1981 of the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN), an online system connecting libraries computerised catalogues around Australia to the newly formed National Bibliographic Database (NBD). This was a giant leap forward for libraries in Australia and enabled librarians to view each other’s collections and thus share cataloguing and resources. This development set the pace for the continuing developments we have seen in this area, including the most recent Libraries Australia search service.

Bryan was a man who put a great deal into the profession of librarianship both as an exemplary practitioner and as an educator and supporter. It is therefore fitting that his papers and works should be maintained within the National Library’s collections.

Edgar Crook is a librarian at the National Library of Australia

 

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