W Laurence Brown

ALA FLAA

Conferred 1970

Wilby Laurence Brown was educated in England. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II and, after demobilisation, was elected to the Register of the Library Association as a chartered librarian, prior to emigrating to Australian and joining the staff of the then Public Library of New South Wales.

Mr Brown has since filled with distinction a number of senior posts as a public librarian, as well as securing valuable experience in bookselling and publishing.

In 1953 he was appointed chief librarian of the Sutherland Shire Public Library. He became city librarian of Lithgow in 1954 and was chief librarian of Fairfield Municipal Library from 1959 to 1964. From 1964 to 1966 he was associated with a leading Australian library supplier. In 1966 he became city librarian of Essendon and he is currently chief librarian of the Essendon-Broadmeadows Regional Library Service.

In considering Mr Brown's record of achievement, the Board of Examiners has distinguished three main grounds for recommending him for the award of the Fellowship: first, leadership in the development of public librarianship; second, service to the Association and to the promotion of its aims; and third, writing and publishing in the area of our profession.

In his public librarianship Mr Brown has always been both forthright and forward thinking, a combination which, the Board suggests, is all too rare. To take but the most obvious example of the operation of this forward-thinking, in recent years he has been conspicuously successful in directing the application of computer technology to public library processes. The Essendon-Broadmeadows library service presents what, as far as the Board can judge, is certainly the most automated public library in Australia.

Mr Brown's talents for organisation, his clarity of thought and his force of argument have been recognised both by the Association itself and by outside organisations. Within the Association he has held office for several years as general councillor representing, on separate occasions, the Victorian Branch and the Public LIbraries section. In addition he has served as a member of the Standing Committee, as well as president of the New South Wales Branch, as treasurer of the Public Libraries section and as convener of the Association's Committee on Book Prices.

In 1970 he was appointed editor-elect of the Australian Library Journal.

In recent years Mr Brown has played a leading part, as Victorian Branch representative on the Library council of Victoria, in assisting in planning library development for the State Library of Victoria, at a particularly crucial stage in its history. He has also served on the advisory committee for the courses in librarianship within the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Mr Brown has beena steady contributor to the professional literature, writing on matters as diverse as the functions of the Library Board of New South Wales and trining for sub-professional lbirary staff. His feature articles in the Australian Library Journal on the public library scene have been both informative and critical. The measure of their penetration is the correspondence they have stimulated.

While on the staff of James Bennett, bookseller and publisher, Mr Brown initiated, and has continued to edit, a series of Australian Library Pamphlets which has helped substantially to fill a noteable gap in the detailed documentation of Australian libraries and library practice.

The Board of Examiners has carefully reviewed Mr Brown's publications and his work as a librarian and for librarians. It is unanimously of the view that he has made a distinguished contribution to both the theory and the practice of Australian librarianship, through his own publications and those he has been instrumental in having produced, through his work for library development, through his leadership in our profession and through his record and his example as an outstanding public librarian.

The Board commends Wilby Laurence Brown, Associate of the Library Association, Associate of the Library Association of Australia, to Council as being well qualified to be invited to the distinction of Fellow of the Library Association of Australia.