22 April 1999

Newcastle public library starts award-winning career

A librarian who began his career as a cadet at the Newcastle Public Library more than 40 years ago has won his profession's highest accolade.

Professor John Levett, editor of the Australian Library Journal, has received the HCL Anderson Award, the highest honour which the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) can bestow.

Professor Levett was chief librarian at the Lake Macquarie Shire Library in the early 1960s. He is a former director of the Department of Librarianship in the University of Tasmania and chair of the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records in Monash University.

He was a member of the ALIA Board of Education and has been active in ALIA affairs since 1964. The association awarded him its Fellowship in 1988 and he served as its president in 1991.

In making the award ALIA's General Council said Professor Levett had made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual development of librarianship, including the consideration of the ethical and philosophical issues which underpinned the profession.

The General Council cited Professor Levett's contribution to ALIA over a long period and his advocacy for education for librarianship. Professor Levett began his career in 1954 as a library cadet in the Newcastle Public Library and gained a Bachelor of Arts at Newcastle University in 1969 and a Master of Librarianship at Monash University in 1985. After various library appointments he was made chief librarian at Lake Macquarie in 1961.

He later moved to Tasmania to become a library educator.