AARL

Obituaries

Jean Primrose Whyte AM

21 June 1928 - 18 March 2003

Jean Whyte, who died in March, entered librarianship by accident and rose to become one of the most outstanding and influential professional leaders of her generation.

Jean was born in 1923 and spent her first decade on a sheep station north of Port Augusta, SA, where her father was manager. Her mother died when she was three, and she was brought up by her father and a series of governesses. As a child she learned essential farming skills and became, by her own account, a useful stockman and general hand. For her high school education she was a boarder at St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School in Adelaide, where she edited the school magazine, debated, played tennis and hockey, and excelled in English and history. She won the Tennyson Medal for Matriculation English and hoped to go on to the University of Adelaide for an Arts degree. However, her father, who didn't favour higher education for girls, thought she should return to the farm where she could do something useful. Stubbornly she enrolled in Arts as a part-time student and applied for a job at the Public Library of SA, not because she had any thought of a career in librarianship, but because she needed a job to support herself, and the library was close to the university and it would be easy for her to get to lectures.

Between 1941 and 1948 Jean gained experience in various sections of the Public Library, and it didn't take her long to succumb to what she later called 'library mania'. In 1946 she became one of the first to pass the qualifying examination of the Australian Institute of Librarians, the professional qualification at the time. In 1948 she was given responsibility for staff training at the PLSA and thus began her life-long involvement in education for the profession and in encouraging young librarians.

She graduated BA with first class honours in English in 1950. Other librarians, satisfied with their attainment of a degree and professional qualification, might then have settled back on their laurels and made little further effort. Not Jean. She won a Fulbright Travel Grant and a scholarship from the American Association of University Women and became one of the first Australian librarians to secure an advanced professional degree from an American library school, graduating Master of Arts from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago in 1956. This experience not only reinforced her library mania and began many lifelong friendships, but also convinced her of the value of research-based graduate study in librarianship which she was later to put into practice at Monash University.

In 1959 Jean was recruited by Andrew Osborn to revitalise services to readers at the University of Sydney Library. Osborn also had a serious case of library mania, and they made a good team, dragging the country's largest and oldest university library firmly into the 20th century and establishing it permanently as a leading player in Australian academic and research librarianship. Her awareness of American standards of library service, her straightforward approach to problems, and her unquenchable enthusiasm enabled her to motivate and inspire her staff to set new standards for services to readers in Australian university libraries.

Jean's achievements at Sydney were all the more remarkable because her work there coincided with the very demanding responsibilities of editor of the Australian Library Journal (1959-70). While she lightly called editing the Journal a 'hobby' it was in fact very time-consuming, often frustrating, sometimes thankless, but always tremendously rewarding. During her tenure the Journal increased in both size and frequency, attracted contributions of first-class standard, and significantly raised the profile and reputation of Australian librarianship internationally.

At the same time, Jean was active elsewhere in the Library Association of Australia, most importantly as member (and, for a time, chairman) of its Board of Examiners (1957-68 and 1971-77). This was a crucial period during which professional education moved from the external examinations of the LAA into tertiary institutions, and the LAA's role evolved from one of examining candidates to accrediting courses. These developments presented many challenges to the Board of Examiners, and membership of the Board was no soft appointment. Jean Whyte's persuasiveness and commonsense ensured that policies were adopted which laid a robust foundation for a new era in education for librarianship in Australia.

In 1972 Jean was appointed director of Information, Reference and Research at the National Library of Australia, incidentally making her one of the first women to join the second division of the Commonwealth Public Service. Again she faced the task of assisting a new broom, Allan Fleming, to reorganise and reinvigorate a major research library, this time with the added challenge of exploiting the power of computing to deliver services to clients and to the nation. Jean thrived in these new surroundings and was a powerful influence in defining new directions for the National Library. Unfortunately Fleming retired the following year and Jean found working with his successor frustrating and uncongenial.

At this difficult time a new career opportunity appeared. Monash University wanted her to take the foundation chair of librarianship and Jean accepted with even more than her usual measure of enthusiasm. It was the best career decision she had made since joining the Public Library of SA more than 30 years earlier, and it turned out to be not only a major gain for Monash but also a major gain for professional education in Australia.

In 1975 she began to create the Graduate School of Librarianship at Monash, modelled in many ways on her alma mater, the Graduate Library School at Chicago. As foundation head Jean had pretty much a free hand to mould a genuinely academic school of librarianship where study and teaching would be carried out alongside research, where education would be valued over mere training, and where the principles and philosophies underlying practice would be emphasised. Monash graduates would be able to think and argue and lead, not just work in libraries. To this end Jean decided that the GSL would break new ground in education for librarianship in Australia by emphasising research and the Master's degree as a base-level qualification. Australia's first post-professional Master of Librarianship course began in 1976 and a first-award MA in 1980. Both included a significant thesis component in keeping with Jean's belief that research was the way to develop good students into critical thinkers, and to move the profession forward intellectually. In 1988 the ambit of the school was widened to include courses in archives and records management.

It was an exciting time and Jean's clarity of vision, infectious enthusiasm and passionate commitment to the scholarly enterprise enabled her to attract first rate academic staff and students, and to secure support within the university for her School. A small department within a large faculty can sometimes be ignored or dismissed as of peripheral importance, or at worst, threatened; Jean saw to it that the GSL was perceived as an integral part of the university and a valuable contributor to its work. Through the quality of its graduates the GSL also earned the respect and confidence of the library profession, and a reputation as a centre for the scholarly study of librarianship. It is no exaggeration to say that the GSL at Monash, under Jean Whyte, was one of the leading schools of librarianship in Australia, fully equal to the best in the world.

While working hard at Monash, Jean characteristically took on more outside professional commitments, most importantly Membership of the Council of the National Library (1981-87) and of the Library Council of Victoria (1981-87). She had been made a Fellow of the LAA in 1963, and in 1987 she received the HCL Anderson Award, the LAA's highest award for a professional librarian who has rendered outstanding service to librarianship, to the library profession, to the LAA, or to the theory and practice of librarianship. She easily qualified on every count. In 1988 she was made a Member in the Order of Australia, national recognition of her outstanding leadership during a career spanning nearly 50 years. In 1996 Monash University conferred on her an honorary Doctor of Letters.

Not only as a teacher, but throughout her professional life, Jean made it her business to encourage younger librarians. Long before it was fashionable to talk about mentoring and mentors and mentees, she was doing it, though she would have scorned anyone who described themselves as a 'mentee'. She treated the English language with respect. For four decades she encouraged countless younger people - staff members and, later, students - to perform better than they thought they could, to set their sights higher and achieve more, to believe in themselves and their own abilities, and to become active in the profession. Many of them caught library mania through her apparently inexhaustible enthusiasm for what libraries can accomplish, and her matter-of-fact assumption that everyone else was, or would soon be, just as competent and enthusiastic and dedicated as she was. She set high standards for herself and expected that everyone else would do the same. They usually did.

Alongside this 'professional' Jean Whyte was a person of high intelligence, interested in the world and in its cultural opportunities (particularly poetry, art and the theatre), interested in ideas and argument and able to bring to these a sense of humour and a refreshing dose of common-sense. She wrote poetry and published some of it. Her presidential address to the South Australian Branch of LAA in 1956 was almost entirely in verse! In 2000 the Ancora Press, which she helped to establish at Monash, printed (by hand - another of her great interests) her collection The Poems of Callimachus which cleverly illustrate in verse some highlights of library history. She seemed to be able, effortlessly, to recite almost any poem which came up in conversation, or which offered an apposite comment on whatever was being discussed. She enjoyed entertaining and her dining room was often filled with other intelligent, cultured and interesting people who could be relied on to provide stimulating discourse, even spirited argument. Her knowledge of Australian wines was formidable and she always served the best - South Australian, of course.

She was a modest person, more interested in giving credit than taking it, and ambitious only insofar as any achievement would enable her better to serve or advance the profession or those who depended on it. She was unashamedly an elitist in educational and professional matters - wanting people to be more highly educated, and libraries to provide superior services with better collections - but politically she sided more with the common man and the goals of the labour movement than with conservative ideology.

Her life was a well-rounded one, her friends and admirers were legion, her accomplishments outstanding. How fortunate we as a profession are that, back in 1941, when looking for work close to the University of Adelaide, she sought a job in the Public Library of SA and not in the adjacent art gallery or the museum! She would have been a great success in those institutions, too, but Australian librarianship would have been much the poorer.

Neil A Radford

Hedley Cyril Brideson

13 August 1910 - 30 April 2003

Hedley Brideson was principal (later state) librarian of the Public (later State) Library of South Australia from 1955 until his early retirement on medical invalidity in 1970. He was appointed to the staff of the Public Library of South Australia as a cadet in 1926. He gained a Bachelor of Arts degree by part-time study at the University of Adelaide.

His chance for prominence came in 1942, when he was asked to head a specialist unit in the public library to provide scientific and technical printed information to assist the war effort. Brideson's work in establishing and promoting this unit (named the Research Service) was unprecedented and brilliantly successful. He gave countless radio presentations and public lectures; visited firms and factories; and wrote press releases and articles for trade journals to promote the service. So successful did it become that it continued for nearly 25 years after the end of the war. Brideson extended its activities to include documentary film shows, public lectures, and the publication and distribution of hundreds of subject bibliographies.

These activities were to set the course and tone of Brideson's subsequent library career. He was a man of gregarious disposition, and he relished opportunities to be seen and heard in his world. He was a member of the Adelaide Rostrum Club, the Adelaide Rotary Club, the Adelaide Club, a Freemason, and Chairman of the Writers' Week Committee of the Adelaide Festival of Arts.

Brideson's administration of the State Library is best remembered and illustrated by the establishment of the municipal lending library system, the construction of a new State Library building, and by the Australiana Facsimile Editions publishing program. Noteworthy too, was his fascination with the application of technology to libraries. He would have delighted in today's IT age, and needed little persuasion to establish a modern book bindery, an offset printing plant, an extensive photographic laboratory and to be a prompt purchaser of new electronic photocopying equipment and a Flexowriter.

Before the passing of the Libraries (Subsidies) Act in 1955 the State Library was the only source of free public book lending in South Australia. Brideson, and many others, made a massive, and finally successful, effort to convince the government actively to move on the establishment of free municipal public libraries. He was, moreover, able to convince the government and the libraries board to allow the State Library to provide assistance to public libraries with free initial bookstocks and through the central purchase and processing of all future books. The way this system was established allowed the State Library to buy books in bulk at very low prices and to exercise considerable influence over public library standards of service, both quantitative and qualitative. Under these conditions, the first wave of about 20 public library services was established within the first decade after 1955.

In the early 1960s accommodation for the State Library was at crisis point. In addition to the main building some 20 other sites were being used to store periodicals, newspapers and maps. One of Brideson's great successes was to gain from the government approval and funds for a vast new building. This building, the Bastyan (now Spence) Wing was opened in 1967, and was sufficient for a time to house all of the collections and services at the one North Terrace site.

In 1962 the first six items of the facsimile publication program appeared. These were printed on a newly available Xerox Copyflo machine, which Brideson had earlier seen on a Carnegie Corporation overseas study tour. These items were the precursors of a major Australian publishing venture of facsimile works, largely of Australian explorers' journals. It won acclaim not only in Australia, but also overseas. There were also many other works of various kinds published. Almost all publications were printed and bound within the library bindery, on machinery specially purchased for the purpose.

With regard to the staff for whom he was responsible, Brideson conducted a never-ending bombardment-by-docket of the State Public Service Commissioner in order to increase both numbers and salary levels, with some success. He also did his utmost to persuade his staff to complete both academic and professional qualifications, and this at a time when such qualifications were not general and brought no pecuniary reward. Brideson's constantly increasing need for additional staff to second to expanding state government departmental libraries, to support the central services to public libraries, and to service the publications program, meant that the staffing situation at the State Library itself was sometimes dire.

Enough has been said to support the view that Brideson was an energetic and innovative state librarian, and a successful manipulator of community and government support. He was not, however, a strategic planner, but rather a spectacular campaigner in a series of opportunistic forays. A favourite expression of his was 'Throw away a sprat to catch a mackerel'. During his term of office the public image of the library was high. The substance of its situation was rather different.

Unfortunately - and whether justly or unjustly - Brideson was not regarded at the time warmly or with much professional respect by many of his staff. Whilst he could on occasion be supportive and generous to individual staff members having personal problems, he often seemed indifferent to, and even dismissive of, others judged as being of lesser social status. Senior staff resented the qualitative dilution and numerical loss of staff to services seen as not essential to the State Library's own needs. His day-to-day administration seemed wayward and frequently inconsiderate. His greatest professional weakness was failure to monitor the performance and continuing relevance of the innovations he had brought into being. He would quickly lose interest in his old ideas in favour of his next new idea. The effect of this failure to attend to such management matters was evident before his sudden retirement, and was perhaps, a causal factor in it.

After his retirement not much of the structures he had erected, or the systems he had put in place survived. The public library system was close to collapse because of failings in the central book provision system. Participating councils were already demanding explanations and reform, and they had not been answered. It was to be a further five years before any new councils ventured to dip their corporate toes into the library pond.

The publications program was supposed to be self-supporting. It never was, and it became a constant drain on the state library's staff resources and its book-binding capacity. By the time the program was closed down a large sum of capital was tied up in unsold stock.

Throughout the decade 1955-1965 the library's senior staff became increasingly restive and disquieted, as they saw core services eroded by what seemed distorted priorities. There are many reasons why people change their jobs but the fact is that by 1965 four out of the five most senior staff members had voted with their feet, and left the state.

The State Library's historian, Carl Bridge, in his A Trunk Full of Books, summarised Brideson's career admirably. Whilst paying full tribute to his remarkable achievements, Bridge concludes:

Brideson's juggling of too many balls found him out, with sad consequences for the administration of both the subsidised libraries and the facsimile programme. He was a remarkable ambassador for free library and information services and a tireless worker. It is a pity he lost his grip.[1]

R K Olding

1. C Bridge A Trunk Full of Books; History of the State Library of South Australia and Its Forerunners Adelaide Wakefield Press 1986 p214