Marginal Notes 48: The importance and impact of libraries
As my sixty-first anniversary in business approaches on the 28th of May, I am reflecting on my genesis as a bookseller. I was raised in a family where reading and a love of books was actively encouraged.
My family had come to Melbourne from Adelaide, via Perth, in 1956. Apart from having my own small collection of books, a regular highlight as a teenager was the weekly Friday night visit my parents and I made to the State Library of Victoria where we borrowed books from their lending library, followed by a visit to the Melbourne Athenaeum Library in Collins Street to borrow LP recordings – and then to Bourke Street to see Myer’s window displays (there being no late night shopping).
My early ambitions included becoming a writer, an artist, or a librarian. This last idea was probably based not only on those visits to the State Library of Victoria, but also on my knowledge of the local lending library where westerns and romances were the stock in trade. My mother, Muriel, was a member of the privately owned lending library in Buckley Street, Essendon, where she borrowed the romances but not the westerns. I would accompany her on regular visits to the library, helping her to return books and to choose others.
I did not achieve my first three choices of employment, instead becoming a secretary prior to my final career as a bookseller. One of my first jobs was in an advertising agency situated in Melbourne’s central business district. I would alternate my lunchtimes between reading in the nearby State Library and browsing in Evans’ secondhand bookstore in Swanston Street. During one of my lunchtime trips to the State Library, which still had its lending library, I discovered Van Allen Bradley’s Gold in Your Attic: A Guide to Valuable Rare Books (1958) – ‘An easy to follow guide including a checklist and many actual photographs of rare American books and first editions worth $25 to $25,000’. I borrowed the book and took it home to my mother to read. This was probably the catalyst for turning my mother’s weekly auction purchases of books for our private library into a commercial reality.
During our early years in business, Muriel and I, armed with numerous small typed catalogue slips, would visit the State Library to research and to check comparative prices of books we had bought, mainly consulting Book Auction Records, American Book Prices Current and Bookman’s Price Index. Over ensuing years we bought our own copies of these expensive reference books, all of which remain in my reference library to this day, although they are now considered by most booksellers to be redundant due to the instant accessibility of book price comparisons on the internet and AI platforms (not necessarily accurately in either cases).
One of Melbourne’s great resources is the wonderful Melbourne Athenaeum Library, being the first established in the mid-1800s as a ‘a Mechanics’ Institution for skilled workmen’, open to all the community. Interestingly, women were able to be individual members with the first joining in 1847. My mother was a member of the library for many years, until macular degeneration forced her to rely upon audio books. During COVID and Melbourne’s infamous long lockdowns, I purchased online at considerable expense many works by my favourite detective authors. Now, as a member of the Melbourne Ath, which is just down the road from our bookshop, I simply borrow familiar and new authors.
During our years in business we have had many interactions with institutional libraries in different capacities – ranging from selling individual items and important collections, to attending and participating in events held jointly with The Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers and Melbourne Rare Book Week.
Long may libraries exist and prosper.
The Melbourne Athenaeum Library
