In an age when public libraries are frantically divesting themselves of their bookish image, spending heavily on hardware and software, and desperately seeking to be socially relevant, it was a pleasure to step back into the past world of library economy, Andrew Carnegie, and debates over “open access” (old style): a chance to see how far we have come and put the present in a context. Not that the Past was a cosy world: the fight to establish credibility, to build buildings to be proud of, and to agree “best practice”, was as hard and as bitter as it ever was. Such is clear from this landmark study by Professors Black and Pepper, and architectural librarian, Kaye Bagshaw.
This book grew out of a four‐year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council), and which had antecedents in work done by members of the Library History Group of the then Library Association. In 1991, the LHG began to explore ways of preserving the surviving physical heritage of libraries and librarianship. Eventually efforts were concentrated on the library building itself. There were, at that time, many historic library buildings under threat of demolition, and even if the buildings themselves could not be saved, there was an urgent need to document them for posterity.
Based on a database of over a thousand library buildings built before 1940 researched and compiled by Kaye Bagshaw, Alistair Black (author of many recent books on library and information history) and Simon Pepper (Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University) have written this groundbreaking study of pre‐1940 public library buildings. Not just the buildings, but how they came to be what they are, how developing ideas of professional practice influenced design, and how they were used and regarded.
This immaculately produced book features 155 photographs and, importantly for a reference context, a directory of nearly 1,000 UK public library buildings – existing, demolished, and re‐used – adapted from the research database. Together with engravings, plans, contemporary accounts and other documentary sources, this book is an account of how the emerging library profession put their ideas into practice and how this development related to the wider architectural and social environment.
The book is structured in four parts. Part One gives a broad historical context into which the rest of the work can be related. It was a surprise to find Foucault, Gramsci, Popper and Habermas in a book on library architecture, and I could have done without “deontological belief”. But it is good to find a library historian (they are usually mere chroniclers) engaging with mainstream, non‐librarian, historians. Foucault did, after all, write on the layout of prisons and the surveillance culture, and the architecture of some of the early public libraries did reflect these issues.
Part Two looks at the three main periods of public library design: the Pioneer phase of 1850‐1883 (using the models of the British Museum Reading Room and other iconic buildings); the Age of Serial Philanthropy, 1883‐1919 (Carnegie, Passmore Edwards, et al.); and Modernism and the Public Library between the Wars. Part Three, Thematic Studies, looks at three topics in detail: the Open Access debate, Children's Libraries, and The Library as Monument and Machine, the latter illustrating the tension between functionalism and public statement. All these issues had important implications for library design. Part Four, “The past in the present”, looks at how this pre‐war heritage is regarded today and usefully features the findings of a mass‐observation study of what people think of their library buildings.
Many UK readers will have worked in pre‐1940 buildings and for them this will be a fascinating and instructive browse. By chance I discovered the floor plans of Purley library (where I first stamped books), of the cataloguing bay at Sanderstead (where I was initiated into the secrets of inserting and withdrawing entries from sheaf catalogues), and the workroom at Coulsdon (where I used a razor blade to scrape off dried‐on Indian ink from pen‐nibs prior to writing reader's tickets). According to Black and Pepper, Purley has “a handsome portico leading into the combined children's library and performance space, surmounted by a low relief of a child with a book”, while “Coulsdon uses neo‐Georgian proportions, but the corner with the front door is curved – like many contemporary cinemas – and the balcony over it is decorated with faint art‐deco touches”. Likewise Sanderstead. Well, I never! Forgive the nostalgia, but this does indicate the detail that has gone into this book. Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Lambeth libraries all receive particularly (merited) detailed treatment (some oral history in the case of Liverpool), though the authors do spread their net widely. The book's Directory (styled Gazetteer) starts at Aberaman (built 1909, destroyed by fire in 1994) and concludes at York's 1904 Grade 2 listed Dringhouses branch, still in use, and noted by Pevsner. Full documentation is given together with a comprehensive bibliography and detailed index.
This book is not just a documented history of the early Carnegies and other iconic library buildings, but it is also a thoughtful and wide‐ranging socio‐architectural study of public librarianship before the 1939‐1945 war. It was interesting to learn of the difficulty librarians had about where to put their book stacks, and the bitter dispute over closed/open access seems to have bemused the architects. The differing viewpoints from an architectural historian and a library historian work well. I was particularly impressed with the concluding essay that looked at some of the big philosophical issues to do with libraries and how past thinking can have relevance to our future. Not only will this book provide library professionals with a new perspective on where they come from, it will also be of interest to non‐library historians, architects and students of cultural history. This book is a landmark in library historiography and a reference resource for library history.
