Librarianship
Joan Stevens's 1968 article about Frederick Knox, the first Wellington
librarian, describes well what a community regarded as suitable
qualifications for operating a public library. Over 40 years later,
those responsible for making an appointment to the position of first
Librarian of the Auckland Public Library were a good deal less demanding
(see article on Edward Shillington, DNZB , vol.2,
1870-1900). The consideration that was uppermost in the minds of the
appointing board in Auckland was the need to show encouragement to a
married man; an acquaintance with books was a less pressing need. As
late as the 1930s, it was not uncommon to see the appointment of persons
without library qualifications to positions of some seniority in larger
libraries.
Prior to World War II,
the person who wished to gain qualifications for library work typically
would enrol for courses run by the Library Association, London. Rank and
file staff in libraries were required to have little more than an upper
primary school pass. The raising of the qualification levels of workers
in libraries is a story of activity in the late 1930s and 1940s by the
re-energised NZLA, directly, and in partnership with the Carnegie
Corporation of New York (which tied its development grants to a
requirement for staff training) and the newly-established Country
Library Service. See Maxine Rochester (1990) on 'the revolution in New
Zealand librarianship'. The development of a training regime for New
Zealand is a story initially of in-service correspondence courses, then
the establishment of graduate studies (1946), the replacement of the
correspondence courses by a 'sandwich course', and the eventual transfer
of graduate studies (the Diploma of the New Zealand Library School) to
Victoria University of Wellington, and the transfer of non-graduate
studies (the NZLA Certificate) to the Wellington College of Education.
The story is told in Ronnie (1996).
Ronnie (1980)
describes the work of the New Zealand Library School, from its
foundation in 1946 to its close in 1979. Information about graduates of
the School was published regularly in New Zealand
Libraries each year, but there is a convenient source of
listings of students in Dienes (1995), which covers the entire period of
the School's existence, 1946-79. It is a list of students, arranged by
class year, noting the bibliography that each student produced. The list
is prefaced by statistical information about class numbers, academic
qualifications and gender balance, and has a subject index to the
bibliographies. Complementary to Dienes is the work by Rimmer and
Siddells (1972), a listing of Library School bibliographies, 1946-72.
The period covered is shorter than that covered by Dienes but entries
are annotated.
The transfer of the
graduate education of librarians to Victoria University of Wellington in
1980, bringing with it the full recognition of library education as a
tertiary qualification, was the outcome of protracted lobbying pressure
by the Association. It was a campaign complicated by the issue of what
to do with the training course for non-graduates. A key document was the
report of a working group appointed by Minister of Education Kinsella in
1969 to advise him on the future of education for librarians. The report
of the group is a useful reference, more for its history and summary of
the contemporary situation than for its conclusions and recommendations
(which were not implemented): Working Party on
Education for Librarianship (1969).
With the two arms of
library training secure in their respective institutions, a period of
quiet progress might have been expected. However, changes in social
conditions and in the library environment forced further review. One of
the issues, distance education, is the subject of a paper by Richardson
(1990). Another issue, research and advanced studies, is treated by
Roderick Cave (1984b, 1991). The interested parties twice invited
experts from overseas, English and American in turn, to survey the
situation and to make recommendations: Saunders (1987), Barron (1994).
For a broader account of education for librarianship in New Zealand at a
critical stage of its development, see Gerald Bramley's World Trends in Library Education (1975).
An interesting episode
in the development of library education was the campaign to establish a
training course for teacher-librarians, as part of a wider campaign to
strengthen library services in schools. A course began at Wellington
Teachers College in 1986 with 20 students, but ran for two years only.
The story is well told in Ronnie (1996), but additional light is thrown
on the issue in two papers published by the New Zealand Council for
Educational Research: Lealand (1988, 1989). The director of the 1986
course described the event: Gawith (1986). A background article on the
subject, with bibliography, published 20 years earlier, retains some
interest: Burns (1963).
An allied question is
that of professional qualifications. Discussion of this issue within the
profession was coloured by the existence of the two levels of training,
graduate and non-graduate. Less than ten years after the commencement of
the graduate school in 1946, the Association put in place a system of
professional registration, which conferred on suitable persons the
qualification Associate of the New Zealand Library Association (ANZLA).
This is essentially the system which operates at present. An early paper
by John Barr (1948a) sets out some of the difficulties in achieving what
he called 'certification'.
Five years after Barr
the subject was thoroughly treated by a number of prominent librarians
at a symposium, reported in New Zealand Libraries
, October 1952. In 1954 the annual conference of the Association adopted
a registration proposal; explanatory remarks made on that occasion were
reported in the journal: McEldowney (1954). These two references between
them provide a fair description of the background and principles of the
system. The rules and procedures of the registration system have been
modified substantially since 1955, generally to strengthen the
requirements.
The NZLA/NZLIA,
contrary to some views of it and occasionally the wishes of some
members, has never been an industrial organisation nor, in the current
parlance, has it acted as a negotiating agent, but it has taken an
interest in the working conditions of librarians, in particular the
levels of remuneration. From 1960 it maintained a standard salary scale,
within which there were recommended levels and scales of salary for
various grades of library qualification and for various grades of
management responsibility in libraries. In a sense the standard salary
scale was a management manual rather than a piece of industrial
advocacy. It brought together and recorded the best practice in the
library sector and related sectors, so that employing authorities and
library managers might be assured that they were offering competitive
conditions, an important consideration in what was a period of high
employment. A summary account of the scale and its history is given in
McKeon (1973). Prior to 1960 there had been efforts on three occasions
to strike standard levels of remuneration in public libraries; the
background to the production of the first comprehensive standard scale
is given in New Zealand Libraries (22, Sept.
1959, pp.152-63). The issue of what stance the Association should take
in industrial matters, and what degree of militancy librarians should
exhibit is canvassed in a series of thoughtful articles in New Zealand Libraries : Roth, Brooks, Traue,
Gittos (1974).
In the decades after
World War II workforce planning was understandably a preoccupation of a
sector confronted by steady business growth on the one hand and a
relatively small labour intake on the other. How was the profession to
estimate the numbers needed to avoid shortages or surpluses of various
types of worker? A series of survey articles was published in
New Zealand Libraries between 1968 and 1987,
showing the employment patterns of librarians, related to a variety of
factors: age, country of birth, date of training, type of qualification,
gender, marital status, and type of employing library. Extrapolated from
this information there were statistics about gains and losses of people
from the workforce, and growth trends in subsectors of the library
community. See O'Neill and Traue (1968), Traue (1972), McEldowney (1982,
1987).
In the year prior to
the publishing of the first of these articles, the Professional Division
of the Association carried out a general survey of library work. The
purpose of the study was to ascertain how the work of libraries was
being discharged, in particular its allocation between clerks, library
assistants and the two types of qualified staff. The knowledge derived
from the study was expected to help in subsequent planning of training,
negotiating of salaries, and achieving of efficiency in library
operations: O'Neill (1967b).
Another survey was
carried out a year later directed specifically at women and their
position within the profession. The report on the survey was published,
and its findings were the subject of a seminar within the 1968
Conference of the Association. The issue of New
Zealand Libraries for February 1969 carries the report of the
seminar, a collation of the comments made by the women who were
surveyed, a commentary by a library employer, and a report of the
discussion which occurred at the seminar and the resolutions which arose
from it: NZLA, Professional Section (1969).
The paradox of the
'five-sixths minority' was put before the profession, with a plea for
correction of the anomaly, in a statement made by 12 women librarians in
New Zealand Libraries in 1975. The
signatories observed that women outnumbered men 5:1 in the library
sector, but senior posts in libraries were distributed in the inverse
proportion: Thwaites (1975). In that International Women's Year, the
journal carried further comment about deficiencies in the profession's
treatment of its majority members, for example in an article which
identified sexist language in the student notes for the Association's
Certificate Course examination. Ten years later the same career patterns
were revealed in a survey undertaken by Jan Bierman (1985).
The most recent
treatment of the subject was a paper by Glenda Northey (1995). The
author argued that the Association had throughout its history obstructed
the advancement of women in the profession. The force of the arguments
was weakened by their dependence on records of the Association and on
simple quotations from past commentators, without regard to the
circumstances in which statements were made or the value that certain
concepts and expressions possessed at the time that they were made.
