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May 14, 2003
ST KILDA LIBRARY CELEBRATES ITS 30TH BIRTHDAY
Photo Opportunity: Champagne and cake celebrations and staff in seventies clothes, 10 – 11.30am, Wednesday May 14 - St Kilda Library, 150 Carlisle Street.
St Kilda Library celebrates its 30th birthday today with cake and champagne from 10 –11.30am. Staff will don seventies clothes to mark the occasion. They will be joined by Jenny Love and former councillor, Ivan Trayling, who campaigned for the library’s establishment in the sixties, and foundation librarian, Vida Horn, as well as many library users.
Port Phillip mayor, Liz Johnstone, who will welcome guests, said that the mere existence of the library was a cause for community celebration. “It took decades of community campaigning to persuade the former City of St Kilda to establish the library. As far back as 1948, the Rev Dr Sir Irving Benson of the Methodist Church was berating the council for the fact that the supply of books depended ‘on the parsimony of semi-illiterate councillors’.
“A St Kilda Library Promotion Committee was formed on April 23, 1953 to press the council on the issue but the council responded by producing long reports arguing a library would be an unwarranted administrative and financial burden. In 1957, the library would have cost a thousand pounds a year to operate.
“The committee was not successful and was forced to deny that it had anything to do with protest graffiti daubed on Balaclava Railway station. People wanting to borrow books had no alternative but to pay to do so at one of six little subscription libraries attached to local tobacconists, florists, dry cleaners, toy shops and knitting agencies,” she said.
A new committee, the St Kilda Library Establishment Committee, involving Jenny Love and Ruth Shnookal, took up the cudgels around 1961. The committee persuaded the council to get the Free Library Service to conduct a survey but the resulting positive report was dismissed.
Jenny Love says the objections were farcical. “The councillors said that everyone was watching television and, besides, the population of St Kilda was itinerant and unlikely to return books. Only communists read books, they reckoned!”
The committee then waged a massive campaign of producing petitions, pamphlets and constant letters to the papers, lobbying state MPs and holding public meetings involving high profile people such as Barry Jones and Dr Andrew Fabyini. Pressure on the council continued with the Jungwirth Report on the Provisions of Libraries in 1964 criticising the council for refusing to conduct a poll on the issue. The committee won the strong support of local Labor MLA for Albert Park, P.K. Sutton, and Brian Dixon, Liberal MLA for St Kilda.
“However,” Ms Love says, “the election of one of the committee members, Ivan Trayling, in 1964 really shook up the council. There was weeping at the polling booths!”
In 1967, the council capitulated, setting aside $50,000 to the project. A new library committee in 1969 of councillors (including Cr Ivan Trayling) and some of the former protestors (including Jenny Love and Bernard Rechter) recommended the purchase of a used car yard opposite the St Kilda Town Hall and seven properties in Duke Street as the site.
In 1970, the committee appointed Vida Horn as the foundation librarian. As well as appointing staff and overseeing the purchase of books and other materials, Ms Horn had to keep a watching brief on the building program. “It was the sort of job people describe as challenging. Fortunately, I had marvellous staff,” she said.
A tender of $417,000 was let to builders, M. Notkin Construction of Caulfield South, with Enrico Taglietti appointed as architect. Taglietti was a leading proponent of the ‘Brutalist school’ of architecture and the resulting building is deemed in the council’s heritage study as “offering no sympathy to its surrounding context”, perhaps because plans to demolish adjoining shops never happened. Various ceremonies marked the different stages of the building that was finally opened on May 14, 1973 by Sir Rohan Delacombe, the Governor of Victoria.
Anne Longmire, who wrote St Kilda: The Show Goes On, volume three of the local history concludes, “ Most importantly, the library stood as an affirmation of the dignity and right to knowledge of all who lived in St Kilda, no matter how short their stay, or how limited their financial resources, standing as a reminder to all, that if people worked for a just cause, they would eventually win through. Importantly, too, involvement in the long fight for the library taught those who struggled what it meant to win, and many joined other action groups afterwards.”
The new library was immensely popular but strictly administered. Librarians didn’t wear uniforms but were expected to turn up in the St Kilda colours of red, black and white. If users had overdue books, they could expect a visit from council by-laws officers. Staff maintained a file of blacklisted users with very overdue books.
Entry was through a turnstile. People with prams or in wheelchairs had to ask to be let in through the glass door. The elderly had to produce doctors’ certificates before they could have books dropped off through the home delivery service. Anyone wanting to borrow audio-visual materials had to pay a substantial deposit that ranged between $7 and $10.
“But,” says Angie Salahor who went to work at the library straight from school in 1980, “in those days you could smoke at your desk!”
Vida Horn says that the library was the biggest toy the local kids ever had. “Local kids broke everything that could be broken. We used to call them the St Kilda Product Testing Association. They even stole the red public phone from the foyer! But when they needed help with school work or, in fact, any help at all, they came to the library.”
On another occasion, someone unlocked and stole the photocopier cashbox – in full view of four or five staff.
For most St Kilda Library staff, the great flood of 1989 was the single most dramatic event. Ms Salahor recalls that fourteen cars and a huge amount of stock were lost when water rushed into the basement. “There was water everywhere. People were canoeing down Chapel Street. The library had no lights but we were still open, in case someone needed refuge. Out of the dark appeared a man with a torch, wanting to borrow a book on UFOs!”
Alistair Baird, who also started in the library in 1980, said that huge fans were brought in to dry out the stock. “Staff then spent months at trestle tables putting paper between the pages of books to dry them out. Luckily, a lot of precious local history material was saved.”
For Vera Boston, who succeeded Vida Horn as head librarian in 1987, the saddest moment of her whole career was when the freezer van, brought in at huge expense to dry out the books, failed. “We’d worked like dogs to save the books but then they all went mouldy. It was such a shame.”
St Kilda Council staff camped out for months in the library after the fire that burned down the major hall of St Kilda Town Hall in 1991. The new ‘open book’ extension to the library building was added in the early1990s. In 1995, the library was the scene of a vocal demonstration of local residents against plans to outsource the Port Phillip library service under the Kennett Government’s compulsory competitive tendering legislation. The in-house team won the bid. The library has since been brought back in house, in line with other council services.
A few years ago the library was raided by the Vice Squad for having Tom of Finland, a gay erotic book on its shelves. Unbeknownst to the library, it was a classified book. It is now available under restricted access, along with American Psycho and Final Exit. St Kilda Library is now proudly the main branch of the Port Phillip Library Service where things have definitely loosened up since the good old days of blacklists and turnstiles and where anyone is allowed to join whether they live locally or are backpacking from overseas.
Written By:
Carmel Shute
Media Officer
City of Port Phillip
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