COMMENTARY

Turnbull Library Record, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 November 1968, Page 59

COMMENTARY

Library jubilee , ? K .. r o v h A. H. Turnbull was born on 14 September 1868 and his centenary therefore occurred on 14 September last, three days after these notes are being written. He died on 28 June 1918 and the Library was formally opened by the Hon. G. J. Anderson, Minister of Internal Affairs, exactly two years later on 28 June 1920. The Trustees Special Committee for the Library at its first meeting in March 1967 decided that having regard to the requirements of an appropriate publication programme the centenary should be celebrated in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Library, at a date appropriately close to 28 June 1970. The Endowment Trust on the recommendation of the Committee has commissioned Dr E. H. McCormick to prepare a biographical memoir on the life and collecting interests of Turnbull. Dr McCormick with some research assistance by the staff, is making good progress with his task. It is hoped that as a continuing programme of publication from this anniversary, catalogues will be issued of the special materials in the Library, such as the manuscript collection, the art collection and the rare books printed in Great Britain and other European countries. A preliminary listing of the manuscript collection should be available early next year as part 11 of the Union Catalogue of Manuscripts but the full catalogue will give a more detailed analysis of the contents of the major groups. From the March 1969 issue of the Record a series of articles will feature special aspects of the Library and in mid-1970 a jubilee issue of the Record in addition to other appropriate material will outline the history of the Library from 1918 until the present time.ov/j yhnscm ibno bmi

Field-Hodgkins Exhibition :c ?;•, ' ; l On 20 June the Honourable H. G. R. Mason, a Trustee of the National Library, opened the Field-Hodgkins exhibition of sketches and paintings. The exhibition was mounted to mark the generous donation to the Library by the family of the late W. H. Field of their extensive collection of paintings, sketchbooks and correspondence which had been on deposit for some fifteen years. The collection is representative chiefly of the work of W. M. Hodgkins, the Otago solicitor and painter, and his two daughters, the well-known artist Frances Hodgkins and her J'sister Isabel, the wife of the Wellington solicitor and Member of Parliament, William Hughes Field. The collection was used extensively by Dr McCormick in his studies of Frances Hodgkins, The expatriate and Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand, and it was Dr McCormick who encouraged the family to deposit the material in the Library. Mr Mason in opening the exhibition stressed the appropriateness of

the gift, both in itself and as yet another precedent for similar future donations to the Library. In speaking also of the desirability of gifts to the Endowment Trust he touched on the question of providing incentives for these by tax concessions and expressed the hope that the National Library building which would provide a fitting home for donations such as the Field-Hodgkins collection would not be too long delayed.

Friends of the Turnbull Library Canon Nigel Williams presided over about sixty members at the Annual General Meeting held in the Library on 1 August 1968. The Annual Report and Balance Sheet as presented were adopted. The election of officers (listed on the cover) completed the formal business of the meeting. Professor Joan Stevens gave a fascinating lecture on her discovery of the 1845-6 London journal of Edward Jerningham Wakefield, and its contents. She dealt in some detail with Thackeray’s association with Wakefield during this period and the linking family connections between them and with others mentioned in the diary.

Standardisation of Catalogue > Y In an age of increasingly diversified library materials from gramophone records to microfilms the reliance of both readers and staff on the catalogue has not diminished. It is the artery of communication between books, research workers and all sections of the library. While to the discerning the information it gives or even leads to may be limited, it is the essential guide- to location. The Library from its earliest years has used until recently two sizes of card in its catalogue: The standard 7.5 x 12.5 cm, and the larger 15 cm, the latter in the Pacific and New Zealand catalogue. It has long been apparent that there would be clearcut economic advantages in using the standard size card, but the magnitude of the task in cutting down the older cards to conform has deferred action. However on 18 September 1967 a start was made with editing and card cutting and the whole operation was completed a year later on 3 September 1968. The work has involved Miss Irvine and her staff in the considerable burden of editorial checking and revision of a large number of entries, and casual workers in the 1 unexciting routines of guillotining approximately a quarter of a million cards in 250 drawers. Apart from a considerable saving of space in the new cabinets in which most of the cards are now housed, preparation procedures in the cataloguing process have been simplified. 0 %i Em nt sfoinnoDoM