Notes and Comments

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 14, Issue 2, 1 October 1981, Page 114

Notes and Comments

Reduction in hours of opening On 1 August 1981 the Library began opening to readers and visitors at 10.30a.m., Monday to Friday. Saturday hours for readers and visitors (9a.m. to noon) and evening hours for readers (sp.m. to Bp.m.) are unchanged. These changes will reduce the total hours of opening from 55 hours to AIV2 a week. The Minister of Education was advised by the Trustees of the National Library at their meeting on 12 May 1981 ‘That . . . now that the National Library building has been sanctioned, and to relieve pressure on Turnbull, the establishment of a public reference service (with a strong New Zealand component) by the User Services division of the National Library in the Wellington city area be regarded as a matter of urgency ... to approve a change in the Turnbull Library’s time of opening ... to 10.30a.m. Monday to Friday . . .’ and ‘to approve an amendment to the Turnbull’s “Rules for the Use of the Library and Reading Room” to allow for differing levels of access to the collections for visitors and bona fide research readers’. In June the Minister accepted the Trustees’ advice on hours and conditions given in terms of the Alexander Turnbull Library Regulations 1966. The reduction in hours will give the staff an uninterrupted period between 8.30 and 10.30a.m. to undertake the essential housekeeping necessary to maintain public services at an acceptable level. The reduction is regarded as a temporary measure and as soon as staffing levels and user demand are in better balance consideration will be given to an increase in the hours of opening. Changes in the rules and procedures to allow for differing levels of access to the collections for visitors and bona fide research readers are being reviewed.

The Turnbull Winter Lectures 1981 This year during May and June the second series of Turnbull winter lunchtime lectures was held at Turnbull House. The first series consisted of seven lectures between May and September in 1966, the first year of the Turnbull’s incorporation in the National Library of New Zealand. On four occasions (three Mondays and the Tuesday after the Queen’s Birthday holiday) about a hundred people, mostly members of the Friends, gathered in the upstairs rooms at Turnbull House between 12.30 and 1.30 to hear lectures on the theme ‘New Zealand Through the Arts: Past and Present’. The lecturers were Sir Toss will Woollaston on painting, Jack Body on music, Allen Curnow on poetry, and Witi Ihimaera on literature and Maori life. The series was sponsored by the Friends and tickets were made available first to Friends at $8 for the series and then to the public at $lO. The 100 tickets available for sale were all taken up some

two weeks before the first lecture. The speakers were invited to submit a text for publication by the Friends and it is anticipated that publication, either in the Turnbull Library Record or a separate booklet, will take place during 1982.

Fine printing from Germany The Library has received from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn a gift of some recent examples of Buchkunst (art of the book) published by Edition Tiessen of Neu-Isenburg, Federal Republic of Germany. An offer of some German books of the Library’s choice was made to Dr M. E. Hoare, Manuscripts Librarian, as a former Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow (University of Gottingen, 1970-71) and it was decided to use the opportunity to inaugurate a collection of German fine printing to complement the Turnbull’s rich British and American collections on the art of the printed book. The examples from Edition Tiessen together with some very recent purchases from other German printers and publishers went on display in the Library on 19 June to complement the German Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association exhibition ‘Books on the Move’ which began its New Zealand tour in the Concert Chamber in Wellington on the same day. The Library is fortunate in having an expert on contemporary German fine printing, Dr Jurgen Eyssen, author of Buchkunst in Deutschland: vom Jugendstil zum Malerbuch (Hanover, 1980), as an adviser on the development of its collection of German Buchkunst.

Tony Murray-Oliver honoured Tony Murray-Oliver, who retired from the Turnbull in November 1980, received an M.B.E. in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List injune 1981 ‘for services to the Alexander Turnbull Library and art history’. The last issue of the Record featured a bibliographic tribute to Tony Murray-Oliver and a brief record of the farewell ceremony held on 13 November 1980. Mr Murray-Oliver has recently been appointed to the panel of honorary consultants to the Alexander Turnbull Library.

For the discerning collector of printed ephemera The Library is offering to Friends with an interest in New Zealand printed ephemera some prize examples produced by the Turnbull. A small stock of posters advertising recent Turnbull exhibitions etc has been discovered and is being offered to Friends before being placed before an eager public. For the paltry sum of $3 (which includes a substantial contribution to Her Majesty’s Mails) you may have by post the Premier Package consisting of ‘Entertainment Ephemera’ (61 X 46cm); ‘Turnbull Winter Lectures’ (41.5 X 29.5 cm) designed by Janet Paul; ‘W. J. Harding 1826-1899 —Photographer in Wanganui’ (31.5 X 44cm); and ‘SOO Years of English Printing’ (29.5 x 21 cm).