MARGARET... On the retirement of Margaret Calder as Chief Librarian, 19 March 2007

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 40, 1 January 2007, Page 7

MARGARET... On the retirement of Margaret Calder as Chief Librarian, 19 March 2007

Philip Rainer

Kia ora koutou. I am Philip Rainer from the Alexander Turnbull Library. The Ides of March (which mark Margaret’s birthday) having passed without incident, I am here to speak on behalf of all the staff of the Alexander Turnbull Library. Today is a day of great celebration: of saying farewell to Margaret after 16 years as Chief Librarian, and welcoming Chris to a new chapter in the life of the Library—a Library that has been open to the public for all of 87 years. In her time in the Library Margaret has been a most enlightened colleague, and a far-sighted leader. She has had a most distinguished career in librarianship. You would be hard pressed to find any other person who has given such service to two great Australasian research libraries, the Mitchell and the Turnbull. Margaret arrived back at the Turnbull in the late 1980 s from Australia, in a roaring dark green and yellow car. It was so Australian, and I like to think it was a Holden. She would walk in most mornings with ‘Cooee’, an aboriginal greeting, or more precisely a call to locate oneself relative to someone else.

Cooee, Margaret. Some of us wondered what we were in for! And she has proceeded to constructively disrupt the status quo ever since. If there is one thing I dislike about farewells, it is having to write something pithy on the farewell card. For the first time in my life I feel I cracked it. I wrote (or think I wrote) on Margaret’s, ‘What next? Enjoy it’. It is that ‘What next?’—that feeling of movement, development, progress —that we will always treasure in Margaret. Getting projects started, pushing people to deliver, always seeing far ahead. Tapuhi, Timeframes . . . were forged in just that fashion. While others might be doing the development work, the guiding light was so often Margaret.

I can say with absolute certainty that if not for Margaret, Books in Maori, that majestic 1013-page bibliography, would not have come into the light (te ao marama).

In all of this work, everything was directed at two goals: first, improving access for readers; second, supporting that access with better records, better information about the collections. No short cuts . . . just solid, reliable, verifiable data. And throughout the whole time the quest for improving the range and depth of the collections has never faltered. Her support of the curators has been unfailing

linked with a keen demand to justify their acquisitions in line with collection policy. In recent weeks her negotiations with the owners of the Whites Aviation collection have been a model to us all; and resulted in a magnificent addition to the collections. In the same manner Margaret led the exploration in ATL into digitally born resources; and even before that, into digitising selected parts of the collections.

Margaret was the first (and still the only) woman to be Chief Librarian at ATL. I note in passing that the Bodleian at Oxford has just appointed a woman—Dr Sarah Thomas—to the post of Librarian, the first woman in 400 years, and what’s more an American. For all of her time Margaret has adopted an open door policy to everyone staff, readers, and donors. I, with others, blush to think of the number of times we knocked on her door, or simply walked in with ’Do you have two minutes?’ And she continued this policy throughout some of the really difficult times in the life of the Library—times when she must have pondered hard on John Milton’s lines: ‘better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n’.

But that open door policy has engendered such good relations, significantly with donors. Margaret’s initiation of an annual Donors’ Day, close to Alex’s birthday each year, is a highlight, a time when donors are thanked for their ongoing support. Even as recently as last Friday afternoon two of our major donors/supporters turned up to see Margaret, although what pink golf balls have to do with the Library is beyond me. With people’s individual problems she has been superb. That ability to instantly cast aside their work, performance, attendance or lack thereof, and sympathetically deal with the immediate concern.

And the life of the mind. We lose today one of the quickest and most agile minds in the National Library; and don’t be fooled by her passion for free-cell/solitaire. The thinking, and the writing of task lists, never stopped. And who could forget her close working and personal relationship with Miria Simpson?—where the two of them gave so freely of advice and friendship to each other.

On a personal note ... I hope that Margaret and I continue to buy each other books. I have a whole shelf of them from her—Colin Thubron, William Dalrymple, Maurice Gee, Lloyd Jones all spring to mind. She mercifully has not involved me in detective fiction, and I have kept her away from grumpy old V. S. Naipaul.

And so briefly to Chris ... Welcome. Welcome from all the staff of the Alexander Turnbull Library. An inspired choice; and the first Maori to be Chief Librarian, in a Library so drenched with information and taonga of importance to Maori.

So bang on 8.30 am tomorrow morning we all set to work with a meeting of all ATL staff, and into the future with the Next Generation ATL. When some of us were first aware that Margaret was leaving, John Mohi and myself resolved it should be in Margaret’s good time; in a manner fitting to her position; and be conducted with good grace. I would, on behalf of all the staff of the Turnbull, like to thank everyone who has made this such an occasion. To Margaret... a long and richly deserved next phase in your life.

And finally —as with most things in the Library—l turn to the collections for solace and contemplation. Do not think of Margaret’s going as Paradise Lost, but rather, Chris’s arrival as perhaps Paradise Regained—or given it is 2007 and the strange times in which we live, Paradise Realigned. No reira. Tena tatou katoa.

Turnbull Library Record 40 (2007), 7-10