At RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia a unique opportunity was presented in late 2012 to bring together scholars interested in the history of the people, places and institutions that have shaped the culture and learning of communities. Buildings, Books and Blackboards — Intersecting Narratives was a combined conference of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES), Mechanics’ Institutes World Wide (under the auspices of Mechanics’ Institutes Victoria), and the Tenth Australian Library History Forum. Additionally, the conference was part of Melbourne Knowledge Week, an event which showcased the knowledge sector in an Australian city already well known for its sport and culture. Papers presented at the conference were wide ranging, reflecting, not only the intersection between the history of architecture, libraries and education but also the ongoing relevance of related issues for contemporary practice. This special issue of Library and Information History presents a representative selection of conference papers, with contributors drawn together from various disciplines by their mutual interest in the place of libraries in society and the forces which have shaped them internationally.
In ‘Function and Decoration, Tradition and Invention: Carnegie Libraries and Their Architectural Messages’, Oriel Prizeman presents an architectural perspective on the function of ornamentation in public library buildings. She focuses particularly on the interplay between functionalism and decoration in two libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie in his adopted home town, Pittsburgh. In Michael Birkner’s contribution, ‘‘The Wisest Help’: Frederick Keppel and His Consultants’ Impact on Australia and New Zealand Libraries’, we move from the impact of Carnegie’s philanthropy on the built environment of Pittsburgh to his Corporation’s contribution to library practice in Australia and New Zealand in the first half of the twentieth century. Birkner reassesses Carnegie’s often contentious intervention in the library profession in the Southern Dominions, emphasizing the role of expert advisors and educators such as Frederick Keppel and James Russell in shaping Carnegie’s global ambitions. The final paper by Martyn Walker, ‘‘For the last many years in England everybody has been educating the people, but they have forgotten to find them any books’: The Mechanics’ Institutes Library Movement and its contribution to working-class adult education during the Nineteenth Century’ situates the development of mechanics’ institute libraries in a similarly global context, uncovering the role of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’ Institutes in providing reading material for the working classes.
Many of the themes emerging from this conference will be addressed further in 2014 when the State Library of New South Wales will host the eleventh Australian Library History Forum, November 18–19, 2014. Provisionally titled Library History Forum 2014: Marking 75 years of the NSW Library Act: Libraries for the people, this eleventh forum will provide an opportunity to celebrate the many achievements of libraries and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the NSW Library Act in 1939.