I was saddened to learn of the death of Professor Gary Gorman, Reviews Editor for the Australian Library Journal, on 19 August 2015. Gary died in New Zealand, where he had been living since 1999. His previous positions, which included professorial level appointments at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Malaya, and academic positions at Charles Sturt University and Ballarat CAE in Australia, meant his range of contacts was extensive. He also worked and consulted in Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia, and his participation in IFLA extended the range of his contacts even further.
The Australian Library Journal benefited greatly from Gary’s efficient management of the reviews process and from his wide network of contacts. As Editor, I greatly appreciated the regular and timely arrival of a generous supply of reviews. I will miss it.
I contacted those who had provided reviews for the Journal in recent years to inform them of Gary’s death. Their responses have been illuminating. One long-time reviewer wrote ‘I did a lot of work with Gary and although we never met, we had a fruitful working exchange for a number of years’. The theme of never having met Gary was echoed in tributes from other reviewers. Another consistent theme was the sense of humour that came through in his emails: ‘I never met him, but he wrote very good emails’; ‘He was always so cheerful and optimistic and I will miss his pithy comments’; ‘I enjoyed trading puns & cynical jests with him’; ‘We had an amiable email correspondence and he was very patient with me as a newbie although we never met in person’; ‘I enjoyed my email exchanges with him and he struck me as a witty and good-natured sort of man’.
An obituary of Gary Gorman will follow in a later issue of the Journal. It is expected that the position of Reviews Editor will be filled before the end of the year.
This issue of the Australian Library Journal contains seven articles and 25 reviews. Five of the articles are based on papers presented at Libraries for the People: the 11th Australian Library History Forum held at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, on 18–19 November 2014. This forum marked the 75th anniversary of the passing of the New South Wales Library Act (1939) and focused on the development of public libraries in Australia. The next issue of the Journal will publish more papers from the 11th Australian Library History Forum.
Alex Byrne’s inspiring opening address to the Forum is the first article in this issue. Dr Byrne, the State Librarian and Chief Executive of the State Library of New South Wales, reminds us in ‘Institutional memory and memory institutions’ of the varieties of memories that make up the story of the State Library of New South Wales with its almost 200-year history.
The State Library of New South Wales has undertaken two major surveys of local studies collections, one in 1984 and the other in 2013–2014. Sigrid McCausland’s case study ‘Archives for the people: public libraries and archives in New South Wales’ notes the important role played by public libraries in preserving and providing access to local archives in New South Wales. Her article concludes that public libraries have played a critical role in preserving records documenting the lives of rural and city communities for over 50 years, despite there being no explicit requirement to do so.
The focus narrows further to a single library in the third article, Nora Hinchen’s ‘Keep Stanton Free’. It describes the battle the author, then Manager of the Stanton Library in North Sydney, fought in 1983 to keep the public library service free. This article is a stirring story of a grass-roots campaign that succeeded in overcoming strong opposition.
Rachel Franks’ ‘“There’s a dead body in my library”: crime fiction texts and the history of libraries’ is a change of pace. It examines crime fiction produced in Australia from colonial times, including bibliomysteries, that illustrate the history of information services, providing a supplement to more traditional historical sources.
The role of international organisations such as UNESCO and IFLA in promoting public libraries in the years following the Second World War is the last of the five articles in this issue based on presentations at the Forum. In ‘Australia and the globalisation of the public library’ Amanda Laugesen examines how the idea of the public library was promoted and practical advice and assistance given. Australia’s role in these initiatives and the roles of Australian librarians are noted.
The two remaining papers were not presented at the Australian Library History Forum. In ‘Highways and byways: future directions for Australian public libraries’, Ellen O’Hehir and Sue Reynolds use a range of recent reports to identify themes and trends that will have an impact on Australian public library services in the future.
The final paper is ‘A happy compromise: collaborative approaches to school library designing’ by Hilary Hughes, Derek Bland, Jill Willis and Raylee Elliott Burns. The authors provide evidence of the beneficial impacts of collaboration between professional designers and key stakeholders, such as librarians, teachers, principals and students in the design process for two new school libraries.
Reviews complete this issue, beginning with an extended review by Colin Steele of four books about the Bodleian Library. They are supplemented with reviews published online, of which the theme is ‘All about Books: History, People, Preservation and Censorship’. The reviews are available at http://www.alia.org.au/publications-and-news/australian-library-journal-alj/alj-online-reviews.
The contribution of the Journal’s editorial assistants, Jaye Weatherburn and Julia Kuehns, in tasks associated with editing this issue of the Journal is gratefully acknowledged.
AALIA, FLIANZA
Editor, Australian Library Journal