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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
Lionel McColvin (1896-1976) is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of British librarianship. In the specific context of 150 years of public librarianship in Britain, his reputation as a visionary influence is second only to that of the nineteenth-century pioneer Edward Edwards, while in the twentieth century his reputation is unsurpassed. McColvin was the major voice in the mid-twentieth-century movement to reconstruct and modernize public libraries. He is best known as author of The Public Library System of Great Britain: A Report on Its Present Condition with Proposals for Post-war Reorganization, published in 1942 at a moment of intense wartime efforts to assemble plans for social and economic reconstruction. The "McColvin Report," as it came to be termed, was a landmark in the struggle to de-Victorianize the public library, not least by emphasizing the institution's universalism and its function as a national, not just a civic, agency. This article briefly describes McColvin's notable contribution to twentieth-century librarianship, resulting from his work as a public librarian, as a leading figure in the Library Association, and as an influential player in the international library movement. The article's core aim is to offer a critical appraisal of McColvin's vision for public libraries by placing it in the context of the project to build a better postwar world. This project was defined by the conceptualization and development of a welfare state in Britain, the underlying values of which can be seen to correspond to McColvin's national plan for a rejuvenated public library system. McColvin drew on the spirit of the time to produce a plan for public libraries that was shot through with social idealism and commitment and with a confidence in the need for intervention by the state--values that perhaps provide lessons for current and future library and information policymakers and professionals.
"ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN OF ALL LIBRARIANS" (1): MCCOLVIN THE HERO
If the nineteenth-century world of British public librarianship belonged to Edward Edwards, the powerhouse behind the inaugural Public Libraries Act of 1850, that of the twentieth century was dominated by Lionel McColon, author of the seminal survey The Public Library System of Great Britain: A Report on Its Present Condition with Proposala for Post-War Reorganization (1942)--the McColvin Report, as it came to be termed (McColvin, 1942b, abbreviated in textual references hereafter to MR). (2) Unlike a number of other library leaders who have been the subject of biographical monographs (Gobolt and Munford, 1983; Miller, 1967; Munford, 1963; Munford, 1968; Munford and Fry, 1966), coverage of McColvin's life has been restricted to short biographical sketches and to interpretations of particular themes (for example, Collison, 1968; Gardner, 1968; Jefcoate, 1999; Kerslake, 2001; McColvin, K. R., 1968; Vollans, 1968b; Whiteman, 1986 and 1967). The nearest thing to a full biography that has been produced is the festschrift edited by Robert Vollans, McColvin's former colleague at Westminster City Libraries, seven years after McColvin retired (Vollans, 1968a).
Assessments of McColvin's professional life and contribution have invariably been glowing and congratulatory. Immediately after his death, McColvin was assessed as "truly a Colossus of librarianship," the author of his obituary in the Library Association Record arguing that "it is difficult to think of any aspect of librarianship in his time in which McColvin did not play a leading and often decisive part" (Harrison, 1976, p. 88). Such was his standing in the profession that during his life he became known, colloquially, as "Mr. Public Libraries" (Vollans, 1968b, p. 17). The library historian William Munford viewed McColvin as "the outstanding librarian of his generation and one of the greatest figures produced by public libraries since 1850" (1951, p. 54), and this was a decade before McColvin had even retired. On the matter of the McColvin Report, Mnnford was equally generous, calling it "the most devastating and ... perhaps the most influential" of all public library inquiries (1951, p. 51). "It is unlikely," he continued "that the full influence of the report, direct and indirect, can be felt in the lifetime of any who first read it in 1942" (p. 51).
Given such eulogistic assessments of McColvin's career and the significance of the McColvin Report, it is perhaps timely to examine his career and especially the Report more critically by attempting to place them in the context of their times and to assess them from the historical perspective that the passage of time allows. Such an approach might help suggest to others the importance of undertaking the fuller, more complete biographical study that McColvin deserves.
The historical context of the McColvin Report is the climate of optimistic wartime debate concerning arrangements for a better postwar world. It was in the cauldron of heated anticipation of an improved, more just society that the McColvin legend was forged. Particularly noteworthy is the timing of the McColvin Report. Published just before a major turning point in the war and discussed during the ensuing period of increasing optimism and purpose, the McColvin Report took on a reputation of almost mythical proportion, a momentous, "watershed" event in the history of libraries and librarianship in Britain and a product of the spirit of renewal that was sweeping the country at the time. Irrespective of any criticism it generated at the time, it has always carried with it the "feel-good" factor of the age in which it was produced. It is one of the purposes of this article to describe and explain that "feel-good" factor, in keeping with the need to encourage cool and critical appraisals of the heroic myth that McColvin has become in the minds of many librarians and library historians.
McCOLVIN'S LIFE AND CAREER
The son of a portrait and figure painter, Lionel Roy McColvin was born on November 30, 1896, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne into a middle-class family of modest means. In 1901 the family moved south to London, eventually settling in the southern suburb of Croydon, where the young McColvin won a scholarship to secondary school.
During his fifty-year career in librarianship, McColvin rendered distinguished service, man and boy, to a number of public library authorities. Having served a ten-year "apprenticeship" at Croydon Public Library, which he joined at the age of fifteen, McColvin went north to Wigan in 1921, armed with his recently achieved Library Association professional certificate, to take up the post of deputy librarian, with chief responsibility for reference services. In 1924 he finally obtained the position of chief librarian, at Ipswich. Here he virtually "re-created the library service," establishing a new central library and developing extension activities in music and drama (Vollans, 1968b, p. 16). In 1931 he returned to London as Hampstead's chief. Finally, in 1938 McColvin was appointed to the top job at Westminster, where he was to remain until his retirement, brought on by ill health, in 1961.
McColvin was consistently active in promoting libraries and librarianship in print. His interests were varied--ranging from music librarianship and work with children, to book selection and library extension work (McColvin, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1952, 1957; McColvin and Reeves, 1937-38). (3) On more than one occasion he took the opportunity to promote the library cause on radio and television, beginning with a broadcast on the BBC on January 7, 1936, on the subject of "The Public Library Service" (Vollans, 1968b, p. 20).
McColvin served the Library Association, in various capacities, throughout almost the entire span of his career as a chief librarian. He worked tirelessly to improve the status of librarianship and the standards of service received by the public, efforts that were rewarded by a CBE in 1951. (4) Elected to the Library Association Council in 1925 (on which he remained until 1961), between 1934 and 1951 McColvin served as honorary secretary. He was the association's president in 1952 and was made an honorary fellow in 1961. Between 1941 and 1945 he edited the Library Association Record. McColvin also became a well-known figure in the international library field. His international work began in 1936, with a three-month investigative tour of libraries in the United States, the results of which were contained in the Library Association's A Survey of Libraries, published two years later (McColvin, 1938). It was only after 1945, however, that he grew into a truly international library figure. In 1946-47 he undertook an extensive tour of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Middle East, and the United States, and throughout the 1950s he made numerous visits to a variety of European countries. These visits, and the evidence of library purpose and practice he came across, were recounted in his authoritative book The Chance to Read (McColvin, 1956). In addition, McColvin served on committees in the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the International Federation for Information (FID), and UNESCO.
McCOLVIN'S PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PHILOSOPHY
McColvin successfully combined deep-rooted, philosophical beliefs about the value of librarianship with a capacity to plan and bring about concrete change. As one of his colleagues remarked, he was "a practical man, not a dreamer" (Gardner, 1968, p. 109). His philosophy of public librariansbip was formed by three tenets. First, the library service existed "to serve--to give without question, favour or limitation. It is an instrument for the promotion of all or any of the activities of its readers." Second, the public library had to be "catholic and all embracing"--in selecting materials and prioritizing services, as all libraries must do in the absence of infinite resources, "this must always be in accord with the value of the service to the individuals requiring them." Third, libraries should be "free in every sense"--"universally available...
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