...century. Consideration the significance of cataloguing as an intellectual and creative act also enables an exploration of issues of power and knowledge in the life of the female librarian.

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In a speech in 1981 entitled 'Reminiscences of a cataloguer', Jean Fleming Arnot, formerly Head Cataloguer at the Public Library of New South Wales (PLNSW) quoted Pierce Butler, Professor of the Graduate Library School, University of Chicago: 'Nobody loves a cataloguer. Cataloguers are the pariahs, the untouchables, in the caste system of librarianship. Everyone seems to pity them'. (1)

To focus here on Arnot the cataloguer is not to avoid the issues of gender alluded to in the title's specific reference to her as a woman in librarianship, but to examine the significance of an intellectual and creative task--the art of cataloguing--at which Arnot excelled.

The personal papers of Jean Arnot (1903-95) are contained within sixteen neatly ordered boxes in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of NSW. (2) They document not only her forty-seven year professional career at the PLNSW but also her activism, most notably in the struggle for equal pay for women, a cause with which her name was at times considered synonymous. (3) Those aware of this association may expect that one might turn initially to this story--of a female librarian's role in broader Australian society--in examining Arnot's life. In taking Arnot as an example of women in Australian librarianship one might equally anticipate a discussion of overt discrimination in the profession, of the barriers to Arnot's career progression. (4)

Focusing instead on cataloguing, the particular area of librarianship in which Arnot ultimately specialised, represents in some sense an attempt to realign the historical record of her life to incorporate what she did achieve alongside what she did not. Arnot's struggle against the barriers she encountered on account of her gender was carried out against the background of a life of considerable professional achievement, achievement that should not escape the historical record simply because she did not climb the final rungs of the ladder of the library hierarchy.

In the history of Australian librarianship it is mainly the achievements of those at the very top that have been recorded for posterity. An account of Arnot's working life represents an attempt then to redress this imbalance, to capture something of the story of women in Australian librarianship and thereby contribute to the broader history of women's working lives in Australia, from which librarianship has remained curiously absent. (5) Although a history of Arnot's professional career can hardly be termed 'history from below' in its purest sense, it is nonetheless instructive to consider her daily work, carried out as it was in closer proximity to the 'coalface' of the books, the library user and, particularly here, the catalogue, than the more well-documented lives of her male superiors.

The principal librarians of Arnot's time were not entirely removed from the cataloguing process. David Jones' thesis on W. H. Ifould, who headed the PLNSW from 1912 to 1942, documents Ifould's detailed oversight of this department. (6) John Metcalfe, Ifould's successor as Principal Librarian, certainly displayed a keen interest in cataloguing in his role at the library and later as an academic. (7) Arnot, however, expressed her perception of Metcalfe's involvement in cataloguing at the Public Library in the following terms: 'Later on I suffered the experiments of John Metcalfe when he really became interested in cataloguing! The Metcalfe era had begun!(8) Arnot proudly recalled on several occasions the way in which Metcalfe referred to the card catalogue of the Library as 'Miss Arnot's baby'. (9) There was evidently no doubt as to ultimate responsibility for the catalogue.

It is, of course, beyond the bounds of an examination of Arnot's life to formulate a general conclusion on the nature of the work of female librarians en masse, bearing in mind that the PLNSW was a metropolitan institution, far removed from the more directly nurturing role of, for example, a children's librarian in a small country town. The librarian at the PLNSW was, however, not an entirely different species from her later counterparts in the periphery and in examining Arnot's professional work and identity, one must separate the often gendered discourse of what a librarian does from the reality of the work involved. The work of cataloguing is a case in point and a task common to all.

In her seminal text on women in American librarianship, Apostles of culture, the social historian Dee Garrison dismisses cataloguing as a mundane and routine job relegated to the female librarian, a kind of housekeeping in the workplace. (10) Other historians of women in librarianship, most notably Suzanne Hildenbrand, have vigorously challenged Garrison's general thesis of librarianship as an extension of women's private caring and service work into the public sphere. (11) In Australia, Jim Cleary has recorded the fascinating story of the 'first generation' of women at the PLNSW. He documents the way in which the pioneering Nita Kibble entered the library in 1899,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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