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Jean Hagger, BA, MLS, ALA, FLAA (1917-2008).

Article Excerpt
Jean Hagger, who died on 16th July 2008 in her 91st year, was the foundation head of the RMIT Department of Librarianship and a pioneer of education for librarianship in Australia.

Jean was born in Preston, Melbourne on 11th October 1917. She was actually christened Margaret Jean Hagger but never used the Margaret, insisting on being called simply 'Jean'. I sometimes thought that she quietly rejoiced, as a cataloguer and teacher of cataloguing, in having an unused forename.

Jean attended primary school in Preston, and then Coburg High School. From Coburg she won a scholarship to the Melbourne Girls High School, known since 1934 as Mac.Robertson High School. The change in the school's name was made following a very substantial donation but Jean's niece told me that Jean strongly disapproved of the change and invariably referred to her old school by its former name.

Nowadays it is almost conventional wisdom that students can expect to experience at least one significant change in career during their working life. Jean, however, was of a generation when that was certainly not the case and when the security of an assured career was highly valued and people expected to follow one career through to retirement. It is a tribute to her strength of character and sense of 'can do' that Jean in her lifetime pursued no less than four different careers.

In 1937 she graduated from Melbourne Teachers College with a Trained Primary Teachers Certificate. Her first position was in a country school but in 1943 she was teaching third grade at East Coburg Primary School when the headmaster asked for a volunteer to set up a school library. Jean's offer was accepted. She commenced studies for the examinations of the Australian Institute of Librarians (later the Library Association of Australia...

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