National planning for public library service: the work and ideas of Lionel McColvin

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Alistair Black

THE MCCOLVIN REPORT IN CONTEXT

A primary and obvious context to the McColvin Report is the development of public libraries prior to it's production. The history of the public library in the decades before the 1940s has been chronicled and discussed at length elsewhere (Black, 2000; Kelly, 1977). It is sufficient here to say two things. First, the interwar years witnessed a slight shift in mentality, which the McColvin plan was to accentuate, away from the notion of the public library as simply a local, civic institution, toward the notion of a national public library system, or a national library grid. Second, this history was characterized by a sense of progress, of which there were plenty of examples; but this was heavily tinged with a great deal of disappointment that services could and should be much better and were being held back by structural problems of poor funding, inadequately trained staff, and parochialism. In writing his Report, McColvin drew on each of these trends. The detail of these trends and other aspects of public library history in the early twentieth century need not delay us here. However, the immediate situation in which libraries found themselves as a result of the war does require fuller treatment.

Libraries and the War

During the war, bombing took a heavy toll on book stocks and library buildings. In total, between 1939 and 1945 some 50 branch and central libraries were destroyed or seriously damaged and around 750,000 books lost to enemy action. Books were in short supply, and by the end of 1942 book prices were 30 percent above their prewar level (Kelly, 1977, p. 327). In response to the crisis some libraries mounted salvage campaigns to attract donations from the public and from private collections. Conscription decimated the public library's professional workforce. By 1945 nearly 2,000 members, or approximately one-third, of the Library Association were serving in the armed forces. (9)

Yet the war generated a number of positive library developments. For McColvin, the conflict had been a constructive force, making libraries more important than they had been (MR, p. v). At the start of the war, the Library Association forged close links with the Ministry of Information. The ministry was anxious to know that "active steps were being taken to alleviate the boredom and lack of enthusiasm which a 'static' winter [in 1940-41] would doubtless involve" (Unpublished letter from Ministry of Information to A. R. Boyle, August 6, 1940. National Archives, INF 1/260); and it acknowledged public libraries as a means of distributing Ministry of Information material and providing premises for meetings and display areas for ministry posters and other information. Librarians welcomed this type of war service and hoped that, by being enthusiastic in agreeing to undertake it, public library premises would not be requisitioned indiscriminately for purposes that had no informational or cultural dimension and that would prevent libraries from going about their normal business. As "experts in indexing and filing and the maintenance of records," librarians also presented their credentials to the Home Office as willing candidates for undertaking such tasks as food control and national registration. (10) McColvin himself served as the officer-in-charge of the civil defense Report Centre in Westminster.