The Opening of the Domed Reading Room

The new dome was officially opened by the Governor General, Lord Denman, on Friday 14 November 1913. The proceedings took place in the old newspaper reading room, now the Trescowthick Information Centre. A large gathering of guests listened to several speeches which, despite their length, were transcribed almost in their entirety in the Argus newspaper. Guests were then led up to the new dome by way of the handsome Victorian marble staircase. The Royal Victorian Liedertafel sang the National Anthem, followed by part-songs at intervals from the second gallery. The result was very beautiful according a the report in Table Talk, 'the voices floated outwards and ascended to the dome'. The guests were able to go up to the upper floors 'by means of corkscrew staircases'. the remainder of the evening was spent in 'conversazione' in the picture galleries kept open for the occasion and where dainty refreshments were served.

Nevertheless, the grand and long-awaited occasion had its detractors. The Tribune reported that there was hardly a single Catholic of prominence present at the 'brilliant function'. Despite there being an 'elaborate programme and rich menu, all arranged at public expense', the Tribune's reporter saw hundreds of Protestant clergyman and not a single priest! The fault, the Tribune concluded, lay partly with 'the parson-ridden board of trustees'.

Worse, the opening in 1913 coincided with changes in library systems that were greeted at the time with angry criticism. Only 35,000 volumes of books of reference and standard authors would be shelved around the walls of the circular reading room, with the rest to be stored in the annulus. A 1912 report had claimed the Library would one day be able to hold more than two million volumes. The problem, however, was that far fewer books could be accomodated in the shelving around the new reading room than had been available on open access in the Queen's Hall and the Barry Hall, the main reading rooms before the opening of the dome.

Not everyone embraces change with the same enthusiasm as some managerial types, and, even before the opening, disgruntled readers complained about the lack of direct access to the books and the consequent loss of browsing. Before the opening of the dome, the Melbourne Public Library had been perhaps the freest in the world with 140,000 books on open access. After the dome opened, the Library's collection of 300,000 volumes, thousands of which had been accumulated in the previous fifteen years and stowed away in the basement, were housed in the annulus stacks. A call number was needed for any book not on open access, which had to be obtained by consulting a card catalogue. Moreover, readers had to cope with another revolutionary change, the introduction of the Dewey system of classification, regarded as the most practical working system yet discovered.

As early as September 1912, 'RJD' and Arthur Wills wrote letters to the Argus objecting to the new system and complaining of having to ask for books. 'Chancery Lane', a regular and irate critic of the dome and the new system, described the reading room as a rotunda 'a la Pentonville', with a warder at the centre and radiating tables in lieu of exercise yards. He complained about the shifting and climbing of the tall ladders to reach the books in the reading room and of the time spent waiting for books to come down from the stacks. And there was no doubt as to where the blame lay:

But it will be too much to hope that any effort will be made to consult the convenience of its [the Library's] readers, or to consider how to conserve and develop its usefulness, in an institution with lifelong State appointed trustees...

Illustrations

Left: Domed Reading Room c1940-50 showing the tow large globes that originally stood in the Queen's Hall, Pictures Collection
Right: Readers in the Domed Reading Room in 1950, Pictures Collection