Abode of dusty angels.

IN THAT STRANGEST of immortal books, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, no passage is stranger than the half-page which precedes the main text, as a paean to all librarians who ever sat behind the counter, or plied the dedicated duster among the books.

Melville sees them all (but especially the "sub-sub-librarians") as taking lifelong pains to please and to serve, but doomed to stay unthanked for ever. They are a downtrodden and dispirited class: "a hopeless, sallow tribe, which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong". Yet they shall be exalted, says Melville, in his ready tone of Biblical assurance: surely they shall be exalted! In Heaven, "Long-pampered Gabriel, Michael and Raphael" will be evicted from their lush lodgings, and the librarians shall be housed in glory.

Strong stuff! But we need not take it all literally. I have known librarians warmed by a sufficiency of Pale Sherry (or of blood-red Burgundy, if it. comes to that). And why should librarians be denied recognition and reward in the here-and-now? Why should they wait until the Archangels vacate the "seven-storied heavens"? But not to quibble; in sentiment and spirit I am with Melville all the way.

Few so-called "advances" have lacked their drawbacks; the computer and the car--both now indispensable--seem nevertheless to be as much bane as blessing. But what harm did a library ever do? (It might be demurred that Karl Marx wrote Capital in the British Museum (Library), but that would be very narrow-minded.) Of all the inventions for the relief and elevation of the human race, none has done so much good and so little harm as the public library and (by extension) as the librarians who make such institutions possible.

I know that not everybody takes such a kindly view of what I regard as wholly benevolent collections. That prototypical ur-columnist Doctor Johnson pronounced that "no place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library". Loopy left-wing English socialist, Tony Wedgwood Benn, was contemptuous of them: "If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library." All very well for him, but not all of us can call upon the inherited squillions of the Wedgwood family to finance our own private research facilities.

Libraries have been milestones in my life. When I was four--eighty years ago--an aunt took me on a visit to the Melbourne Museum. It was then housed, together with the Public Library, in the classic pillared building in Swanston Street, where the State Library today reigns alone. As a bonus treat, I was allowed a hushed and mouselike peep into the Library's immense circular Reading Room, under the "largest glazed ferro-concrete dome in the world". (Was it? Is it still?)

I was gobsmacked--a tiny human ant dwarfed below towering galleries of books which seemed to stretch up to the skies. As we tiptoed out, my aunt whispered: "When you get older, dear, you'll be allowed to come in here and read all those books." What? Me? But she spoke truly. When I was an undergraduate reading History at Melbourne University after the Second Word War, the Public Library was my daily kind mentor, shelter and mother of studies. (It was also the jumping-off point for occasional uproarious sessions with the male librarians in the pub over the road, though not necessarily fuelled by Pale Sherry.)

In 1937, when I was fourteen, the same aunt led me a further step towards thraldom to libraries. Among ancient back numbers of the old Melbourne Argus I had discovered grim stories of the Chinese opium dens of Little Bourke Street; the earliest of my literary fantasies was to write bloodcurdling crime stories about them. I had by chance found a mention of an English opium-taker, though for a lad raised on the Boys' Own Paper it seemed preposterous that any clean-living Englishman could indulge a vile addiction belonging in the stews of Chinatown. Yet--there he was: Thomas de Quincey. (His real name was Quincey--he had added the "de" for swank.) He was friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and in 1821 he published the still-fascinating Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Read this at all costs I must, but how to find a copy?

My aunt was friendly with a state Labor MP and--yes, he thought perhaps he could help. On a memorable day (aunt in best hat and budding scholar in short pants and school cap) we climbed the great bank of front steps to Parliament House, were met in the hall by the member, and treated to afternoon tea. Then to the Parliamentary Library. Forewarned, they had de Quincey ready; the Librarian showed me round, awed by the hushed gravity and authority of the place. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater I was allowed to borrow, and hugged it all the way home in the tram. It was a handy-sized little book, and the first example I ever saw of fine binding--all leather and lavish gold stamping. There was a frontispiece engraving of the author; maybe it was an original edition of 1821. Though I have still to get around to writing that sensational series of opium-loaded crime stories, the volume gave me a startling first-hand introduction to just how very odd some of those Lakes District writers and poets were.

That was my only visit, yet the Victorian Parliamentary Library served me better than it ever did our long-time premier Sir Henry Bolte. At a dinner to mark his retirement, he informed the company that, over his twenty years of service, he had been in every part of the House, but he had never entered the Library. Nobody was inclined to doubt him.

With great libraries go great librarians. Even today, no sound scholar neglects the shrewd judgments of H.M. Green. His two-volume History of Australian Literature (1961) was written while he was Fisher Librarian at the University of Sydney. Australian learning would have been lamed over decades without Morris Miller's two-volume Bibliography. He began it in 1900 while on the staff of Melbourne Public Library, and finished it in 1940, when he had become vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania. And (of memory revered) there was Ida Leeson, long-serving Mitchell Librarian in Sydney. My two years service with her as fellow army officers during the Second World War taught me lessons never forgotten, about libraries and learning and life. Happily, we have a splendid biography of Ida, by Dr Claire Martin. Read it! And if it isn't readily available in your regular library, raise Hell!

Apart from the odd gong in the Australia Day honours, I suspect that Australians are niggardly in the recognition we bestow on our librarians. Cretinous sportsmen are commemorated ad lib; one of the most dubious quantities ever to enter federal politics is to have his statue in the public streets of Canberra. But earl you, offhand, remember any substantial memorial to a librarian? Any statue? Any obelisk? True, a few sober oil portraits here and there, but that seems to be as far as it goes.

And yet, perhaps they do have their memorials--myriad in number; not indeed in polished marble or granite, but in innumerable bright shards shining from prefaces. How many worthy works of learning or of literary substance lack the tribute: "My grateful and particular thanks are given to the learned and helpful staff of--Library"?

Part of last Friday afternoon passed pleasantly in the Kew municipal library, in hot pursuit of some facts for a forthcoming newspaper article. Then--a hitch: I needed imperatively to consult the second edition of a certain massive publication; but though Kew held the first edition, they had not acquired the second. Stumped? Not on your life!

The angels who preside over the enquiry counter first saw me comfortably seated, to watch while nimble fingers over their computer keys got to work on my impasse: "Ah! They've got a copy at the Australian War Memorial ... Canberra ... um ... too far." "There's a second edition in Townsville ... that's even further." Then a couple of phone calls to mysterious unseens: "Ah-ha! They acquired a second edition at Box Hill Library only a few days ago."

Box Hill being about half an hour's drive distant, it was arranged that the book would be waiting for me at 10.30 next morning. It was--all laid out on a sturdy trolley, and just as well, for its bulk and weight almost required a crane. By lunchtime, research completed, I packed up and went home, marvelling at the service I had received in both libraries--skilled and efficient, keen and courteous: nothing wrong with our librarians. I wonder how many of them feel the need of a bit of comfort from Herman Melville?