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

ABSTRACT

Lionel McColvin (1896-1976) is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of British librarianship. In the specific context of 150 years of public librarianship in Britain, his reputation as a visionary influence is second only to that of the nineteenth-century pioneer Edward Edwards, while in the twentieth century his reputation is unsurpassed. McColvin was the major voice in the mid-twentieth-century movement to reconstruct and modernize public libraries. He is best known as author of The Public Library System of Great Britain: A Report on Its Present Condition with Proposals for Post-war Reorganization, published in 1942 at a moment of intense wartime efforts to assemble plans for social and economic reconstruction. The "McColvin Report," as it came to be termed, was a landmark in the struggle to de-Victorianize the public library, not least by emphasizing the institution's universalism and its function as a national, not just a civic, agency. This article briefly describes McColvin's notable contribution to twentieth-century librarianship, resulting from his work as a public librarian, as a leading figure in the Library Association, and as an influential player in the international library movement. The article's core aim is to offer a critical appraisal of McColvin's vision for public libraries by placing it in the context of the project to build a better postwar world. This project was defined by the conceptualization and development of a welfare state in Britain, the underlying values of which can be seen to correspond to McColvin's national plan for a rejuvenated public library system. McColvin drew on the spirit of the time to produce a plan for public libraries that was shot through with social idealism and commitment and with a confidence in the need for intervention by the state--values that perhaps provide lessons for current and future library and information policymakers and professionals.

"ONE OF THE BEST KNOWN OF ALL LIBRARIANS" (1): MCCOLVIN THE HERO

If the nineteenth-century world of British public librarianship belonged to Edward Edwards, the powerhouse behind the inaugural Public Libraries Act of 1850, that of the twentieth century was dominated by Lionel McColon, author of the seminal survey The Public Library System of Great Britain: A Report on Its Present Condition with Proposala for Post-War Reorganization (1942)--the McColvin Report, as it came to be termed (McColvin, 1942b, abbreviated in textual references hereafter to MR). (2) Unlike a number of other library leaders who have been the subject of biographical monographs (Gobolt and Munford, 1983; Miller, 1967; Munford, 1963; Munford, 1968; Munford and Fry, 1966), coverage of McColvin's life has been restricted to short biographical sketches and to interpretations of particular themes (for example, Collison, 1968; Gardner, 1968; Jefcoate, 1999; Kerslake, 2001; McColvin, K. R., 1968; Vollans, 1968b; Whiteman, 1986 and 1967). The nearest thing to a full biography that has been produced is the festschrift edited by Robert Vollans, McColvin's former colleague at Westminster City Libraries, seven years after McColvin retired (Vollans, 1968a).

Assessments of McColvin's professional life and contribution have invariably been glowing and congratulatory. Immediately after his death, McColvin was assessed as "truly a Colossus of librarianship," the author of his obituary in the Library Association Record arguing that "it is difficult to think of any aspect of librarianship in his time in which McColvin did not play a leading and often decisive part" (Harrison, 1976, p. 88). Such was his standing in the profession that during his life he became known, colloquially, as "Mr. Public Libraries" (Vollans, 1968b, p. 17). The library historian William Munford viewed McColvin as "the outstanding librarian of his generation and one of the greatest figures produced by public libraries since 1850" (1951, p. 54), and this was a decade before McColvin had even retired. On the matter of the McColvin Report, Mnnford was equally generous, calling it "the most devastating and ... perhaps the most influential" of all public library inquiries (1951, p. 51). "It is unlikely," he continued "that the full influence of the report, direct and indirect, can be felt in the lifetime of any who first read it in 1942" (p. 51).

Given such eulogistic assessments of McColvin's career and the significance of the McColvin Report, it is perhaps timely to examine his career and especially the Report more critically by attempting to place them in the context of their times and to assess them from the historical perspective that the passage of time allows. Such an approach might help suggest to others the importance of undertaking the fuller, more complete biographical study that McColvin deserves.

The historical context of the McColvin Report is the climate of optimistic wartime debate concerning arrangements for a better postwar world. It was in the cauldron of heated anticipation of an improved, more just society that the McColvin legend was forged. Particularly noteworthy is the timing of the McColvin Report. Published just before a major turning point in the war and discussed during the ensuing period of increasing optimism and purpose, the McColvin Report took on a reputation of almost mythical proportion, a momentous, "watershed" event in the history of libraries and librarianship in Britain and a product of the spirit of renewal that was sweeping the country at the time. Irrespective of any criticism it generated at the time, it has always carried with it the "feel-good" factor of the age in which it was produced. It is one of the purposes of this article to describe and explain that "feel-good" factor, in keeping with the need to encourage cool and critical appraisals of the heroic myth that McColvin has become in the minds of many librarians and library historians.

McCOLVIN'S LIFE AND CAREER

The son of a portrait and figure painter, Lionel Roy McColvin was born on November 30, 1896, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne into a middle-class family of modest means. In 1901 the family moved south to London, eventually settling in the southern suburb of Croydon, where the young McColvin won a scholarship to secondary school.

During his fifty-year career in librarianship, McColvin rendered distinguished service, man and boy, to a number of public library authorities. Having served a ten-year "apprenticeship" at Croydon Public Library, which he joined at the age of fifteen, McColvin went north to Wigan in 1921, armed with his recently achieved Library Association professional certificate, to take up the post of deputy librarian, with chief responsibility for reference services. In 1924 he finally obtained the position of chief librarian, at Ipswich. Here he virtually "re-created the library service," establishing a new central library and developing extension activities in music and drama (Vollans, 1968b, p. 16). In 1931 he returned to London as Hampstead's chief. Finally, in 1938 McColvin was appointed to the top job at Westminster, where he was to remain until his retirement, brought on by ill health, in 1961.

McColvin was consistently active in promoting libraries and librarianship in print. His interests were varied--ranging from music librarianship and work with children, to book selection and library extension work (McColvin, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1952, 1957; McColvin and Reeves, 1937-38). (3) On more than one occasion he took the opportunity to promote the library cause on radio and television, beginning with a broadcast on the BBC on January 7, 1936, on the subject of "The Public Library Service" (Vollans, 1968b, p. 20).

McColvin served the Library Association, in various capacities, throughout almost the entire span of his career as a chief librarian. He worked tirelessly to improve the status of librarianship and the standards of service received by the public, efforts that were rewarded by a CBE in 1951. (4) Elected to the Library Association Council in 1925 (on which he remained until 1961), between 1934 and 1951 McColvin served as honorary secretary. He was the association's president in 1952 and was made an honorary fellow in 1961. Between 1941 and 1945 he edited the Library Association Record. McColvin also became a well-known figure in the international library field. His international work began in 1936, with a three-month investigative tour of libraries in the United States, the results of which were contained in the Library Association's A Survey of Libraries, published two years later (McColvin, 1938). It was only after 1945, however, that he grew into a truly international library figure. In 1946-47 he undertook an extensive tour of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Middle East, and the United States, and throughout the 1950s he made numerous visits to a variety of European countries. These visits, and the evidence of library purpose and practice he came across, were recounted in his authoritative book The Chance to Read (McColvin, 1956). In addition, McColvin served on committees in the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the International Federation for Information (FID), and UNESCO.

McCOLVIN'S PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PHILOSOPHY

McColvin successfully combined deep-rooted, philosophical beliefs about the value of librarianship with a capacity to plan and bring about concrete change. As one of his colleagues remarked, he was "a practical man, not a dreamer" (Gardner, 1968, p. 109). His philosophy of public librariansbip was formed by three tenets. First, the library service existed "to serve--to give without question, favour or limitation. It is an instrument for the promotion of all or any of the activities of its readers." Second, the public library had to be "catholic and all embracing"--in selecting materials and prioritizing services, as all libraries must do in the absence of infinite resources, "this must always be in accord with the value of the service to the individuals requiring them." Third, libraries should be "free in every sense"--"universally available regardless of a man's resources, but free also in the sense that they offer sanctuary to all facets of opinion and all aspects of knowledge" (MR, pp. 4-5).

McColvin often stressed the human side of librarianship. It was the job of librarians "to help people become whole, active, individual personalities." Librarians could do this because, contrary to the stereotype, they were people orientated: "librarians are versatile and adaptable people--not half so unbusinesslike and retiring as many had one time regarded them." Librarians could also bring people together and teach tolerance by furthering the interchange of ideas and experience between nations and cultures: "We can ... render a vital service to civilisation by circulating, each of us in our own country, those books which will tell us about the people who live in other countries, their thoughts, conditions, aspirations and their essential oneness with all other peoples" (McColvin, 1942a, pp. 91-92).

The written word, McColvin believed, was "the most adaptable, most easily accepted means by which man can make the widest and most appropriate contacts with the ideas and knowledge of other men" (1956, p. 10). These beliefs echoed and revived the raw idealism of the nineteenth-century library movement and linked tightly to the ideals of universalism and egalitarianism that underpinned the evolution of a welfare state in Britain during and immediately after the Second World War. He was ever keen to promote these ideals: "today we have reached the stage when we advocate universallibrary provision, not merely because the masses have the right to equality of opportunity in respect of access to knowledge but also because we firmly believe that mankind will not be able to exercise wisely their fights and powers unless they do indeed enjoy such access" (McColvin, 1961, p. v, emphasis added).

Regarding his personal politics, his loyalties are difficult to pin down firmly, but his son, Kenneth, also a public librarian, was happy to describe his father as "a socialist (with a small 's')" who firmly believed that "a man through education and personal endeavour should be individually and collectively happy." He did not see his father, however, as a supporter of "command socialism" or of overbearing state control: "He was dedicated to free librarianship, to librarianship without governmental, social or moral censorship" (McColvin, K. R., 1968, p. 13). Similarly, McColvin himself was eager to stress that Britain's libraries had historically been "on the whole, little the concern of the State, but have grown up very much as independent, self-governing institutions" (1961, p. v). Yet, as we shall see, this did not prevent him from arguing in favor of a much greater role for the state in the provision and planning of public library services.

THE McCOLVIN REPORT

Reacting to a spirit of national reconstruction that demanded that plans for a postwar world be put in place as early as possible, in 1941 the Library Association asked McColvin, its honorary secretary, to conduct a survey of the state of, and prospects for, public libraries. The exigencies of war and the urgency of the situation meant that the task of producing an extensive yet decisive report was best undertaken by one man rather than by committee. It was said that McColvin was the right person for the job as he had an "unrivalled knowledge of the conditions of British librarianship" (Unpublished letter from P. Welsford to R Morris, July 4, 1941. Scottish Record Office, GD281/13/45), his work on the Library Association's large prewar survey of public libraries having given him the authority to undertake further, more extensive research (McColvin, 1938).

McColvin's investigations, funded by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust (CUKT), were carried out largely in the second half of 1941, following the circulation of a questionnaire to the nation's library authorities in June. (5) He approached his work, in his own words, with a "deep sense of responsibility" (MR, p. 198). It was planned that he should spend a total of seventy nights away from home, commencing in October 1941, traveling the length and breadth of the country visiting libraries of all types, some in the remotest of places. In the end, McColvin visited 130 library systems and, within these, around 350 service points. The Library Association received the Report in early September 1942 and released it on October 15. (6)

The Report is a dense and detailed document, but without the structure of a modern, official statement. It is nonetheless well organized, extremely readable, and accessible. The tone of the Report was, and remains, compelling. Idealistic, committed, ideological even, the Report in many ways resurrected the burning faith in the importance of self-realization through the public library that had marked the discourses of the service's Victorian pioneers. The Report's feel is adventurous, Whiteman describing it's style as "wholly uncompromising, its author taking the risk that his ideas would be taken as impracticable, even outrageous" (1986, p. 1).

The Report was divided into four parts. Part 1, comprising a single chapter, delivered a potent philosophical statement on the value of public libraries. Part 2, made up of twelve chapters, reported on the condition of public libraries at the time. Sandwiched between an opening general overview of the availability and organization of the service and a closing summary of the problems facing libraries and the factors producing those problems, in this part of the Report McColvin addressed a wide range of issues: the county library system; the urban library system; stock; work with children; buildings, facilities, and methods; staffing; finance; and cooperation. An entire chapter was devoted to the situation in Scotland and another to the various functions and departments of the public library: reference, lending, local history and extension work, as well as the provision of museums and art galleries. Part 3, divided into five chapters, presented proposals for the future--McColvin's grand plan with emphasis on the reorganization of administrative units, the provision of central funding, improved cooperation, and better training. The fourth and final part of the Report discussed the very special problems and developments associated with library services in wartime, especially in relation to citizens evacuated from the cities to rural areas and small towns.

McColvin claimed his report to be realistic: "I have not evaded the unpleasant nor sought to magnify it" (MR, p. viii). Consequently, he was unable to avoid painting a sorry picture of existing provision: "The outstanding impression of the library service gained throughout this survey is that it is badly organised" (MR, p. 109). Book stocks and staffing, he said, were often inadequate, and, although there were some "oases in a desert," most libraries survived in poor premises with lamentable facilities (MR, p. 81). "All libraries should be to all men an opportunity and an inspiration," he observed, but in Britain, "too many are a disappointment and a failure" (MR, p. 195). He described reference provision as "the outstanding failure of British librarianship. In only a handful of libraries is it adequately practised" (MR, p. 63). Most library buildings, said McColvin, were "unsuitable, inappropriate, inadequate, expensive and ill-sited," forcing him to conclude that "as a class, libraries are the worst set of buildings to be found in this country" (MR, p. 81). One central library he visited was a bitter disappointment, as it was in a prosperous town and one of the larger libraries in its class:

   The lending library is a long, dark, cramped room; the non-fiction
   stock is plentiful and includes much good material but also much
   that is very old, drab and dirty. The "reference library" is an
   insult to the name, upstairs we find an assortment of reading
   rooms--a big dirty newsroom, a place called a "reviews room"
   (a name clearly intended as a tribute to the reading tastes of the
   more seasoned vagrants, who filled it to capacity), a "magazine
   room" devoid of magazines, and another at present used by a school.
   (MR, p. 47)

Such depictions were echoed by other librarians at the time. The Borough Librarian of Fleetwood, A. A. C. Hedges, reported that his library was "dying through lack of attention.... Sixty per cent of the fiction volumes are either filthy, dirty, imperfect or moribund, and not fit to be taken into people's homes." (7)

Six main reasons were offered to explain the poor state of the nation's library service:

1. Poorly trained staff

2. Lack of demand for a good library service: bad libraries did not provoke reform, they simply generated a bad attitude and apathy toward the issue among the public

3. Disinterested local authorities

4. Poor funding

5. The existence of too many inefficient, small library authorities

6. Lack of coordination between authorities: for example, some fifty-four towns accommodated both an urban municipal library and a county library headquarters (MR, pp. 106-112)

The real importance of the Report, however, as the Times Educational Supplement commented at the time, was "not its criticism of the present--though that is useful--but its suggestions for the future." (8) The report amounted to a detailed blueprint for a new library service. McColvin's key ingredient for fashioning a more efficient library service was the establishment of a national body with responsibility for libraries and with the power to administer direct grants from the central government. Of equal importance in the Report, but much more controversial, was the proposal to reduce the existing total of 604 library authorities in the United Kingdom to 93 (78 in England, including 9 in London, 9 in Scotland, 5 in Wales, and 1 for Northern Ireland). Larger authorities, McColvin argued, would deliver economies of scale, reduce the damaging distinction between town and county, and produce a more efficient system of interlibrary cooperation. The proposed national, central grant-giving body would complement these structural changes and instill common high standards across the library system.

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.

Unlike in the First World War, the government recognized from an early stage how public libraries could act as an antidote to psychological stress on the home front. In 1940, at the behest of a Ministry of Labour anxious to improve the welfare of industrial workers in the interest of production, the Board of Education issued a memorandum to library authorities, calling their attention to the importance of maintaining and, if possible, extending their services. (11) The memorandum explained that "The public libraries afford recreation and instruction to vast numbers of readers and, when the hours of darkness come and the possibilities of outdoor recreation are less, increasing numbers will find in books a relief from the strain of war work and war conditions." (12)

In most places, although not everywhere, wartime conditions brought with it the boom in reading and library activity that the government had hoped for. Book loans soared. The blackouts and air raids produced a minor revolution in public library opening hours: earlier opening, reduced half-day closing, and some Sunday opening. Further flexibility in the operation of services was evident in the availability of extra lending tickets and the prolongation of loan periods. The reading boom appeared to maintain its momentum throughout the war: "Blitz or no Blitz--the demand for books goes up," trumpeted the Daily Express in 1944. (13) The public library was believed to have an important role to play in relieving the stresses and strains of war. The editor of the Library Association Recordwrote in the depths of the national crisis of May 1940 that "Books in war time can be a refuge into which we make our way to escape the slings and arrows of outrageous conflict ... a storehouse from which to draw sure knowledge and rich emotion to clarify our minds and strengthen our souls for the tasks to which we

have set our hand" (Smith, 1940, p. 133).

McColvin and others in the library movement recognized that the boom in reading and in library use provided a fertile soil in which new plans for the public library could be planted and, hopefully, grow. Renewed faith in the public library's popularity boosted confidence in the possibility of further, fundamental advance. After all, if popularity and use could be achieved without extra financial investment, as had been the case since the start of the war, think what could be done if the service were to receive significant new resources?

Reconstruction and the Sense of Renewal

In explaining that "we fight not for a world fit for heroes but for a world fit for ordinary people to live in freely and fully," McColvin was reflecting a wider sense of the hope for, and possibility of, renewal that swept the nation, certainly from 1942 onwards (MR, p. v). McColvin was inspired not just by the prospect of reconstruction but of revivification also. He urged the deployment of "the utmost vision and foresight" if opportunities were not to be lost in achieving postwar improvement (MR, p. v).

The crisis that befell Britain in May and June 1940-as the German army swept through France and the Low Countries, forcing the British Army to flee in disarray from the beaches of Dunkirk--shook the nation out of its complacency, invigorating it with purpose and propelling it toward a program of social renewal in anticipation of victory. Almost immediately, the demand for social reform "sprang up as suddenly as a gust of wind on a still day and continued to blow with increasing force" for the rest of the war (Addison, 1975, p. 108). Henceforth, the war was to be conducted with planning for needs taking priority over the financial correctness demanded by the treasury. Social reform became a beneficiary of the new strategy: for example, free or subsidized school milk for children under five and their mothers was introduced barely days after the last troops disembarked from their cross-Channel retreat in June 1940. (14) Irrespective of the practical needs to plan postwar arrangements, reconstruction policies were required to boost the national spirit to help the war effort: workers at home and soldiers on the battlefield would be less inclined to undertake sacrifices the less chance there was of a better postwar world. Reform, and the planning for reconstruction that went with it, was obviously good for the morale of the public and the armed forces alike. But it was also based on the need to build a (physically and mentally) healthier nation, capable of winning the war and generating a future society shorn of the inequality, waste, and injustice of the prewar years.

It is dangerous to over-romanticize the spirit of liberation, collective solidarity, and sociopolitical consensus of the war years (Calder, 1992). The emergence of a "Dunkirk spirit" and a sense of "equality of sacrifice" is difficult to deny, however. Libraries thrived on the war's ideological fight against authoritarianism and for social and democratic advance. For J. H. Wellard, the significance of the public library, which he regarded as having come of age in the war, was in its "contribution to the general welfare of democracy" (1940, preface) ; in common with the free church, free school, and free press, public libraries were "the instruments of those democratic ideas which Fascism abhors" (p. 196). Voicing a similar ideological fervour, the librarian Norman Pugsley declared in a rousing style that

   Never were firm convictions and clearly envisaged ideals more
   needed than now. The qualities of leadership must show in many
   or we shall fail.... We must be sure of what we stand for and
   stand unshakable in our faith in what we know to be our task....
   Now is the time for a fundamental reconsideration of all that
   librarianship means. We look for clear and vigorous statements of
   belief and policy, searching analyses of basic values.
   (1940, p. 134)

The library world sensed the change of public mood. It was in keeping with sentiments of renewal and faith in the righteousness of the struggle against totalitarianism that the McColvin Report should be viewed. The grand, optimistic view of the social role of libraries, even if overstated, nonetheless suited the mood of the times. McColvin wished to promote the idea that libraries were "a great instrument and bulwark of democracy"--civilization, which Nazi Germany had abandoned, and books being inevitably intertwined (MR, pp. 1 & 5). Books and libraries were essential to the "real democratic conditions of living"; they were "the tools and the symbols of true freedom" (MR, p. 195).

In the face of military retreat, however, it was difficult to maintain faith in the prospects of eventual victory and the realization of social reconstruction. In 1942, after three years of war, there was still no light to be seen at the end of what was becoming a very long tunnel. The year since the start of the war with Japan had been a disaster. Although America's entry into the war had boosted the Allied cause immeasurably, this was swiftly followed by the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941 and the surrender of 80,000 troops at Singapore in February 1942, the largest defeat in British military history. News from North Africa in June 1942, when over 30,000 troops were taken into captivity at Tobruk, deepened the nation's depression. Then, as the fourth winter of the war began to bite, a glimmer of hope appeared. Battle against the Germans in North Africa was joined at El Alamein on October 23, 1942. On November 4 the BBC announced that the German Army was in full retreat across Egypt, a victory that prompted Churchill, in a speech on November 10, to declare famously that "this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning" (Calder, 1969, p. 305).

On the home front, too, despair was turned to excited anticipation that the war could be won and the peace made good. The famous Beveridge Report, outlining a plan for social security provision to tackle the five social evils of want, squalor, idleness, ignorance, and disease, was issued on December 1, 1942 (Beveridge, 1942). The Beveridge Report, and other policy initiatives dealing with health, housing, and unemployment, were reflections of a new social solidarity and an increased egalitarianism in public attitudes (Pope, 1991, p. 10). They were statements of optimism and purpose concerning the likelihood of a better world once peace came. Published at a time of high spirits and increasing social solidarity, at what was an important psychological turning point in the war brought about by the victory at El Alamein, the Beveridge Report stood as a beacon of hope for a better and more just and equal postwar world (Calder, 1969, p. 527). It was against this backdrop of hope for social and national renewal that the McColvin Report began to be considered in earnest by librarians and library planners. (15) This is perhaps one of the main reasons why the report has achieved such a high status as a groundbreaking document. It was born into an environment of intense purpose and yearning for change.

Expressions of the need for renewal and hope for the future permeate the McColvin Report. They were also reflected by McColvin in an inspirational--Churchillian-like--address, delivered in his absence, to the American Library Association in the summer of 1942, when his Report was in the final stages of preparation. McColvin explained that the fundamental reason for the boom in wartime reading, leaving aside practical and obvious explanations like the absence of distractions, was that citizens had gained "a new and ... a better sense of values," as well as "a fresh interest in the real things of life." One critical value people had assimilated during the war was that "the struggle for victory was directly linked to a belief in the importance of knowledge, in the power and beauty of the written word, the achievements of the human mind and imagination, the glories of the past and the idea of progress." Books not only spread knowledge, McColvin argued, they also fostered an awareness of others: the people knew, he asserted, that "Jerusalem cannot be built if we lack sympathy and understanding." Libraries and librarians of the democracies stood for "freedom of thought, for equality of opportunity, for economic and social betterment." To impart these values it was thus important to build a better library service. What was needed, he urged, was "a service that can give its benefits to all men--a truly nation-wide system, efficient, properly organised and co-ordinated, adequately financed, staffed by thoroughly competent personnel" (McColvin, 1942a).

Toward a Welfare State

The national public library system proposed by McColvin reflected wartime aspirations and efforts to construct a welfare state designed to banish forever the misery of the prewar years. A welfare state is defined by principles of egalitarianism, universalism, social justice, and equality of opportunity and by the development of policies aimed at reduction of income inequality. These policies are not confined to improved social security arrangements. They also include a greater commitment by government to manage the economy and to improve state provision for health, housing, and cultural and educational services (Birch, 1974, p. 3). According to this broad definition, therefore, the public library service forms part--albeit not a core element--of the structure of the welfare state. This was very much the opinion of the Library Association when in 1941 it urged that "The public library service must certainly take its place in the consideration of the planning of post-war social services." (16)

Plans for a welfare state had implications for central government spending and intervention. Although there has never been a period of pure laissez-faire in the history of industrialized Britain--contrary to popular perceptions generated by images of unfettered Dickensian squalor, exploitation, and despair--government intervention in society and the economy throughout much of the nineteenth century was marginal. Public expenditure as a proportion of national income fell sharply after the Napoleonic Wars and only began to increase significantly after 1900, as new social welfare programs and naval construction to meet the German threat began to suck in larger amounts of taxpayers' money. Although always opposed by a strong and enduring liberal philosophy, however, collectivism and centralization--etatism--steadily advanced. The closing decades of the nineteenth century demonstrated visibly the viability of collectivism, at a rudimentary level at least: witness during this period the first provision of state education and housing. By the early twentieth century the idea that the state should purposefully evolve a social policy aimed at improving living standards was widely accepted by the nation's political leaders. The decade immediately prior to the First World War saw the birth pangs of welfare, most notably in terms of the payment of the first noncontributory old age pensions, the establishment of labor exchanges, and the inauguration of a national insurance scheme to protect against unemployment and sickness (Evans, 1978; Macdonagh, 1977; Taylor, 1972).

The First World War raised intervention by the state to a new level. Despite a return to traditional economic values after the war, by the 1930s, in response to severe economic malfunction, the need for government to intervene in peacetime to stabilize the economic and social life of the nation was beginning to be increasingly accepted. The Parliamentary Committee on Finance and Industry reported in June 1931 that past growth in industrial activity was the result of "natural causes," or laissez-faire. It recognized, however, that natural economic activity had also led to social problems and economic instability and suggested that "we may well have reached the stage when an era of conscious and deliberate management must succeed the era of undirected natural evolution" (cited in Von Tunzelmann, 1981, p. 239). Shortly after, in a decisive break with conservative treasury economic policy, the future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, called for a Central Economic Council to coordinate financial and industrial policy (Macmillan, 1933).

By the end of the war the government had, through various newly established agencies, developed a direct concern for the health and well-being of the population, which, by contrast with the role of the state before the war, was remarkable (Titmuss, 1950, p. 506). It had also assumed much greater control of the economy, a trend that continued in the postwar years through the nationalization of a number of economic and service sectors. Shaped by a strongly developing welfare state, after 1945 British society was significantly different from that of 1939:

   There was greater security of employment and less material poverty.
   The population, taken as a whole, was healthier and better housed.
   There were also greater educational opportunities. Universalist and
   comprehensive social policies had replaced the selective, restricted
   and often stigmatising provision of the Edwardian era. (Pope, 1991,
   p. 89)

It is in this context of increasing investment in state responsibility and welfarism that the McColvin Report, with its plans for increased government spending on, and control of, a national library network, should be viewed. Whereas the deepening culture of state control and centralization supported the agenda of McColvin and his followers, it was not to the liking of everyone in the library community.

REACTION TO THE MCCOLVIN REPORT

The McColvin Report galvanized debate on public library policy both during the war and for years after it. McColvin's proposals amounted to a quasi-nationalization of the public library service. While the Report was still being prepared, McColvin's proposed "nationalisation" plan was leaked to the wider cultural community via the Times Educational Supplement, which announced that

   Public libraries should be considered as a national service. The
   smaller boroughs and urban districts have not been able financially
   to support an adequate library service, and the work of the larger
   boroughs and county boroughs requires greater co-ordination, as does
   the work of the county library systems which fall under the control
   of the county educational authorities. This would involve some form
   of regionalisation and nationalisation on the lines of that already
   existing for education.... Grants should be made from the Central
   Government to public library authorities, consisting of 50% of
   expenditure on salaries, books and extension work. (17)

McColvin's report carried a warning. It was positioned as a personal report and was not to be considered the work or proposals of the Library Association until it had been "officially" approved (MR, p. vii). The Library Association advertised the Report with a disclaimer: "The Council of the Library Association, in publishing this report, do not commit themselves to the policy or the recommendations which have been submitted for their consideration." (18) Nonetheless, when in the following year the association (1943) published its official blueprint for postwar public libraries, it came to accept virtually all of McColvin's recommendations. In merely proposing that "local government areas should be re-arranged to give the best results," however, the association's plan rejected the idea of forming ad hoc library authorities in advance of the general local government reform that would deliver the larger units upon which library structures could be more solidly built: "the creation of suitable library authorities should be secured by such reform of local government area functions in general," announced the association (Library Association, 1943, p. 8). In 1946, at its annual conference in Blackpool, the association dropped the idea of larger library units, ad hoc or otherwise, in effect backing the "parochialists" against the "enlargers," at least in the short term.

McColvin's proposals caused consternation among librarians concerned about a possible loss of autonomy. Many still clung to the compromise that had been worked out between the wars: to cooperate but retain independence; or in the words of Sir Frederick Kenyon, "to continue to be locally autonomous, but to think nationally." (19) The Kenyon Report on public libraries in the 1920s had rejected not only the idea of compulsory provision of a library service by local authorities but also suggestions for central government grants and inspection: "Local autonomy can be left unimpaired; local responsibilities can be left on local shoulders," it advised (Board of Education Public Libraries Committee, 1927, p. 209).

In the long debate that followed the publication of the McColvin Report, and in a plea to continue to fight for the "common cause," McColvin reminded readers of the Library Association Record, writing in his capacity as editor, that "There are still far too many isolated public libraries, serving communities too small and too poor ... they will [need to] be brought into organic relation with the centres which do give a full service" (McColvin, 1944b, p. 242). McColvin belittled "those who prate about liberty, interference, bureaucracy, remote control and the like" (McColvin, 1944a, p. 131). He was impatient with library authorities, such as that in Rugby, that sought to retain autarchy, calling instead for a "wider vision," a "broadening of outlook, a willingness to extend and to co-operate" in the pursuit of a "truly nation-wide service" (McColvin, 1944c, p. 95).

McColvin was not alone in his fight against the parochial mentality. Irritated at the opposition generated by the report, Raymond Irwin scoffed at the dangers that some saw lurking behind the proposed system of "remote control," the specter of which he believed to have been misrepresented as "unenlightened and unsympathetic administration" (1944, p. 134). McColvin's followers welcomed the statist tone they perceived in the Report. It was E. V. Corbett's view, for example, in pondering the question of users resident in one library authority using the services of others, that the trouble with the interavailability of tickets (20) was just one problem that made nationalization necessary (Corbett, 1940, p. 5).

On the question of government grants, there was greater support than on the issue of larger administrative units. McColvin had attempted to prepare the ground on this matter in advance of the appearance of the Report. The Library Association survey of 1936-37 included a good deal about state aid for public libraries. Official government channels appear to have been used to garner data from abroad. Replies were received from the appropriate departments of several European governments. The reply from Sweden, for example, pointed to a significant amount of central government financial involvement in public libraries. (21) In the report that followed the survey, McColvin devoted a large amount of space to the question of central grants in the context of the United States, which he had visited in 1936 to obtain information on library administration. He believed Britain could learn a lot from the American scene, where state library agencies directed federal money to local library authorities (McColvin, 1938, pp. 486-490). The Library Association supported the idea of direct grants, believing they would achieve "a national average of efficiency" (1943, p. 9).

By 1944 McColvin's proposals were being discussed by government. A Ministry of Education memo that year estimated that since the end of the First World War there had been about a dozen suggestions--from the Library Association, various library authorities and local education committees, and the National Library of Wales--for direct grants to public libraries from central government. It was reported, however, that financial stringency and the library community's fear of loss of autonomy, and a dislike of inspection as the corollary to grant aid, had combined to ensure that central funding never went beyond the drawing board. It was believed that county authorities could just about stomach the inspection that would accompany central grants because this was a small price to pay for escaping the control of the local Education Committees that in the counties ran public libraries. Many urban library authorities, on the other hand, were much less keen on the idea of state "snooping," as well as the demands for enlargement and economies of scale that centrally provided funds would bring with it. (22) Many clung to the ideal of independence and would no doubt have agreed with the announcement made in the Municipal Journal that "We cannot blink the fact that Government Grants usually mean central control of one kind or another, and so far as our public library service has developed in an atmosphere of freedom ... it behooves us to be jealous of our present freedom" (Green, 1942). Other opinion looked forward to the establishment of a "national [library] authority with considerable powers to prod the lazy and/or miserly local authorities into improving their library services." (23)

Yet central funding for library provision was not without precedent. To provide extra services to evacuated children in county areas, the Board of Education had given grants early in the war to libraries via local Education Committees, which in county areas controlled public library operations. Calls for direct grants came from some surprising quarters. The archbishop of Canterbury, aware of the slowness of library reform and the danger of "failing to keep pace with the social and educational developments to which we are looking forward," pressed the president of the Board of Education, R. A. Butler, to establish "a ministry, or department of ministry, which could be charged with doing for public libraries what the Board does, and has still more to do for education"; but he added that public libraries should remain locally controlled and that, because their field was wider than that of formal education, the board should not be the ministry chosen to control them. (24) In reply, Butler dismissed the suggestion, claiming that the time was not "opportune for us to embark on consideration of these issues," an argument repeated shortly after the war when an education minister rejected the possibility of fresh library legislation in view of the pressure of other public business. (25) Other government departments appeared more amenable to the idea of centralization. The minister of health was advised in 1944, in the context of the need for greater involvement by local libraries in the hospital library provision, that "public library services will sooner or later have to be placed on a more rational basis than at present and that some form of central direction and control may be necessary" (Unpublished memo from N. D. Bosworth Smith, March 1944. National Archives, ED 171/1).

The McColvin Report was rejected, in the final analysis, for political and parochial reasons. Despite the increased role of government resulting from the war and the construction of an embryonic welfare state, developments upon which the McColvin proposals drew legitimacy and momentum, this was not enough to secure government support for central grants or a shift toward "giantism" in library authority structures. If the library community as a whole had fallen in behind McColvin, then government policy on libraries may have been different. But the forces of parochialism were ultimately too entrenched.

The "keep it local" lobby retained its voice throughout the 1950s. In 1957 librarians of some of the country's largest cities collectively voiced the opinion that where there was a compact community it should have a local library service and should not become part of a larger reorganized unit: "The public library is an organic growth in response to a community need; its character, therefore, reflects the community it serves ... in the large industrial cities the community is complex and varied and the public library services are of a like kind." (26) Many smaller public libraries remained vehement in their desire to remain local, and thereby closer, in their view, to their readers. A "Smaller Public Libraries Group" urged that a number of points be considered before any decision was taken to restructure the service.

But the debate on size was eventually overtaken by events. Changes in the structure of local government, largely outside the sphere of influence of the library world, eventually forced the issue. Local government reorganization came first to London. From 1965 the London County Council was replaced by the Greater London Council, comprising thirty-two boroughs (plus the City of London) and covering a much wider geographical area. Many smaller boroughs disappeared: in London's East End, for example, Bethnal Green, Poplar, and Stepney were amalgamated to form a single borough, Tower Hamlets. Reorganization followed in the rest of England and Wales with effect from 1974, and in Scotland with effect from 1975. The structure of library authorities fell in behind this reorganization, realizing much of what McColvin had advocated decades before. The net result of reorganization in England and Wales reduced the number of separate library authorities from 385 to 121, and in Scotland from 80 to 40. After over thirty years of professional debate and conflict the battle of the library boundaries came to an end, with the forces of conservatism and parochialism perishing in the flames of modernization. The reorganization of administrative structure was complemented by a new Public Libraries Act in 1964 that introduced compulsion and demanded the provision of a comprehensive service. However, it did not deliver the direct grant that McColvin, and some nineteenth-century library pioneers before him, had hoped for.

CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF MCCOLVIN AND HIS REPORT

In the closing pages of his 1942 Report, McColvin expressed the hope that his document would not "share the late of too many similar documents ... and pass, after perhaps a brief discussion, into the realm of forgotten things" (MR, p. 197). His fears in this regard were groundless. Notwithstanding the huge contribution he made to the public library movement over many decades, it is for his 1942 Report that he is mostly remembered. Yet, in many respects, the Report was a failure. In its original form it was rejected. The core recommendations of the report--the creation of a powerful central body that could distribute significant funding to reorganized large, viable library authorities--hardly received, it would be fair to say, immediate support in government and across the librarianship spectrum. In fact, of the core proposals, only that dealing with the creation of larger authorities was accepted and put into effect--and that only after a generation had passed and only because wider local government reform in the 1960s and 1970s facilitated it. The new Public Libraries Act that could have implemented McColvin's core proposals, one requiring (not simply allowing) local authorities to adhere to set standards and establish a "comprehensive" library service, open to inspection moreover, did not reach the statute book until 1964. In addition, certain small, but essential, aspects of his nationalization plan never became reality. For example, McColvin's plea that "Tickets should of course be national" (MR, p. 86) in order to deliver a truly coordinated, national library system was never taken up seriously, despite the example set by later local and regional cooperative schemes.

Other proposals were turned into reality speedily. In the late 1940s new library schools were created in an attempt to boost the library professionalism that McColvin had identified as so inadequate. Before the war there was only one full-time school of librarianship, at University College, London. Within a few years it was joined by a clutch of other institutions: in Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Loughborough, the City of London, Brighton, and Newcastle. Another of McColvin's proposals, a weekly list of new books, suitably catalogued and classified, was inaugurated in 1950 in the form of the British National Bibliography.

The McColvin Report bears the mark of the time it was written: committed, passionate, hopeful, resolute, and saturated by the ideals of democracy, social justice, and universalism that people believed they needed to defeat totalitarianism. They were also the ideals that underpinned the planning for a welfare state, of which libraries would form a part. The Report is irrevocably linked to the "Dunkirk spirit," Churchillian defiance, and the crusade to build "new Jerusalem." This explains why the Report, and its author, is surrounded by a powerful aura of "historical moment."

McColvin's proposals have been described as far-sighted; however, the ideas he put forward were shared by many others in the library movement and had been discussed for many years prior to the war. A more sober assessment of the Report, therefore, would describe it as a forecast, based on a consensus of the progressive wing of the public library movement, of shared work to be done. McColvin may have been asked to map out the path, but as the librarian Frank Gardner put it: "many others helped in clearing it" (1968, p. 128). The planning and reconstruction of a postwar library service was not the work of one man, as some interpretations of history may lead us to believe. It is fortunate, however, that the person charged at the time with producing a road map for the public library's future journey was able to draw on the spirit of the age and deliver a document that stands the test of time in terms of its idealism and social commitment and its faith in the power of collectivism to enhance individual self-development. In this, as in other aspects of the McColvin Report and McColvin's other work, there are surely lessons of history to be learned by current and future library and information policymakers and practitioners.

NOTES

(1.) Munford (1987), see entry for Lionel Roy McColvin.

(2.) Some might argue that James Duff Brown, whose career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and who pioneered open access in 1894, commands a standing at least equal to that of Edwards and McColvin (Munford, 1968).

(3.) For a comprehensive list of McColvin's publications, see Collison (1968).

(4.) CBE stands for Commander of the British Empire. Awarded by the sovereign on the recommendation of the government, such awards are highly prized recognitions of distinguished service. The ranks of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire as it is styled are Member, Officer, Commander, Knight Commander, and Grand Cross.

(5.) See Scottish Record Office, GD 281/13/45, for archive material associated with the survey that underpinned the Report.

(6.) For a succinct account of the Report, see Kelly (1977, pp. 334-44). Fuller coverage is provided by Whiteman (1986).

(7.) Manchester Evening News, December 8, 1942.

(8.) Times Educational Supplement, October 24, 1942.

(9.) Library Association Record, 47(1), January 1945, p. 1.

(10.) Library Association Record, 41(9), September 1939, pp. 460-63.

(11.) A call to public libraries, Times Educational Supplement, August 24, 1940; Public libraries and welfare work, Publishers' Circular, August 24, 1940.

(12.) Library Association Record, 42(9), September 1940, p. 243.

(13.) Daily Express, February 24, 1944.

(14.) Titmuss (1950) showed how government concern for social issues was galvanized by the war.

(15.) The Report was discussed widely in the professional press and also in the confines of the Library Association at several meetings of the Post-War Committee; see Minutes of the Library Association Post-War Committee, 1942-43, Archives of the Library Association, University College, London. It was also discussed in a range of newspapers and periodicals outside the library world: Times (October 15, 1942), Manchester Guardian (October 19, 1942), Times Educational supplement (October 24, 1942), Municipal Journal (October 10, 1942), Publishers' Circular (November 7, 1942), Public Opinion (November 27, 1942), and Nature (March 20, 1943).

(16.) Minutes of the Library Association Emergency Committee, July 18, 1941. Archives of the Library Association, University College, London. Emphasis added.

(17.) Public library reconstruction: Some necessary reforms, Times Educational Supplement, January 10, 1942.

(18.) Library Association Record, 44(10), October 1942, p. 145.

(19.) Speaking at the Library Association's annual conference in 1927. See A national library service, The Scotsman, September 29, 1927. At the same conference, and reported in the same article, the opinion of Lord Elgin of the CUKT was that "The spirit of the library service was the spirit of liberty. It had grown up by individual initiative and local support, and they [librarians] did not wish to sacrifice one particle of that spirit of local independence and of local responsibility."

(20.) In U.S. usage, library cards.

(21.) Library Association Survey of 1936-37 on the subject of state aid for public libraries. National Archives, ED121/190.

(22.) Public libraries: Previous requests for grant-aid, December 20, 1944. National Archives, ED 171/1.

(23.) A Cinderella service, Sunday School Chronicle, October 29, 1942.

(24.) Archbishop of Canterbury to R. A. Butler, March 21, 1944. National Archives, ED 171/1.

(25.) R. A. Butler to the Archbishop of Canterbury, April 4, 1944. National Archives, ED 171/1. Questions and answers in the House of Commons, December 6, 1945. National Archives, Ellen Wilkinson, ED 171/2.

(26.) Memorandum to Roberts Committee from the city librarians of Birmingham [and other large cities], November 13, 1957. National Archives, ED 171/8.

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Alistair Black, Professor of Library and Information History, School of Information Management, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, LS6 3QS, United Kingdom