"So Here I Am"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 240, 28 January 1944, Page 14

"So Here I Am"

An American Woman Opens A Library HEN the U.S. Office of War Information decided early last year to establish five libraries in the British Empire to supply information about America, there was one experienced librarian who jumped at the opportunity to go to New Zealand, because she had made friends of New Zealand librarians who went to America to study, and felt she would be at home among its people. She is Miss Mary Parsons, who arrived here last month to establish a United States Information Library in Wellington. The Listener interviewed this interesting American the other day, and her assistant, Mrs. Doris Metcalf, who will specialise in the statistical inquiries and in the care. of the Government documents that will form a substantial part of the collection. The function of this library, and of its four counterparts in Sydney, Melbourne, Johannesburg, and Bombay, was described in a Department of State bulletin that Miss Parsons showed us: "The new libraries are designed to serve writers, the Press, radio, American Missions, local government agencies, and educational, scientific and cultural institutions and organisations. They are not lending libraries for casual readers, nor are they in any sense propaganda centres or distributors of pamphlets." Their purpose is less direct than this: they exist to provide the "information which can best reach the masses of people in an Allied country through the media of Press, radio, and educational institutions." And although the library has not been opened yet, and its two librarians are still living in a hotel, Miss Parsons is already able to talk of the kind of inquiries they receive-she has had telephone calls from people seeking information not available here, and in one case she sent for some information by cable, and was able to supply it in a very short time. One inquiry came from a person who was giving lectures on American fiction, who sought up-to-date news of authors, another from someone who wanted to know what was worth having of the latest published poetry in America; interest in American music, too, has surprised Miss Parsons, and she thinks the sections of her collections devoted to the arts will be in demand. Documents, Thick and Thin The basic collection of the new library will hold about 1,000 volumes, and about 3,000 Government "documents," which will be in Mrs. Metcalf’s care; a "document" in this connection being a term that includes anything from a single leaf printed on one side to a work in several volumes. This will be added to in various ways-with the arrival of new and up-to-date material, and with the addition of material for which the demand was not anticipated when the first lists were made out. But many cases of books are still waiting on a "pier," as Mrs. Metcalf called it, and the formation of the library is dependent on shipping space being found in America, and labour being found here to build the shelves. (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Though the details of a library that promises to be so useful to The Listener were interesting to ourselves, we felt that the background of the woman who had been chosen to control it should be more interesting still, and we were right. Miss Parsons has been working in libraries ever since she left college, and because, as she says, "We in America believe in advancing by moving about, and in comparative study," she has seen a good deal of America, and has also had some interesting years in Europe. In Paris in the "Twenties After the last war, the U.S. Committee for Devastated France established small libraries in towns that were being rebuilt, and soon a school for librarians became necessary. It began as a summer school for French librarians, but soon it was obvious that it would become an international affair, and during her time as resident director at this school (the Paris Library School), Miss Parsons knew Countess Panin, Minister of Social Justice in Russia before the Revolution, who was, perhaps, the first woman to attain Cabinet rank in a Western Government, and other interesting people who came to study, such as the Keeper of the Western Books of the King of Siam, the National Librarian of Turkey, and librarians from Hungary, Poland, Scandinavia and Greece. There were Jews, too, from Jerusalem, who were quite at home in library collections covering many different languages. The city of Montlucon in France, which had a socialist municipal government, sent its librarian to the school, too. It was not strange for qa librarian of many years’ experience to enter the full course, Miss Parsons said, because "librarians believe they are studying all their lives anyway." The 1929 financial crash left the school without funds, but Miss Parsons had the satisfaction of seeing her students take it on their own shoulders, and a good deal of the work was carried on. Meanwhile, Miss Parsons took up some research of her own in medieval manuscripts-Anglo-Saxon charters up to the time of King Alfred. Then in 1932, McGill University (Montreal), invited her to give a course in library science-virtually a bi-lingual course, because there were many French Canadians who could not work in English.

After that, Miss Parsons worked in various universities, and at Michigan she met New Zealanders who went to study library science. "There’s a big, framed picture of New Zealand mountains in the library at Michigan now that was presented by New Zealanders," she said. "I’d made up my mind long ago that I’d take the first opportunity that arose of coming to this country and-well, here I am!"