NOTES AND COMMENTS

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 10, Issue 2, 1 October 1977, Page 57

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Pollard Report on Research Resources in English Literature

Professor Arthur Pollard, Head of the Department of English at the University of Plull, was invited earlier this year to survey the resources of the Alexander Turnbull Library and its potential for the support of advanced research in English literature. Two weeks were spent in the Library in mid-February 1977 as part of Professor Pollard’s assignment during a British Council tour of Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Mauritius during the months of February and March. The report to the Chief Librarian is prefaced by the Professor’s comments on the purpose and validity of advanced research in English literature in New Zealand:

It is both true and right that the principal scholarly interests must relate to the local situation within New Zealand and the Pacific, but the danger of excessive concentration in this direction without regard to other areas of possible study lies in the tendency for those outside New Zealand to regard the country as provincial, if not parochial, an attitude which its geography and its comparatively short history within the European context can do nothing to discourage. New Zealand’s connexions with the European context are established and sustained through its common heritage with Britain and the accumulated culture contained within English literature. It is therefore appropriate that this should be an area of advanced scholarly research within New Zealand and it is fortunate that the resources of the subject in the country give it not only an appeal to local scholars but the opportunity also of making a proper claim to being able to contribute to the international body of scholarship in English literature and thus of establishing in this regard a reputation for New Zealand that will transcend the natural frontiers.

Professor Pollard then goes on to consider the other resources available in New Zealand to support advanced research in English literature and concludes that the Turnbull, because of its own collections and its ‘proximity to the resources of the National Library’ is the natural centre for such research. He recommends that the Library in developing these resources should build upon existing strengths and should seek the most economically strategic deployment of its financial resources. Professor Pollard notes the Milton collection and the holdings of English printed books up to 1700 as areas of strength and outlines some strategies for development. He also identifies a strong core of resources in Victorian fiction in Turnbull which can be supplemented by the holdings of the General Assembly Library and the Brancepeth Collection in the Library of Victoria University. A systematic assessment of existing

material followed by a vigorous policy of supplementation is recommended and some acquisitions strategies are suggested. Under the heading of ‘acquisitions practice’ the Professor notes that because of our distance from London and New York the Library is often at a disadvantage in purchasing materials in English literature and recommends that ‘somone, either on a full or part-time basis and possessed of the necessary expertise’ should be employed ‘to be in contact with the London book market to search for material and especially to keep an eye open for the Library’s specialised needs’. Professor Pollard notes that the Turnbull’s collection of currently published periodicals on English literature compares unfavourably with those of the university libraries. He regrets that insufficient time was available for him to examine the matter thoroughly and suggests that a close inquiry into Turnbull and National Library resources would be desirable. He also calls for a full and detailed catalogue of the Library’s holdings of English literary manuscripts, a collection the strengths of which obviously surprised and impressed him and which provided him with some hitherto unknown manuscripts in his own field of study. A number of useful recommendations are made on conservation, microfilming and other reprographic services.

In his concluding paragraphs Professor Pollard turns his attention to measures which should be adopted to enable the Library to make a contribution to international scholarship in English literature. Greater publicity for the Katherine Mansfield and John Milton collections is advocated together with the publication of full accounts of the Library’s policies and holdings for distribution widely in such countries as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia:

Consideration should be given to the establishment of short-term academic fellowships covering, say, a term or a year . . . there might well be a separate fund to cover travel costs alone to allow, say, scholars already working in Australia to extend their activities by including a period of study at the Turnbull. A further possible facility offered, for instance, by some institutions elsewhere, might well be some degree of secretarial assistance. In addition to assisting individual scholars the Library might also exploit its resources after the pattern of the Nichol Smith seminars in Canberra by organising periodic conferences and seminars and providing fees and allowances for at least the principal participants giving papers. Professor Pollard ends his report: The Turnbull Library has much to offer. Properly developed, it could have more. It deserves to rank high both nationally and internationally. It already possesses a substantial reputation but this may be enhanced still further, I believe, if steps are taken in the

directions I have indicated above. By so doing not only will the reputation of the Turnbull be extended, but thereby also New Zealand will be able firmly to establish an independent position for herself in the world of scholarship as a place where significant research in English literature can be pursued.

Early Printed Books on Microfilm In the 1950 s with the assistance of a $9,000 grant from the Ford Foundation the Library began subscribing to the two series of microfilms of early British printed books published by University Microfilms. The two series, when complete, will contain all the items listed in the two standard catalogues for the period 1475-1700, those of Pollard & Redgrave 1475-1640 (STC I) and Donald Wing 1641-1700 (STC II). The end is now in sight for STC I with its 26,143 items; the Turnbull has received over 77 percent of the total items, some 20,000 items on 4.2 million pages, and will receive some 200,000 pages a year until the project is completed.

The STG II period, with some 53,850 titles, is a far larger enterprise and was in 1976, with only one third of the items filmed, estimated to take another fifteen years. The publishers announced early in 1977 that with an accelerated schedule an additional 200,000 pages are to be completed each year. In addition the Thomason Tracts, 1640-1661 are to be published as a special project. The Tracts, listed in Donald Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue 1641-1700 and as such an integral part of STC 11, will now be filmed separately in 8 subscription units to be made available between 1977 and 1980. Subscribers to STG II who purchase the Thomason Tracts will be given appropriate discounts on the list price of $U51,325 per unit. The Turnbull has placed a subscription and the first two units, each of some 100,000 pages, are now available to research workers.

George Thomason, a London bookseller and publisher, began systematically collecting every book, pamphlet and newspaper issued in London and as many as he could obtain from the provinces and abroad on the day the Long Parliament met, 3 November 1640, and continued collecting until the coronation of Charles II in 1661. The Tracts, comprising some 22,000 items bound in 2,008 volumes, each annotated and numbered by Thomason, are essential source materials for midseventeenth century English history and will add very considerable strength to the Turnbull’s existing collections.

Portrait of J. C. Beaglehole, O.M.

The Turnbull Library has made one of its most happy acquisitions in this oil portrait, done by our liveliest figure painter, Evelyn Page, of New Zealand’s distinguished scholar and world authority on James Cook and the exploration of the Pacific.

It is a portrait painted this year from memory and drawings and photographs. It is a richly coloured real presence. When the painter was chided for making the figure almost larger than life she replied, ‘But he was larger than most lives’—and, it is possible to add, the portrait has more life than most. During the years of editing Cook’s Journals and writing the Life when Professor J. C. Beaglehole used this Library’s exhaustive holdings of published material he was given the rare privilege of being allowed the free run of Turnbull’s stacks. It was, he felt, his Library and he made good use of it. He also endowed it. He gave all his collection of photocopies of Cook manuscripts from around the world and has left to it all his own papers and manuscripts in this field. It is therefore most fitting that the Library should have John Beaglehole’s portrait and that it should be hung permanently in the Exhibition Room where it now catches the eye of the reader with a thoughtful, compassionate, quizzical look and with a mouth almost in movement, ready to make some amused comment.

Exhibition ‘Bush carpenters; pioneer homes in New Zealand’ was on display until September. It dealt broadly with the solutions found by nineteenth century settlers to the problem of providing immediate shelter for themselves and their families. They are chiefly rural homes, as it was only in the country that the dwellings survived until the advent of photography, displaying varying ways in which the materials at hand (wood, raupo, cob and stone) or easily portable were used by unskilled builders. The common factor is that they were planned and built by the people who lived in them. The display featured photographs, illustrated manuscripts and books, paintings and domestic utensils and building tools to reconstruct a unique architectural period.