Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00148:reg:2017:p4
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00148
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2017 (pt 4/81)
Character Range: 50470–53442

in 1927.  Only a small proportion of the Victorian Parliamentary Library collection was moved to that parliament's new home in the Exhibition Building, the substantial part staying at Parliament House for the use of the Commonwealth under Wadsworth's control.

The national library within the Parliamentary Library
The Joint Library Committee, while generally supporting the idea of a national collection and library, had to deal also with the day-to-day demands of parliamentarians for library resources, and these in-house needs tended to take precedence.  This worked against the consistent and active development of the 'national' component of the library's functions while Parliament was located in Victoria.

In its early years the Library Committee maintained a sense of injustice at its treatment by Barton, who had made good statements at the start but had clearly not given priority support for a national collection when trying to establish the Commonwealth administration with limited funds.  The Committee's Chairman, Sir Frederick Holder, who strongly supported the idea of a national collection, in 1907 made a statement in the Committee's annual report that the committee 'was keeping before it the ideal of building up, for the time when Parliament should be established in the Federal Capital, a great Public Library on the lines of the world-famed Library of Congress…'.  A later National Librarian, Harrison Bryan, suggests that 'It was a surprising assertion, in that it accorded ill with the Library's actual operations, especially the acquisition of library material.'[18]

The Executive showed ambivalence to the idea of a national library while Parliament sat in Melbourne, on the one hand supporting the acquisition of the Petherick Collection (1909), the Endeavour Journal, and the creation of the Commonwealth National Library within the Parliamentary Library structure (both in 1923—22 years after Federation), while on the other hand not actively pursuing the idea of developing a separate national collecting institution.  In the absence of a clear government policy or an influential and persuasive champion within Parliament, only small and faltering steps were taken to advance the development of a national library.

Kenneth Binns was appointed to the Parliamentary Library as Cataloguer in 1911, and instituted many practices that professionalised the library.  He got along with Petherick and Frederick Watson, the latter then preparing the Historical Records of Australia series, whereas Arthur Wadsworth did not.  Binns, in conjunction with Wadsworth, put forward in 1919 a proposal for the creation of an Australian Section of the Library with Binns as its head.  Binns appears to have become a primary influence in the operations of the Parliamentary Library.  Binns fostered a strengthening of the idea of a national library within the Parliamentary Library itself, but there was no government sanction for such a development, and