The first library: Pietermaritzburg, 1910-1945
4.2. The formative years, 1921 – 1936
4.2.1. Finances, 1921 – 1936
Allocations for the purchase of library books were first mentioned in the minutes of the Library Committee meeting of 27th April 1922, when Professor Besselaar “brought up the question of the exceeding, by heads of departments, of their votes for books ...”293 The problem was not solved at this meeting and it continued to be discussed off and on for many years, but at the Library Committee meeting of 3rd March 1924 it was noted that Senate had resolved to consider a set of rules, to be drawn up by the Library Committee,
289 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 1st March 1922.
290 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 27th April 1922.
291 Natal University College, 1st report of the Librarian for the period December 1921 to June 30th, 1922.
292 Ibid.
293 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 27th April 1922.
on the administration of Library funds. The chairman, Dr Besselaar, brought a set of proposals to the meeting of 1st April 1924. Considerable discussion ensued and the meeting was adjourned twice. Finally, at the Committee meeting of 23rd April 1924 a set of rules was adopted. In summary these were that a sum for the upkeep and extension of the Library be voted for the Library on the yearly College budget. Hattersley had
shrewdly proposed that the Librarian’s salary, as well as library furniture and fabrics be excluded from the vote. The amount as well as the distribution between departments was calculated according to a fairly simple formula as follows:
• Each department conducting a major course in an Arts subject in the year under review should be credited with a sum of £15;
• Each department conducting a major course in law or in a Science subject under the above conditions should be credited with a sum of £10;
• Each department conducting a course for the Master’s degree or a minor course for a Bachelor’s degree should be credited in respect of each such course with £5;
• For the purposes of this allotment a major in Geography and the Diploma course in Education should each be defined as an Arts major, a major in pure Mathematics should be defined as a Science major, and the various courses in Secondary school subjects for the Higher diploma should be defined together as the equivalent of two minor courses;
• In addition the Library vote should be credited with a sum of £50 for contingencies from which provision would be made for Library requisites (other than furniture), miscellaneous literature and special departmental grants, the claims of departments with large enrolments and of
departments conducting Masters courses receiving first consideration under the last head;
• The allotted but unexpended monies at the end of the financial year, should be carried forward to the credit of the Library Contingencies fund of the year following, provided that the total amount standing to the credit of the fund did not, in any year, exceed the sum of £100 and any surplus over this figure would revert to general college funds.294
294 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 23rd April 1924. See Appendix 4 for a list of the formulae adopted over the years by both the Pietermaritzburg and Durban Library Committees to calculate the distribution of book and journal funds.
The Librarian was instructed to order the books “on terms most advantageous to the N.U.C.” under the direction of the Library Committee and all accounts were to be sent to the Registrar’s office.295 This represented a change in procedure as previously the Registrar had been in charge of the ordering of books for the Library. The Librarian’s task had been confined to the entry of details of the newly purchased books in the register.
For five years, from 1923 to 1927, the book vote remained at a paltry £250. As a
comparison, the University of the Witwatersrand spent £1,859 on its Library in 1927 and Cape Town spent £2,563. Murray’s comment is damning:
It is also evident from the accounts that in the 1920s neither Wits nor U.C.T.
spent more than a derisory sum upon their libraries. In 1927 Wits spent £1859, Cape Town £2563.296
Even Henry’s salary, a meagre £10 per annum for a part-time post, was extremely low in comparison to the salary of £150 per annum which had been paid to the librarian at Beaconsfield Park, near Kimberley, twenty years earlier in 1901.297 It is therefore not surprising that a report drawn up by the Reverend A.P. Stokes, who visited South and East Africa under the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1932, criticised the College Library:
The standards of the University colleges in Grahamstown and Pietermaritzburg are high. Few institutions I visited impressed me more favourably. These colleges seemed to have excellent leadership and most creditable educational standards ... The Library facilities however are very inadequate ...”298
In 1928 the book vote was decreased to £180 and all departments had perforce to take a decrease of 10% in their allocations. The vote remained at this level for the following four years due, as noted at the Library Committee meeting of 14th March 1929, to “the present financial stress”299 although an extra grant of £40 had to be provided by the College for library books during the course of 1930 as there had been an unexpected increase in the numbers of Masters students. The parlous state of the Library’s book vote was a cause
295 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 23rd April 1924.
296 Murray, Wits, the early years, p. 118.
297 R.F. Kennedy, Library mechanics, in: Libraries and people, Cape Town: Struik, [1970?], p. 12.
298 Currey, Rhodes University, 1904-1970, p. 81.
299 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 14th March 1929.
for great concern on the part of the Library Committee. At their meeting of 20 March 1933 discussions were held on the matter and various suggestions were made as to how funds could be raised. Eventually it was decided that:
...representations be made to Dr Bews that an appeal for funds for the College Libraries of Durban and Maritzburg be made at the Graduation Ceremony to be held in Durban next month, also that the Secretary of the old students Union, who hold their reunion meeting at the same time, be requested to bring the matter before the gathering, and that all other avenues be explored with the object of raising funds for the use of the libraries.”300
There is no indication that these appeals met with much success. Undoubtedly the Great Depression, a worldwide economic downturn which began with the stock market crash in the United States in October 1929,301 was a contributing factor. As world trade slumped, South Africa, says Gale, “entered a period of depression which lasted several years.”302 Economists agree that the gold mining industry saved the economy from complete collapse but it was a time of extreme economic hardship for many. Gale describes what this period of economic depression meant to the College:
There was a shortage of funds, both at the Union Treasury and in the business world, which made it difficult indeed to maintain even what had already been established ... Bews indulged in no vain repining. He did what he could, by efficient administration, to make what money there was go as far as possible.303
Fortunately the College did not also have to contend with poor enrolment figures as student registration increased steadily during this time.
In 1932 an extra £20 was granted to the Library, bringing the book vote to £200 and in 1934 the grant was returned to the same amount as had been granted in 1923, namely
£250, where it remained for the next three years. During this time departments frequently overspent their allocations and either extra allocations had to be made from the Library’s contingency fund or departments had to carry their deficits over into the next financial year. In August 1935 the Library Committee agreed that the Chairman should write a report to Dr Bews, pleading the case for a grant from the Carnegie
300 Natal University College, Pietermaritzburg Library Committee, Minutes of a meeting held on 20th March 1933.
301 The worldwide slump in business and increased levels of unemployment occurred between the years 1929 and 1934. – The Cambridge encyclopedia, edited by D. Crystal, 2nd edition, London: BCA, 1994.
302 G.W. Gale, John William Bews, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1954, p. 83.
303 Ibid.p. 83-84.
Corporation of New York.304 This report provides a succinct overview of the situation in 1935:
Since 1923 the College grant for books to its Maritzburg Library has stood at
£250 per annum – a sum which now has to be distributed among nineteen subject departments. The College has been unable to consider requests for an increase in the amount owing to heavy demands for extension of staff and accommodation to deal with a greatly increased student roll. These demands have all occurred in recent years and since the stabilisation of the Government grant. The limitation of the library grant has told particularly hardly on the Arts departments, whose classes have doubled or trebled and in some cases
quadrupled in these years, and which on their small departmental grants find it impossible to keep up with the increased demands for reading material. But it tells no less on the Science departments which cannot afford the range of periodical literature necessary to keep a Science department up to date.305
The second part of the report deals with the necessity of classifying the collection, à propos the Librarian’s recommendation to the Committee on 8th August, 1935 that the Dewey Decimal Classification system be adopted and “that an application be made to the Carnegie Foundation [sic] for a grant to enable the turn over [to be] carried out.”306 The report requested funding both for a temporary assistant and for the purchase of Library of Congress catalogue cards, the latter in response to an earlier recommendation by the Librarian that a set of Library of Congress cards be ordered “for each new volume purchased, and, as funds permit, sets for books already in the library.”307