The Coblans years, 1946 – 1953
6.2. Finances
In 1946 the total library expenditure including expenditure on books, equipment and salaries for library staff had been £2 7s 0d per student, increasing to £3 3s 0d per student in 1947. In a report drawn up for the Durban Library Committee Coblans notes that in 1928 (nearly 20 years previously!) a committee of the American Library
Association had recommended an expenditure of £5 per student and that the “University of Capetown [sic] was spending about £3.5 per student in 1945.”510
Further, he pointed out that another criterion to be considered is the relationship of library expenditure to total university expenditure. He states that “Both British and American authorities suggest that 3½ % is a minimum. On the 1946 expenditure of
£190,000 this would amount to £6700.”511 Actual expenditure on the Library for 1946 had been £5320, 2.8% of the total university expenditure. A report prepared by Coblans for the Holloway Commission512 indicates that over four years, from 1948 to 1951, the situation had actually worsened, as shown in Table 6.1. below:
Year Registered students
Salaries Books &
equipment
Total Total per student
Total Univ.
expenditure
% library to total university expenditure 1948 1846 £3140 £3700 £6840 £3 7s 0d £209,000 3.3
1949 1840 £4010 £4220 £8230 £4 5s 0d £218,000 3.8 1950 1690 £4110 £4400 £8510 £5 0s 0d £228,000 3.7 1951 1876 £4810 £3550 £8360 £4 5s 0d £260,000 3.2
Table 6.1. University of Natal: comparison of library vs. University expenditure, 1948–
1951513
To be fair, the University was experiencing severe financial difficulties. It should be noted that financial problems at this time were not confined to the University of Natal.
As Taylor comments, “Up to 1948, the government subsidy to universities was based on a variety of formulas which, with the phenomenal postwar growth of the universities
510 H. Coblans, A note on criteria for estimates requested by Durban Library Committee at a meeting held on 28th March 1947, 19th June 1947, unpublished.
511 Ibid.
512 A government Commission of Enquiry into University Finances and Salaries, appointed on 15th August 1951, and chaired by J.E. Holloway.
513 H. Coblans, Some considerations in drafting a memorandum for the Holloway Commission, 17th May, 1951, unpublished.
became completely unsatisfactory ...”514 The difficulties at the University of Natal were, however, exacerbated not only by a too rapid growth rate but also by the dual-centred nature of the institution which naturally made it more expensive to run than a University in only one centre.
The financial difficulties were “further accentuated by the pegging of the Government Grant to a fixed amount”515 for the three years, from 1949 to 1951. A two-person commission, consisting of Professors M.C. Botha and J.P. Duminy, was set up in 1951 jointly by Council and the Natal University Development Foundation to investigate the
“organisation of the University in relation to its financial position” as well as how the University’s resources could be used in the most efficient manner “in the light of the present and future educational needs of the Province of Natal.”516 There had been some discussion in Council, “arising purely out of force of circumstances,”517 about
consolidating most of the faculties in Durban, leaving the Pietermaritzburg campus with the Faculty of Agriculture only. According to Brookes, the idea had originated with the government and caused uproar in Pietermaritzburg, “all because of a desperate attempt to remedy a desperate financial situation which ought never to have been allowed to arise and which was the direct result of inadequate and unscientific subsidisation.”518 The Botha-Duminy Commission reaffirmed the policy of dualism and put forward a number of suggestions regarding the administration of academic matters including rectification of the dispersal of activities in Durban. Briefly, these were that a separate “self-
contained academic institution”519 should be established for the “Non-European”
students and that an effort should be made to “concentrate all University activity at Howard College.”520 These measures would, if followed, they said, automatically remove the difficulties which faced the Library in Durban.521 They also, in their report, indicated that library grants were inadequate. In spite of the straitened financial position of the University, they emphasized strongly that:
514 L.E. Taylor, South African libraries, London: Bingley, 1967, p. 32.
515 M.C. Botha & J.P. Duminy (Chairs), Report of the Commission of Enquiry [into the University of Natal], 5th May 1951, unpublished, [p. 13].
516 Ibid., title page verso.
517 Ibid., p. 1
518 Brookes, A history of the University of Natal, p. 123.
519 Botha & Duminy, Report of the Commission of Enquiry [into the University of Natal], 5th May 1951, p. 8.
520 Ibid., p. 9.
521 Botha & Duminy, Report of the Commission of Enquiry [into the University of Natal], 5th May 1951, p. 10.
The library must be built up to and maintained at a standard which is absolutely essential to the proper functioning of the University and which will adequately reflect its academic worth.522
Coblans felt strongly about the treatment meted out to the Library by the University.
“No department has been so shabbily treated”523 he noted indignantly. He considered that the authorities did not take the University Library seriously. He appealed to the Committee and the University authorities to “take a realistic view about the Library,”524 pointing out firmly that:
It is customary to pay lip service and to speak with glowing idealism [about the library] on public occasions. Practice from the Ministry downwards has been much more restrictive. We cannot run our libraries properly on the present scale ... If no more money is available then we must cut our services ... we need a conscious policy rather than a vague feeling of the importance of the Library.525
In 1952 the Joint Library Committee exhorted Coblans to “make very strong
representations to Senex526 on the complete inadequacy” of the £3,400 granted for 1952
“for the maintenance of the University Library.” 527 His efforts met with some success since Council agreed to making a further sum of approximately £1,900 available but in his Annual report for that year he comments acidly that “three separate library systems ...are being maintained with resources barely adequate for one system.” 528
There was a faint light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the appointment of a government Commission of Enquiry, chaired by Dr J.E. Holloway, to consider the question of university subsidies. Presented to government on 4th May, 1953, its main recommendations were approved retrospectively to 1 January 1953.529 The new arrangements for the government subsidy brought a measure of financial relief to the University of Natal but, as Brookes points out, it did not take into account the “trialism
522 Botha & Duminy, Report of the Commission of Enquiry [into the University of Natal], 5th May 1951, p. 10.
523 H. Coblans, [Notes written in preparation for the Joint Library Committee meeting of 20th November 1951].
524 H. Coblans, Statement by Librarian [to the Joint Library Committee meeting of 20th November, 1952], unpublished, p. 2.
525 Ibid.
526 Senate had agreed that the reports of all the library committees be presented direct to Senex,
“the Librarian being present if necessary when the reports are brought before Senex.” – University of Natal, Joint Library Committee, Minutes of the meeting of 6th May 1952, p. 1.
527 Ibid.
528 University of Natal Library, Annual report, 1952.
529 Brookes, A history of the University of Natal, p. 126
that was de facto in existence, the Government virtually averting its eyes (over nearly three decades) from the embarrassing phenomenon of the separate non-European classes.”530
Two monetary donations during this period are worth noting. Carnegie Corporation of New York granted $15,000 to the Library in 1948, apparently for the purchase of library materials. Senate decided at a meeting held on 12th June 1948 that the fund would be administered by the Librarian under the direction of the Joint Library Committee. The fund was to be used to purchase “books which cannot be normally afforded”531 including standard reference works, duplicate copies of books in demand and basic periodicals.
The Joint Library Committee agreed that the monies were to be expended over a period of several years.532 The Librarian noted gratefully in his report for 1949 that this grant
“added appreciably to the Library’s holdings of scientific journals and of the general reference section.”533 Four years, later, in 1952, Mrs F. A. E. Powell, later to be described as the Library’s “fairy godmother,”534 donated £500 towards the creation of a fund, of which half was to be used for the purchase of books published in the social sciences and the other half was to be devoted to the purchase of books in the “technical sciences.”535