History

In the early days of colonisation, most libraries in Victoria were established and run as mechanics’ institutes. These libraries, the Maldon Athenaeum included, were primarily self-funded through member subscriptions and fund-raising activities. However, they also received financial support from the Victorian State Government in the form of an annual grant. This changed after a long campaign to reform the provision of public libraries gained traction in the mid-1930s. The pressure to replace mechanics’ institute libraries with ‘free’ (rates-funded) public libraries run by state and local governments threatened the existence of the Maldon Athenaeum.

After World War 2, according to librarian and researcher Dr Donald Barker, ‘both state and local government subsidised an increasing number of free municipal libraries and a decreasing number of mechanics’ institutes’. The Maldon Athenaeum, however, continued to operate as before, raising finances through subscriptions supplemented by the small Government subsidy, the Country Free Library Grant.

In 1979 the Victorian Government ceased all financial support to the remaining mechanics’ institute libraries. Instead, they provided a grant to local councils to fund their local libraries. Some mechanics’ institutes had found the financial burden hard and were, as historian Pam Baragwanath puts it, ‘only too pleased to hand the job over to councils’. Not so the Maldon Athenaeum Library which joined the few who ‘stoically fought to retain their hard-won collections and their identity’.

When the 1979 annual grant did not arrive, the Maldon Athenaeum committee appealed to the government, only to be told that any funds would have to come through the Bendigo Regional Library Service and the Maldon Shire Council. But it was later revealed that the establishment of a free public library service in Maldon would not be before October 1982. This not only left the Maldon Athenaeum Library with a financial crisis but, if it closed, would also leave Maldon residents without local access to a library in the interim period.

Ted Webb, president of the Maldon Athenaeum committee, felt strongly about the situation, pointing out at the Annual General Meeting in February 1980 that stopping the funding had ‘broken a tradition going back to 1866 when the Chief Secretary at that time awarded an annual grant of nine pounds nineteen shillings to the Athenaeum Library at Maldon’. He considered the State Government’s action to be ‘deplorable’ and

… as sensitive as shooting the last buffalo to starve a few remaining Indians into submission [there being] only a few libraries as the Athenaeum left in Victoria where a group of people voluntarily banded together to provide free reading facilities to the local community.

He vowed that ‘until the regional library provided a better service, the Maldon Athenaeum Library would still operate’.

By August 1982, the Maldon Shire Council was uncertain whether it would join the Regional Service following, as reported in The Tarrangower Times, ‘disquieting rumours of per capita service costs and that some other Councils were considering withdrawing from the service or not taking up their options to join’. However, as the newspaper further reported, Council was told that if Maldon decided not to join, residents ‘would lose their rights to free membership and would have to pay a subscription’.

In fact, what the Regional Service was proposing was a bookmobile which would visit Maldon for six to eight hours per fortnight. This proposal did not change the minds and determination of the Maldon Athenaeum committee members who held their ground and continued to fight for the independence of the historically significant library and its service to the people of Maldon. President Ted Webb, in a radio interview given in September 1982, proposed instead to offer a ‘complimentary service’, declaring:

‘If Maldon deserves two libraries let us give it two libraries’.

In the interview, he went on to say that ultimately ‘the decision was up to the subscribers and the community’. In November of the following year, with the bookmobile now providing a weekly service to Maldon, The Tarrangower Times reported that the Athenaeum Committee was conducting a survey to determine if the Athenaeum’s lending library was still required by the community. At a committee meeting held on 15 December 1983 a motion was passed that ‘if sufficient response is not received by February 1984 we discontinue our Lending Library Service’.

There is no direct record of the outcome of this survey but the response must have been positive because the library never ceased operating. Community support, the leadership of Ted Webb and committee determination during these difficult times ensured the independent Maldon Athenaeum Library exists today, long after the regional bookmobile service to Maldon ceased in 2002.

Heather Pavitt, 2025

References

Baragwanath, Pam (2000) If the walls could speak: a social history of the mechanics’ institutes of Victoria. Publishing Solutions, Richmond.

Barker, Donald (2007) Reformers and reform: towards free public libraries in Victoria, The Australian Library Journal, p 373. Available on https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049670.2007.10722430

Documents held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Library minutes held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Newspapers held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only:

The Tarrangower Times, February 27, 1980.
The Tarrangower Times, April 16, 1981.
The Tarrangower Times, August 19, 1982.
The Tarrangower Times, September 9, 1982.
The Tarrangower Times, March 24, 1983.
The Tarrangower Times, November 24, 1983.