a history of belfast central library

Linen Hall Library

A History of Belfast Central LibraryAuthor(s): Gordon WheelerSource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 4-8Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533996 .

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A History of

Belfast Central Library by Gordon Wheeler, Member of the BELB

In an address delivered to the Belfast Rhetorical Society in 1840 on the causes that had retarded the progress of literature in Ireland and the most efficient means of promoting its

advancement, the speaker, H.R

Montgomery, in dealing with the topic of libraries regretted of Belfast that "the Dublic snirit of this great commercial town is not very amply represented in its

library institutions'. Later in his remarks he called for the establishment of a

public library in the town and what he

meant of course was

an endowed library freely open to the

public. Our lecturer was perhaps being unduly harsh. Given the absence of a

provincial university system, of a national

primary education

system or of any legislation enabling the establishment of

publicly financed

libraries, it was only natural that the

country's largest professional and public collections should have been concentrated in

Dublin. From his own descriptions and from what we know of the first half of the nineteenth century, Belfast had its fair share of book-providing institutions, albeit for a fee.

Early in the century there were the commercial circulating libraries like

Hugh Warren's, Eliza Archer's, John

Hodgson's and Francis Lamont's

(mostly concentrated in the High Street area), where an annual

subscription of 30/- or a daily hire

charge of 2d or 5d could give access to a collection as large as 6,000 volumes.

Montgomery, however, bemoans the evil influence of the circulating libraries with their time-wasting and

mind-crippling novels and romances. The prosperous middle classes were to be increasingly well-provided for by the much more up-market proprietary subscription Linen Hall Library, once it had lowered its initial high standards on what should properly be on its shelves.

By 1840 the Linen Hall had a stock of 8,Q00 volumes, and its importance as

a town reference collection had already been recognised by the deposit of

government publications; as it was to continue to be later, by the gift of Ordnance Survey publications and of the British Museum catalogue, even

after a public library had been established. The Collegiate Deoartment of the Belfast Academical

Laying of Foundation on 18th June, 1884

Institution with 5,000 volumes m 1840

had, nevertheless, according to

Montgomery "only the commencement of a good librar/, but, even here at

Tnst', both tertiary students and

schoolboys had to pay a subscription for access to their library. A public gesture from 1835 onwards had made it possible for past students of at least two years' standing to continue using the library for a very small annual

charge, but even this limited public resource had disappeared by mid

century with the closure of the

Collegiate Department and the transfer of many of the books to

Queen's College. The professions and learned

societies were looking after their own

specialised interests. By the middle years of the century the Belfast

Medical Society was maintaining a

library of several thousand volumes at the General Hospital in Frederick

Street, and the Belfast Natural

History and Philosophical Society had laid the foundations of a scientific

library at its own private museum in

College Square. The Presbyterian

clergy had access to the town's oldest

corporate collection, the so-called Belfast Library founded in 1765 and

belonging to the Antrim Presbytery. This, though far wider than a mere

theological library, was still under 3,000 volumes when it was placed on

permanent deposit in Queen's College in 1873. the same vear as the onenincr

of the Gamble

Library in

Assembly's College, the first really substantial

Presbyterian theological collection in the town, which

had achieved 17,000 volumes by the 1880s. Few if any of these libraries could have been considered public in the sense that a citizen off the street

would have been

given ready access to

them; and the same is true of the largest local collection at

Queen's College, which stood at

38,000 volumes in

1882, the year of the

adoption by Belfast of the Public Libraries Act.

One other type of extremely popular library faculty, which was destined to have a profound effect on the nature of the service offered by early public libraries, was the newsroom or newspaper reading room,

either provided as a commercial venture or in association with a

mercantile group or a club or society. Belfast had at least seven of these by the late 1860s, ranging from those for businessmen and bankers in the Commercial Buildings, the Linen Hall (not the library) and the Coal

Exchange to those for a less socially elevated clientele provided by the

Working Classes Association and the Catholic Institute. It is to this latter

type of institution and to the

development of adult education that we must turn for the real origins of book provision for the humbler classes in Belfast before the creation of a free

public library; although still what little there was had to be paid for by subscriptions which, even though kept as low as possible, nevertheless

excluded those less fortunate than the

page 4 UNENHALL REVIEW 5.2



skilled tradesman, the craftsman or J the self-improving clerk.

Belfast Mechanics' Institute began well in 1825 in Queen Street with over j 400 members, two thirds of its directors having to be creative tradesmen. The subscription was only 12/- a year but by 1830 the steam had

gone out of the initial enthusiasm. The

primary objective was the establishment of a library, but in

November 1838 the library and

premises were put up for sale in order to settle a comparatively trivial debt.

The premises were saved through the

good offices of a benefactor but were let out as a school, the residual funds

remaining in the hands of a trustee and the Institute continuing nominally in a state of suspended animation. To all intents and purposes the r?le of the Institute had been taken over by the

Belfast Working Classes Association for the Promotion of General

Improvement founded in 1845 in Castle Chambers. This Association launched a Peoples Newsroom in the

following year and a People's Circulating Library in 1847. The rates for each were a mere 1/6 a quarter. In 1865 the surviving assets of the

Mechanics Institute were combined with the Newsroom and Circulating Library to form the Belfast People's Literary Institute in Donegall Street, with exactly the same objectives as before but now costing 3/- a quarter. However, by 1879 money difficulties, i.e. not paying booksellers' bills, led to an amalgamation with the Belfast

Working Men's Institute and

Temperance Hall, which had been founded in 1873 at the corner of Castle and Queen Street, again with the

purpose of providing a library and newsroom. Access was either by subscription or at one penny a visit, but in spite of all the work of its

predecessors the library could only muster 3,000 volumes on the eve of the

opening of the free public library in the late 1880s. The Working Men's Institute appears to have carried on in existence until 1907, significantly in the period when the Public Library

was starting to expand into a branch

system. The Public Libraries and Museums

Act of 1850 was extended to Ireland in 1853 but only applied to populations of 10,000 or over. Not surprisingly there

were no takers, as there were few such

towns in the country. The 1855 Act for Ireland reduced the qualification to

5,000 population and required only a two-thirds majority of a meeting of householders in order to be adopted. Some towns such as Cork and Ennis

adopted at once, only to find that the

penny rate limitation and low Irish valuations produced nothing like a sufficient income to make a start.

Dundalk adopted in 1856 and

managed to open in 1858, thereby having the distinction of being Ireland's first free rate-supported

library. Belfast Council appears to have toyed with the idea of a museum and library in the late 1850s but

certainly nothing came of it, and it was not until the early summer of 1882 that a meeting of interested ratepayers was convened by Mr William Gray, Clerk of the Local Board of Works. Gray's enthusiasm secured a petition with 500 si?natures ranging from MPs,

mercantile princes and the professions down to large numbers of tradesmen. The petition was duly presented to the Town Council in June but was initially rejected. However, further pressure caused the Council to relent in October and to proceed to the next required stage, the balloting of all ratepayers.

Of the 10,200-pdd voting papers issued, 5,200 voted for and 1,400 against (Belfast's population was about 230,000 at the time ? the small number of ratepayers illustrates the low income generated by a penny rate).

Matters now proceeded speedily: a

Library Committee was appointed, though not a composite one of Council and co-opted members as Gray had

envisaged (in spite of the later lip service paid to his vital part in creating the Library, Gray never succeeded in

getting onto the Committee even when

co-options eventually did become

possible); a site was selected in April 1883 and the price for the building fixed at ?15,000 and for its fittings at

?3,000. Canny businessmen that they were, the Council obviously had other ideas about the stocking of the Library, so that the Governors of the Linen Hall

Library found it incumbent upon themselves to issue a statement: 'As the Free Library Acts have been

adopted, and are likely soon to become

operative in Belfast, and as it has been

openly proposed that the books and other property belonging to this

Society should be handed over to the Free Library, the Committee think it

right to state that jio such power as that suggested is vested in them. In any case

they consider that the Free Library will not interfere in any way

with the working of the

Library, and that within their respective lies there will be found

ample room for both institutions in this town and neighbourhood. It

is, therefore, their intention to give a cordial welcome to the Belfast Free Library as a fellow agent and

helper in the cause for which this Society was founded ninety five years ago, viz., 'that of Promoting Knowledge?

An architectural competition was won by W.H. Lynn, who had been

responsible for the design of the

Queen's College Library completed in

1868, and whose firm coincidentally

also built the premises now occupied by the City's third major library, the Linen Hall. The foundation stone was laid by the Lord Lieutenant, Lord

Spencer, on June 19th 1884 on one of the most prestigious sites which the Council could have found, to close the vista at the end of the great new commercial boulevard of Royal

Avenue, which it had just carved

through the dilapidating stews of Hercules Lane. On all sides as the

building rose, similar grand (though not quite so grand) structures were

going up at the same time ? the Reform Club at the head of the Avenue, the new General Post Office in the

middle and the Northern Bank just opposite, together with many of the

quasi-uniform ranges of shop and office blocks which have so recently been destroyed or disfigured.

At this stage Belfast was

unfortunately pipped by Dublin which had adopted the Libraries Act in 1883 but managed to have two buildings open by 1884, for the Belfast building

was destined not to be complete for another four years, thanks to a combination of strikes caused by the award of the plastering contract to a

foreign' Scottish firm and the loss at sea of some of the Scottish stone

required, followed by the miscutting (again in Scotland) of the polished

marble granite base, the dulled correction of which remains all to

painfully obvious today. By early 1886 the walls had not even reached first floor level.

Although intentionally only a

portion of the ultimate concept was

built, Belfast found itself in possession of the largest free-standing library building erected in Ireland, since the

completion of the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin in the early eighteenth century. Unfortunately for future

generations of librarians the great red sandstone French renaissance palais

Library of Business, Science and Technology.

was rather more than just a library, for, in addition to the tall newsroom and lending library opening off the

pillared ground floor lobby and the

splendid domed reference library opening off the suitably processional staircase well on the piano nobile, there were on the second floor of the

UNEN HALL REVIEW 52 page 5



building two great top Ht galleries designed to house a museum and

works of art. At a fairly late stage it seems to have been realised that the town possessed little of worth to

display in them other than a selection of civic knick-knacks and town ancestors. The fact that the Belfast

Natural History and Philosophical Society in College Square already ran a successful scientific museum which

was on occasions open to the public

clearly took care of that side of things, so the galleries must initially really have been intended primarily as art

galleries. It says much for the

organisational skills of our Victorian forebears that in time for the

inauguration of the building on October 13th 1888 it was possible in the space of about five weeks to send out a circular inviting contributions for a loan exhibition; to gather in from over 100 lenders and to have in place over 780 paintings and sculptures and ten cases of antiquities, books and

manuscripts; and to prepare a printed catalogue. The bookless walls

throughout the building were happily concealed by a heady selection of what their proud owners fondly imagined to be Rubens, Gainsborough, Hals, Constable, Breughel, Bomney, Claude, Lawrence, etc. etc!

It was at the sumptuous luncheon in the Town Hall following his

inauguration of the Library that the Lord Lieutenant, the Marquis of

Londonderry, announced that the

Queen had graciously conferred the title of City upon Belfast, the first time that such a title had ever been granted to a town which was not the seat of a

bishopric. The first section of the Library to

open to the public was the Newsroom, which within its first year achieved the incredible figure of 895,000 visitors.

The Lending Library opened a month later with an initial stock of 14,000 volumes and a printed catalogue available almost at once. Getting on for 6,000 of these were sold in the first

year, and the totally inadequate stock turned over 13 times at issue! Already

within a year of opening the public were complaining in the press about

poor stock insufficient to meet

demand, wretched lighting, a crowded Newsroom, and the iniquity of having to purchase readers' tickets, pay fines,

buy costly (i.e. Id, 6d) printed catalogues in a so-called 'free' library.

The long wait to change books (which were of course on closed access) was a

frequent complaint ('too many impudent, brazen and idle young ladies sporting their figures and

displaying their charms' at the

expense of busy men without the time to wait

? that is, one presumes, to

change their books!). Another cause for irritation was the inclination of the

City Fathers to close the building at the drop of a tricorne whenever an

occasion of sufficient civic pomp

demanded. They were inordinately proud of what is still one of the most

impressive interiors in Belfast and

only too conscious of the increasing unsuitabUity of their old Town Hall in what had become an unfashionable area of markets and warehouses. It

was on one such occasion, a reception for Queen Victoria's son, Prince Albert

Victor, that one of the royal entourage, peering through the potted palms and groves of classical columns and over

the frock-coated and bearded ranks of assembled worthies, was prompted to ask 'Where is the Library?' The Reference Library was in fact not stocked and open to the public until late 1889, Three thousand volumes of the initial collection were presented by Sir James Henderson and the

remaining 8,000 were selected with the advice of the professors of Queen's College. It was a continuing cause for

complaint that no printed catalogue of the Reference Library was available until 1896. The Library's bad press continued well beyond the turn of the

century: both readers and unconvinced critics of the whole concept of free libraries showed little appreciation of the herculean efforts of a very small staff with an equally small budget. Correspondents in 1892 endued the Newsroom as a disgrace indicted to the

City, frequented by loafers, gamblers and the unwashed. There was a bitter

exchange over the merits and

wickedness of possible Sunday opening. In 1894 the Committee was taken to task for the under

representation (deliberate or otherwise) or Catholic authors.

Nomad's Weekly (the local Private Eye of its day) had nothing flattering to say in 1902, when it described the whole

building as a tramps' paradise, with the Reference Library deserted, the books and papers filthy, and seven tenths of the books used being pernicious fiction (a figure little

changed today!). By 1905 the Methodist Recorder could still refer to

the Library as a disgrace to a large city. Ironically, having started off with

nothing much to put in its museum

gallery, the Library Committee

suddenly found itself, as the result of a

faulty legal opinion, the recipient in 1891 of an immense collection of 60,000 natural history and

antiquarian specimens donated by Canon John Grainger of Broughshane, who had originally intended to give them to the Representative Church

Body of the Church of Ireland. The expense entailed in building a sort of shed annexe to house these behind the

ground floor entrance lobby, and in

providing costly exhibition cases,

added to the already considerable debt

being carried forward from the original construction bill, led to a period of very careful budgeting somewhat eased by regular subventions made out of the

profits of the Corporation Gas j Committee. There grew to be an |

uneasy feeling that the Library was the poor cousin of the art gallery. Certainly the newspapers devoted many more column inches to the

tediously recurring exhibitions of the Ramblers Sketching Club and the Belfast Art Society and to the

circulating loan collections from the Victoria and Albert Museum which had become the obviously popular diet of the top floor. In 1895, out of a rates income of over ?3,000 only ?200 was

actually spent on books and there were dark mutterings from critics about

regular trips for councillors and the art curator to London and even Paris to secure outrageously over-priced works

of art.

The Library found itself almost from the beginning greatly hampered by the incredible lack of storage space which the architect had provided and had to resort within only a few years to such devises as inserted galleries in the upper reaches of the Reference

Library and glass floors over the bookcases in both the Reference and

Lending Libraries. Natural

development of the Central Library building right up to the present time seems to have been dogged by a series of events and circumstances outside

the control of its administrators. In 1905 the Art Gallery and Museum

became a separate institution with its own Director, though still housed in the Library building.

After the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society had handed its museum collections over to the City in 1910, a site for a new museum was

found in the Botanic Gardens at Stranmillis in 1912 and the building design was completed by 1914.

Unfortunately the first World War intervened and work was not started until 1923. The long-suffering library staff were not to see the last of the

museum specimens and to start

realizing on the potential of the released museum galleries until 1929. In the meantime the Reference

Library overflow was already having to be outhoused in a branch library.

The wisdom of evacuating valuable material from the Reference Library was demonstrated in 1942 when the Central Library was severely shaken

during an air raid and the top floor had to be cut off from public use.

Frustratingly the subject departmentalization which was

agreed for the Reference Library in 1950 could not be implemented until the whole of the Central Building was once more available, and, because of

post-war housing priorities, Government did not give permission for this to commence until 1956 (it finished only in 1958). Dramatic increases in the book fund had commenced in 1951 and United

Nations depository status had come in 1956, so the storage problem had now reached crisis proportions, resolved

only by the acquisition in 1958 of a vast

page 6 UNEN HALL REVIEW 5J2



factory building in North Howard

Street to act as a repository.

However, HMSO depository status in 1961 did not help matters, especially as the book fund continued to escalate in those balmy years of the sixties. A

new seven-floor book stack costing ?134,000 was erected immediately behind and leading out of the old Central Library building in 1963,

giving a new maximum capacity of

800,000 volumes and enabling the

gathering in from a multitude of locations of reference stock which had been scattered for decades. By 1971 severe recurrent budget cuts were

being suffered, so it is perhaps odd to find that the first steps were already being taken to find a site for a complete replacement of the Central Library.

After an enormous amount of

detailed preliminary planning, the

Corporation in 1973 gave the go-ahead for tins new building on a four-acre site

adjoining the projected new cross-city motorway link at Peter's Hill. The

target cost was ?2.5 million and the

building was to be four times the size of the present building, with a total shelf

capacity of two million volumes, necessitating a double of staff. Once

again the Library's hopes were dashed

by a turn in events: the Macrory report on local government reorganisation in

Northern Ireland had recommended the transfer of responsibility for education and libraries to five new area boards, and from 1973 the Libraries Department passed out of the keeping of the City Corporation.

The Department of Education, faced with the clamouring capital demands of the new boards, simply could not fund a project of such

magnitude, and besides it had become clear for some time that the site chosen

would be an enormous security risk for a prestige semi-governmental

building, being as it was on what was

proving to be a delicate sectarian interface. However, there was an

ironic plus side to the civil strife when in 1976 a vacant bomb site in Royal

Avenue became available for

development right beside the Central

Library. Still further outline plans were approved by the Library Committee, this time at a reputed cost of ?6.5 m, but this proved to be a project equally hard to swallow, and the

Library instead eventually acquired in 1980 a second book stack lined up on the same subject levels as the first, but

unhappily, because of the

unavailability of the whole of the

intervening ground area, not connected to it.

Such is life that the Library does now own the wanted space, but the money is not immediately available to construct the solid link stack which

would complete the master plan. More

happily it can be reported that the

library staffs increasing manic frustrations with lifts and staircases are at this very moment being eased by

means of the erection of a temporary fly-over bridge at the vital level of the

main Reference Library floor of the

original 1888 building. In the eyes of its users the

reputation of a public library lies as much if not more in the strengths of its branches as of its central headquarters. The need for a branch

library in

BaUymacarrett had already been considered in

1890, but there were no

funds in view of the penny in the pound rates

limitation. In 1892 the City

Council discussed unfounded

promises of district libraries

which some local

government election candidates had been making during their campaigns. A room at the new

Templemore Avenue Baths was

suggested. (A policy of mens sana in

corpore sano was to continue in the selection of sites for some of the City's branch libraries). In 1897/8 the Chief Librarian and two members of committee were sent to visit English cities with a view to establishing branches. Their report in October 1898 recommended the building of four

? in the north, south, east and west sectors of the city. The site for the first branch was chosen at Templemore

Avenue; and as an interim measure

reading rooms for exchange of books were opened in 1899/1900 at Falls Road Baths and in a room provided by the York Street Flax Spinning Company in Milewater Street. The rates were increased to a penny

farthing in the pound the following year in order to meet the cost of the

BaUymacarrett Branch where

building had begun after the adoption of plans of Blackwood and Jury in October. The outlier reading rooms were proving so successful, with

weekly attendance averages of 2,500 and 1,500 respectively, that two further ones were opened in 1902 in rooms provided free of charge by the

Ligoniel Working Men's Club and by the North Belfast Working Men's Club in Danube Street; this in spite of the considerable dissatisfaction of having to provide a list of perhaps twenty desired titles if one was to have a hope of securing one of them!

But a very much more important step had been taken in the form of an

application by the Library Committee -to Andrew Carnegie for more

assistance in the provision of the three

remaining permanent branches

required. Carnegie's offer of ?15,000 was conditional on the raising of the

library rate to a penny three farthings and was not welcomed with universal

delight. Nomad's Weekly though it a

disgrace that a proud city like Belfast, had had to go begging for funds; the

*? *^?L^^?^??ia? '

Music Library.

Belfast Trades Council recommended that the offer should be refused in view of Mr Carnegie's well-known attitude towards trades unions; and some

writers to the newspapers considered the rates increase condition as an

impudent blackmail! However, hard headed business acumen prevailed and the money was duly accepted. The

respectably bought and paid for

Ballymacarrett Branch opened to the

public in August 1903 and an architectural competition was launched for the three Carnegie branches at Oldpark, Falls Road and

Donegall Road. The assessor was Sir Thomas Drew, at the time engaged upon the building of St Anne's Cathedral, and the winning architects were Graeme Watt and Tulloch who

provided substantial buildings in a

variety of Tudoresque and rennaissance styles, each containing a

newsroom, a lending library a juvenile room and a ladies' reading room.

Oldpark opened in 1905, Falls Road in 1908 and Donegall Road in 1909, each

with a stock of 5,000 volumes, as had been the case with Ballymacarrett in 1903. A natural consequence of the

completion of the four district branches was the closure of the various

temporary reading rooms, although the Ligoniel reading room was reputed to have closed because the Working

Men's Club was opposed to the introduction of the likes of periodicals.

As the branches opened the statistics show very clearly the decline in the

pressure placed on the lending and

especially the newsroom facilities at the Central Library: the Central newsroom had exceeded one million visits a year in 1907.

UNEN HALL REVIEW 52 page 7



The first of the City's libraries to introduce open access was the Falls

Road Branch in 1914. This was followed by Oldpark and Donegall Road in 1921 and by BaUymacarrett in 1924, though matters could not be

physically remedied in the Central

Lending Library until 1931, after the

reorganisation which followed the vacation of the museum rooms in 1929.

It was also in 1914/15 that the system's total issue figures exceeded half a

million for the first time, but an

approach to the Carnegie Trust for a further branch library beside the

Ormeau Park was not unnaturally unsuccessful in view of the date. After the war branches for the Shankill and the Ormeau Park areas were again

considered, but Ormeau was not to get its branch until 1959. A competition for the design of the Shankill Road branch was won in 1926 by T.W.

Henry, brother of Paul Henry, the artist, and of Professor R.M. Henry of

Queen's. This branch eventually opened in 1928, and, in view of the fact that the City was at the time in process of building its new museum at

Stranmillis, rather surprisingly contained a museum gallery in addition to the usual library facilities. The Shankill branch had cost ?15,000, more than the total cost of the three

Carnegie branches, so it is not

surprising to find the Committee

sympathetic to the request in 1929 from deputation to have a branch in the Knock/Belmont area but unable to

proceed because of lack of funds. The

separate discriminatory statistics for attendance in Ladies' Rooms were discontinued in the early 1930s. (It is

puzzling to find that in 1932

BaUymacarrett could lay claim to 18,500 ladies whilst Falls would admit to only 1,880!).

The most significant post-war development in the growth of the branch library system was the

acceptance in 1954 of the Chief Librarian's recommendation that

there should be at least twelve more full or part-time outlets forming

middle and outer suburban rings, but the gradual achievement of this goal

was severely slowed down due to lack of capital building funds in the early 1980s.

Some of the branch libraries have in their turn been caught up in the historical events of recent times. In 1922 the Falls Road Branch was set on

fire during an armed raid, and over

7,000 volumes were looted. It was

consequently taken over as a Black and Tans police barracks and did not

reopen to the public until 1926.

Throughout the 1970s it was the target of numerous gun and arson attacks

and its books have been burned in the streets. This culminated in the celebrated flag incident of 1980, which led to temporary closure because of threats to the staff a) not to take the

flag in question down; and b) not to allow it to remain up! During the 1941 air raids of the Second World War the

highly successful and statistically prolific Ballymacarrett Branch in East Belfast was totally destroyed. It was to be almost twenty years before its

replacement was completed. Vandalism is unfortunately always a

problem in any large urban area, but

Belfast has suffered more than most because of the continuing civil unrest: both the Suffolk and the original

Whiterock branches have had to be closed at various times because of

repeated damage and the mindless intimidation and harrassment of staff

whose only offence was to attempt to carry on with a normal service.

The picture today is a system of

twenty full and part-time branches in a

variety of accommodation ranging from the purpose-built (as separate buildings or shared with clinics), through prefabricated huts and

adapted school and bathhouse

buildings, to converted suburban villas and rented shops. In addition there are two mobile libraries and some 112 access points in hospitals, old people's homes and prisons. Library provision is supplied for some 65,000 schoolchildren and 5,500 full-time

equivalent students in further education. The resident population served is 304,000, but the actual

daytime working population within the city is more like half a million. Over 50% of the resident population are

registered library readers, and the

daily rate of visit at the Reference Libraries is in the region of 1,200, with 35% of the enquiries received being from outside the area. The turn-over

budget for 1987/88 was ?3.26 millions but this was actually about ?500,000 below what the Library's allocation should have been from the Board's block grant according to the

| assessment of relative needs for all five area boards. In fact the Library's expenditure in each of the last five years has been an average of 11% below its proper level while other main heads of Board expenditure have shown a pattern of very much higher average increases. The Belfast Board has for the last few years been in a very difficult financial position having to

cope not only with Government cut backs like the other Boards, but also with the transfer of funds from itself to the other Boards as a result of the

continuing downtrend of its population (there is now a difference of only 66,000

between today's population and what it was when the Libraries opened one hundred years ago); between 1969 and 1980 the population has dropped by 100,000.

In the case of Belfast the typical outward population movement to

dormitory areas experienced by many similar cities has been exacerbated by sectarian pressures during the civil

disturbances of the last twenty years. The overall result has been that many of the branch libraries are now wrongly sited and/or too big (or too small) for the areas they serve, so that a process of

rationalisation is both unavoidable and imperative. (The first hint that branches were not ideally situated had come as early as 1938 ? a drastic

proposal to close ten of the existing Libraries was actually considered in 1983).

Finally, something should be said of the provincial r?le of the Belfast Central Reference Library. Northern Ireland now has a national museum,

the Ulster Museum, based on the

original collections which had

belonged to the City of Belfast, but the

province has not yet achieved a national library in spite of several

attempts to bring such an institution into being. A Departmental

Committee on Libraries in Northern Ireland which reported in 1929 merely stated that there should be a state

library. In 1947 the Northern Ireland Branch of the Library Association in its own report was more specific in its recommendation that there should be a regional reference library based on Belfast Central Library and with the relevant services maintained by contributions from the other library authorities. A direct application to Government in 1955 for a grant in

recognition of the national r?le of the Reference Library was refused. The 1964 Government report on the Public

Library Service in Northern Ireland (the Hawnt report) in its turn advised that the Central Library should be

separated from Belfast Corporation and developed as a provincial library governed by a joint committee

consisting of representatives of all

participating authorities together with nominees of the Minister of Education. In May 1983, the Northern Ireland Assembly carried a motion

calling on Government to reconstitute the Central Library as a provincial institution and to grant it copyright privileges. Finally in 1984 the Education Committee of the Assembly conducted a very thorough investigation into the public library service in Northern Ireland, and

amongst its conclusions was the recommendation 'that the Belfast Central Library should become a

regional library facility independent of the Belfast Education and Library

Board and responsible to a broadly based management body. Of all this

absolutely nothing has come, other than the recognition by the

Department of Education that the Belfast Board's expenditure on its Central Library (which in 1982/3

represented 40% of its total library budget) is an *unavoidable expense' and therefore is allowed for as a special case in the block allocation of funds to the various Boards.

page 8 LINEN HALL REVIEW 5 J



a history of belfast central library

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