Library philanthropy

Reading might be instructive, or it might be a pastime, or it might be actually harmful

- Governor of Victoria, Sir John Fuller (1911) from http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11610043?searchTerm=Northcote+library
This was said at the opening of an Andrew Carnegie funded public library in Northcote, Victoria.

It is salutary to remember it was this Scottish/American philanthropist who funded four public libraries in Australia, on the condition that they were permanently free to the public. Four public libraries is nothing like the 1,687 public libraries he funded across the US (just look at one years worth of library philanthropy by Carnegie and others in this 1901 article http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020274/1901-08-18/ed-1/seq-42/) but still enough to make him the largest library benefactor in Australian history.

There would have been far more public libraries built in Australia with Carnegie money (as there was in New Zealand which got 18 or Canada 125) but most councils or state governments were not prepared to pay the ongoing costs of funding the libraries staff and maintaining book stock if they were built, and so they weren’t.

In the US philanthropy continues to build or fund libraries, but I can find little such use of private capital for the purpose here in Australia either now or historically. Maybe the type of entrepeneur in Australia does not value self education and free access to information as it is valued in the US. Or maybe philanthropy is ‘un-Australian’ as there certainly seems less of it here than in other nations.

I would be interested to know if there have been any public libraries built through private philanthropy in Australia, if anyone knows of any please let me know. I know of some past funding for university and state libraries by such as that of Baillieu, Dixson, Mitchell, Mortlock and Fisher. But these monies were primarily to bolster ongoing libraries and in relation to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Carnegie, Mellon and other US philanthropists including recently Bill Gates they were very meagre sums indeed.