Barr Smith Library Memory Book
What’s your favourite memory of the Barr Smith Library?
For
over 75 years, the Barr Smith Library has been serving the University
of Adelaide community. In that time, thousands of students, staff and
members of the general public have lived, worked and studied within its
walls.
To celebrate our past, we’re inviting you to share your
favourite memory or story of the Barr Smith Library. Whether you are an
alumnus, a student, staff or friend – your recollection is valuable. It
could be an unforgettable event, such as meeting someone in the
Library, an anecdote or a defining moment.
John DaviesStaff Member - 25 years so far
"Marie Robinson was the Collection Management Librarian when I started working in the BSL, back in 1984. She talked a million miles an hour in her Irish accent, so she was very hard to understand. It took me a year or so to understand that what you needed to do was listen for every third word and fill in the gaps.
Marie also was a huge fan of Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction, and bought a lot of these books for the Library. Indeed, she used to donate a lot of her own books to the library as well. I was exceptionally saddened when she passed away, and I went to her funeral. I still smile whenever I walk past her photo on Level 3, and the Bromeliad named in her honour...(Marie was a passionate member of the Bromeliad Society of Australia)."
Patricia Raymond
Wife of Ira Raymond (1917-2004), University of Adelaide Librarian 1964 - 1982.
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| Ira Doley Raymond (1917-2004)
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"This one remained in Ira's memory. It was during the University's Centenary celebrations that His Royal Highness paid a fleeting visit to the Undergraduate Library. Prince Philip's eyes strayed to the American poetry shelves, near which he was standing.
He noticed, with apparent horror, that the poetry of T.S. Eliot (OM) was classified as American and demanded to be told why. Ira told him that the Barr Smith Library had collected Eliot since well before he became British. (To add that the Library normally followed standard American practice, and had done so in this case, did not seem politic.)
Prince Philip winced and asked where the Library had put Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (on which he had drawn in his Centenary ovation). On being told that the book, not being poetry, was in another part of the building, he shrugged wearily and left.
This gentle brush with Prince Philip brought Ira a distinct sense of inadequacy. What he had anticipated as a pleasant adventure had turned into a memorable mis-adventure. 'The infirm glory of the positive hour' had departed."
Latifa MahStudent
"My first couple of years studying medicine were overwhelming, intense and gruelling. Never before had I felt so out of my element. The amount of information thrown at us, and expected of us, seemed terrifyingly impossible. To my eyes, it seemed as though most of my cohort glided right into the study and gleaned information effortlessly, while I was left struggling to master the basics. Every time I sat down to study, it felt as though a fog had descended upon my mind, and nothing could get through. Despite this, I knew there was no other way to get through the year but keeping at the books.
So began my enduring affair with the Barr Smith Library. I spent every spare hour I could within those great walls; the shelves of books, the study tables and fluorescent lights as familiar to me as the med school itself.
I would rush over to the library during any breaks in my timetable - climbing up the many steps to the main entrance, and then back down to the bottom floor of the library, where the medical books were located. As the desks lined the perimeter of this area, I could hear everything that was going on right outside its windows. In the warmer parts of the year, there were often demonstrations, shows, events and fundraisers on the Barr Smith Lawns, and I could hear the blaring microphones, music and good cheer of students having lunch, heading in to class or going home. When afternoons and early evenings set in, the pulse of university life seemed to ebb. The sounds that accompanied my lonely hours would dwindle to footsteps in the distance of professors and graduate students on their way home from a long day of work.
As the days wore on, the mood of the library also began to change. More and more students would stay late to study, and there was an intensity to our communal commitment to education as exams began to pose a very real threat. The librarians would make increasing rounds of re-shelving books, and looked almost harried at the hum of students gathering in study areas and occupying computers. I began recognising faces of some of the regulars, and hoped that they too would reach their Everest in the end.
Now I am nearing my own little Everest. Looking back, I realise that the Barr Smith Library was where I found my discipline and pushed through the tough times; it is where I spent the majority of my first years of uni, labouring over massive tomes of books and toiling through their endless chapters. But it wasn't only medical knowledge that I gained - I discovered facets of uni life and culture which formed memories that can never be replaced, from my little spot in the library."
Troy Young
Graduate
"Browsing in the old section of the library and finding a book written by one of Captain Cook's crew about their explorations in Port Phillip Bay."
Adrienne Lovelock
Staff 1989 - 2008
"I was working as the Alumni Activities Coordinator, and I was taking a visiting group of children, teachers and parents from Geranium Area School for a tour round the campus. We looked at the beautiful old buildings, the gardens, the statues, the secret hidden corners. We talked about famous scientists, explorers, writers. We went into the Barr Smith, and wound our way down, down, down through the book stacks, the computer banks ... and finished up in the Reading Room. The kids walked round looking at the carved wood, the moulded plasterwork, the high glass windows, the books. We talked about what the students do. "Any questions?" I asked. A little boy put up his hand. "How many light bulbs are there in this building?"
Helen Grubel
Graduate
"There are so many memories of the Barr Smith Library, it was the focus of University life. I remember writing my first (anthropology) essay in the old reading room, on the Kung bushmen, and being blown away by the history of the old reading room, thinking of how many previous students may have sat where I was seated.
I remember in late 1979 when there were computer printouts of authors, titles and subjects in separate, large folders - it was a revolution! I loved the place and learnt so much about different subjects and, I dare say, life."
AndrewStudent, Graduate
"So many memories! where to begin?
Rainy days looking out over the Barr Smith lawns, hours poring over the books in the reading room, many areas, many aisles, many desks where I got lost in books. Late nights, quiet concentration. The special collections room. The stairwells, the artwork, the searches, the knowledge, but above all the books.
In fact, the Barr Smith library evokes many many memories of many places, its incredible where the books take you!"
John K.Graduate 1961-76
"The spaciousness of it - compared with my school library; the 'serenity' and the foot warmers."
Barbara RobertsGraduate 1976 - 1978 BA
"The details have dulled with time, but the basic memory remains of hours spent huddled in the dim recesses of the downstairs part of the Barr Smith churning through what was ironically called the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, trying valiantly to translate Chaucer from the Middle English into contemporary English. As a young woman it felt like such a dry and interminable task, however, I look back on those hours spent with those metaphorically dusty old tomes fondly today. It seemed like such an Academic thing to do!"
Felicity TepperGraduate 1988 - 1992
"I loved just searching the shelves. BSL had more exciting books on them than any academic library I've ever been to since, and I've visited a lot. Half my learning leads came from such browsing. And I used to love sitting near the windows under the entrance walkway to watch the cats that used to live under there. I have no idea if they're still there now but they were a special addition to my studies!"
Greg BoweringGraduate, Staff 1991 - 1998
"The Computer Science Honours Student laboratory in the Plaza Building had a mysterious locked door in the back wall. This was far, far too mysterious for the inquisitive mind procrastinating on writing a thesis late at night!
Opened using the old credit-card in the crack method of depressing the latch the door proved to be a secret entrance to the back of part of the library. Nobody ventured in for fear of tripping off some kind of alarm."
JenniferGraduate, student, staff
"Even after twenty years working here, I still enjoy giving tours of the library that include the Reading Room. I've yet to find a group that isn't impressed by its atmosphere and beauty. Even noisy school groups fall quiet: one student said that she was impressed because it was "just like out of Harry Potter". I hope that she will read books other than the Harry Potter ones in there one day."
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| Darian Hiles
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Darian Hiles
Graduate
"The Barr Smith was a major revelation, for as a high school student I hadn't quite realised how deeply and how far human knowledge extended. It was like a magic forest that one could enter at will and get lost in in all sorts of unexpected places and ways. And when it was time to leave that maze of the mind and re-enter the daylight outside, even that effort was an education and a discipline in itself."
David InverarityGraduate 1964-1979
1966
Late May
the slanting sun
reddens the reading room.
I pause from'The concept of regions'
(GeographyII)
observing a dark haired girl
measuredly pass
the centre aisle.
This afternoon
the same sun brought
that same light, I paused
from marking
'Ecological issues in food and health'
packed my bag
and went home
to her.
2009
Teresa Donnellan
Graduate 1941-1950
With reference to your request for Barr Smith Library stories, I believe mine may be unique - at least I hope so!
It happened in the 1940s, probably 1944 or 1945. At that time the library was not normally open on Saturdays but we were able to use it for a few weeks before the final exams. As an Honours student I had access to the stacks and so on that Saturday afternoon I descended to that rather gloomy area, and was apparently the only one to do so.
In those days students were poor in a rather different way from those of today, and I didn’t possess a watch, so I only realised it was closing time when all the lights went off. I groped my way through the dark and reached the main Reading Room just in time to see the last librarian locking the side door as she left the Library.
Getting out presented no problem. All I had to do was lift the bolts that secured the main door. But of course, I had no way of locking it, and was horrified at the idea of leaving the place open. (As far as I recall there was no alarm.) I went in search of someone to lock up but there seemed to be nobody about on the premises. Eventually I went home, feeling very guilty. Of course we didn’t have a telephone but after some time we went out to the fairly distant phone box and managed to raise the caretaker, who lived in a cottage near Kintore Avenue. Strangely I never heard another word about the episode.
It wasn’t until I told the story at a dinner marking our 50th anniversary of graduation that it struck me how amazing it was that this could have happened and began to imagine the reaction if something of the sort could happen today. I think that the caretaker was the University’s security staff.
Barbara Wall
Graduate, Student 1945 - 1951
In 1945 on my first day, I walked in to that marvellous reading room, past the staff desk, turned right, went right up to the back left hand corner and sat there, 9 to 5 most days, for three years, facing the books, not the room. I loved it. In my honours year I had a carrel downstairs - very prestigious! - and I have one marvellous memory of dodging an importunate and unwelcome male student round and round the stacks. At 82, I still use the library often, and it's great, but much different. To me the Barr Smith Library will always mean the beautiful high ceilinged Reading Room.
Ralph AbbotGraduate 1961 - 1965
During swatvac the BSL reading room was full every night as students studied. One night was the first hot night of the summer and flying ants kept falling down from the fluorescent lights onto the desks and study materials. The then wingless insects kept walking across notebooks. Initially they were tolerated but eventually books were being slammed to kill the irritating ants. Eventually the noise rose to a level where it was impossible to study and everybody left. The room was empty early that night.
I learnt late in my first year that all four volumes of the recently published Kinsey Report were held in the reserve section and could be borrowed on a daily basis. The Kinsey Report was a study of the sexual habits of Americans. During every day of swatvac I borrowed a volume and spent most of the time reading the fascinating document despite it not being relevant to my studies.
I used to read the Scientific American journal whenever it was displayed on the new periodicals rack in the Periodical room. One issue had instructions to make a folding paper bird in Martin Gardener's Mathematical Games. I set to work following the instructions in the quiet room. Perhaps readers in the quiet room heard me tear a page from my notebook and then tear it to form the starting square. For about 30 minutes I studiously folded this way and that way, not taking any notice of any others in the room. Eventually I bent back part of it to form the beak and finally rolled the wings. I held it in front of me and pulled the tail as instructed. The wings flapped and cheering erupted from a room full of readers who must have been watching me.
During my first year I searched the BSL for material about smoke bombs. The catalogue led me to a Handbook of Military Technology in the stacks. What a mine full of information that was. It contained complete recipes for all manner and colour of smoke bombs. I tried many but the zinc dust and carbon tetrachloride ones gave the best grey smoke of all. Yes, the Barr Smith Library was a wonderful resource.
Evelyn Wagner
Staff
My mother, Marie Robinson, worked at the Barr Smith Library for over 30 years and on many occasions it lived with us. My earliest memories in the library go back to a Saturday morning, where my mum was on the borrowing desk (early 70's). I remember the book trolley and sorting and especially having to be very quiet (if you know me this is a task in itself!).
The Library appeared as a rabbit warren to me when I was a child, made up of different levels and many high shelves in which you could become easily lost but my mum knew every path! As a teenager, during the holidays I would earn a few extra dollars by tidying my mum's desk, filling her desk drawers with many pens and rubber bands that were once scattered throughout her office. If you knew my mum you would know what a task this was. You would find it hard to find a seat let alone her desk because there were piles of catalogues and periodicals everywhere. Mind you, I know she knew what was in each and every pile to the surprise of many. I would also help by sorting catalogue cards.
When the first Macs were introduced to the Library I remember the excitement when it could be packed up into a huge square bag and brought home to complete work. My mum loved penguins and her last office was adorned with many pictures (special ones too), which were blu-tacked all over her walls, I don’t think the library encouraged such a degree of decoration and feel my mother’s office was the only colourful one – it went well with all her piles! I can remember a few of the names of people mum worked with: Jayne, Judy, Kay, Jim, Margaret, Alan, Ray, Ira and many more faces.
In memory of my mum, the library holds a special collection of library books on bromeliads, my mother’s favourite hobby outside of the library. My dad adds to this collection every now and then. Yes the Barr Smith was and still is a big part of my family’s life and brings back many good memories.
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Would you like to add your own memory or story of the Barr Smith Library to the Memory Book?
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Barr Smith Library Appeal
Now
more than ever, the generosity of donors and friends continues to make
an important qualitative difference to the resources the Library can
offer to the students, staff and members of the wider community who
come through our doors, or visit us online, every day.
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