Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Reid Library

In the October 2025 issue of Convocation Connecting, we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Reid Library, remembering the role the library played in so many of our lives.

The idea of a University Library had seemed far-fetched in UWA’s early days. In 1927, when the university was still in the city at Irwin St, the first librarian, Miss Malvina Evalyn Wood, was appointed. A very junior staff member, she had just completed her BA. When the university moved to Crawley in 1932, she and the books were housed in a wing of the new administration building, near the then Perth-Fremantle Rd (Stirling Highway). Even though a library had been provided for in the Hackett bequest, despite the tripling of students from a mere 606 in 1930 to 1,840 in 1950, it was a long wait for a purpose-built library.

A quote from Alexander Ross, foundation professor of Physics and Maths, in an address to Convocation during UWA’s jubilee celebrations, reminds us just how novel the notion was in the early 1960s.

I was told by the wife of one our professors who went to an afternoon tea party, that … a lady dropped in in a whirl of excitement and … burst out… ‘Do you know what the University Professors want now? They want a library for the University only! Why we’ve got a Public Library, and there’s the Mechanics Institute Library, and at least half-a-dozen lending libraries in the town.

They were out of touch. The injection of Commonwealth funds into universities, following the 1957 Murray Report on Australian Universities, set in train a spate of building across the university. And it was certainly time for a purpose-built library. When it opened in 1964 there were a mere 5,000 students at UWA, but that number would double to over 10,000 in a decade.

A detailed orientation video was made in 1964 to teach students how to use the library. The commentary is by Professor Burrows of the English Department. For those with half an hour to spare, it will provide you with an extraordinary visit to the library sixty years ago. As well as astonishment, hilarity or nostalgia for times past, you are likely to be struck by a number of aspects. Apart from the Head Librarian, Leonard Jolly, all librarians are female. Male students are wearing a formal white long-sleeved business shirt which contrasts with tight tailored shorts. Borrowing a book involved a complex, slow process and was strictly regulated. And most astonishingly to me, how access to knowledge was so slow in comparison to today.