A public–private partnership? The Australian Subscription Library: a private library or a public resource

Abstract

The Australian Subscription Library was ostensibly a private institution, owned and managed by Sydney's gentlemen elite. Yet an early decision to accept New South Wales government grants meant that for many Sydneysiders the library was then obliged to accept some role as a public library. This tension plagued the library throughout its life. In part the troubles that beset the library were of its own making. Its fees were too expensive, it was too exclusive, and its debts were always overwhelming. Yet the idea of what a public library could be — one which welcomed self-improving working-class men who were to be given access to practical information — was completely at odds with the services that the Australian Subscription Library could provide. For its forty-three-year history the library struggled with the dilemmas of what was an appropriate library for the Sydney community: how could it retain its private character when the increasingly vocal free public library movement was formulating a very different idea of what libraries were?