Graeme says Helen sometimes drove for hours from Horsham, where she lived until the late 1950s, and later from Echuca, to do research at the State Library in Melbourne.
She may have borrowed the Malvern book in 1955. But Graeme says she also could have obtained it from a friend or a shop. “We simply don’t know the story behind it,” he said. “I thought it might be valuable to the library, because of its historic nature.”
The warning about the threepence-a-day fine in the book’s back panel. Ernest R. Pitt was State Library of Victoria’s chief librarian from 1931 to 1943.Credit: State Library of Victoria
State Library librarian Andrew McConville said the Malvern book – a history of the suburb since colonial times, written by Colonel Philip Trevor – will go into the Rare Books collection.
With its borrowing card and Notice to Borrowers, it’s an interesting relic of the State Library’s lending library, which closed in 1971 – although visitors still ask, in vain, to borrow books.
McConville said the lending library closed after public libraries opened around Victoria, leading to a drop in demand.
He said lending is unlikely to resume since so much information is now accessible online and through the library’s ongoing digitisation of its collection. Library users can also now scan text onto USB sticks.
The State Library of Victoria lending library, circa 1955.Credit: State Library of Victoria
McConville believes most people are honest and says library books often go missing unintentionally, for example when people move house.
He says in the lending library’s first 40 years, from 1893, it lost an average of just two books a year, and penalties for theft were harsh.
A man caught stealing a cricket book in 1922 from the State Library (then known as the Public Library) was fined £5 or one month in prison if he defaulted on the fine, according to a report in The Age.
McConville, who praised Coulson for returning the book, appealed to anyone with a stray State Library book at home to come forward.
An article in The Age about a book theft from the State Library of Victoria on August 5, 1922.Credit: Trove
Such a book could be rare or the only one of its kind in existence, and important to someone, said McConville. One man came to the State Library from Western Australia to read a book about wiring for a 1970s car he was restoring.
“If anyone does come across a book that’s ours, we’d love to have it back,” McConville said. “There will be no fines any more.”
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