Twenty years earlier the Library had also assisted in the reorganisation of the Turnbull Library as a State library. Mr J. C. Andersen was for some time on the staff, resigning to become first Librarian. In addition, both Mr Wilson and Dr Scholefield were in turn Advisory Directors to the Turnbull Library until the post was abolished in 1930.
The Library as a Museum
The Library has during its century collected many curios which should really have been given to a museum. The Library Committee has had to decide frequently whether historical relics could be displayed. In 1886, after the Taiaha of Wahanui presented to James Bryce had been refused, the Committee laid down that nothing but books, manuscripts, maps, etc., should be deposited without special permission.
However the Library possesses today many such relics. There are the caskets containing the Freedoms of certain cities presented to Mr Fraser, a similar collection of Mr Seddon's and of Sir Joseph Ward's, the pen used by Mr Massey to sign the Treaty of Versailles, a kava bowl, mats, etc., from Samoa, and many other items. The Library also had for a time the Bishop Monrad etchings and the Chevalier pictures, but these were handed over to the Turnbull Library and Academy of Fine Arts respectively.
The display of such objects tends to attract to the Library visitors not interested in the books, but whose conversation distracts more serious readers.
Purchase of Books
Though today books are purchased in many countries most of the books have always been obtained in England. The first books were bought from Smith and Elder in London, but this was not continued. Instead, an arrangement was entered into with a Mr Maberly of Auckland, partner in a London firm of booksellers, to obtain and bind books uniformly.
In the following years the Library had several London agents, none of whom were entirely satisfactory, while some were quite the reverse. What the Library Committee wanted was a reliable buyer who could provide books cheaply and in addition supply the more important books as they were published without duplicating them in later orders. Including the time taken for reviews to reach New Zealand, for them to be read, the books to be ordered and dispatched to New Zealand, it would be not far short of a year before a book published in England reached the shelves of the Library.
After several changes of agent in quick time the Committee in 1883 asked the authority of Cabinet to use the Agent-General in London to purchase books. This was given and book purchase was put on a happier basis. This was particularly so in the first years when Sir Francis Bell was Agent-General. Though the books were supplied by a bookseller in Edinburgh, Sir Francis, as a former member of the Library Committee, took a personal interest in the orders and anticipated the purchase of many popular books.
The High Commissioner in London, successor to the Agent-General, has continued to oversee the purchase of books for the Library either from booksellers or from the publishers. He has been of invaluable assistance to the Library in this task; and the assistance given in this field is only paralleled by that of the other overseas agencies of New Zealand, particularly those in the United States, Canada, and Australia.