LISTENER OCTOBER 13 2018GETTY IMAGES; MICKEY SMITH
LITERACY THREAT
F
ree? Suggestions that a town
library should open its doors to all
and sundry and allow for free bor-
rowing of books were, for many
early 20th-century councillors, pre-
posterous. After all, libraries of the day
tended to be private affairs run by and
for the social elite. But open access and
free borrowing underpinned Scottish-
born American industrialist Andrew
Carnegie’s philanthropic mission to
fund the establishment of public librar-
ies throughout the English-speaking
world.
Born to poor parents in Scotland in
1835, Carnegie was aged 13 when he
moved with his family to Pennsylvania.
There, he and other working boys were
given free access to the private library
of local businessman James Anderson.
Carnegie went on to amass a fortune
through the steel industry, but he never
forgot Anderson’s largesse. On his retire-
ment in 1901, he sold the Carnegie
Steel Company for US$480 million and
set about distributing his wealth, hold-
ing true to his adage that a man who
dies rich “dies in disgrace”.Carnegie’s
unlikely legacy
Carnegie funded 2509 library buildings,
including 18 in New Zealand. The librar-
ies boosted librarianship as a profession
and pioneered reading rooms for children
and integrated reading rooms for men
and women.
But there were conditions. The chosen
site had to be debt-free and councils had
to guarantee an annual sum, usually 10%
of the grant, towards upkeep. They were
not to waste money on grand architec-
tural statements and, most importantly,
the libraries had to be free for borrow-
ers. While most New Zealand councils
complied with these requirements, some
resisted. Hastings was one of several
that tried to get away with charging a
borrowing fee – when that library was
devastated in the 1931 earthquake,
the Carnegie Corporation (Carnegie
himself died in 1919) refused to fund
a replacement.
Carnegie was not without flaws.
When workers at his Pittsburgh steel
mill went on strike, he gave the go-
ahead for a private army to move in.
Nine workers were killed. Despite his
working-class background, says US-
born artist and photographer Mickey
Smith, “he was not particularly a
friend of the working man”.
Smith grew up with Carnegie
libraries. When she was a child, her
grandfather took her to the large
Carnegie library in her home town
of Duluth, Minnesota. She went
there again as a young woman
when the basement housed the
local Planned Parenthood clinic.
After graduating with a BA in
photography from Minnesota StateUniversity in 1994,
Smith worked in small
railroad communities,
“and every one had a
Carnegie library. In the
Midwest, it was a status
for those communi-
ties – you would have
your bank, your post
office and your Carnegie
library.”
In her new book, As
You Will: Carnegie Librar-
ies of the South Pacific,
Smith has compiled a
photographic tribute to
these former bastions of
self-education.
Of New Zealand’s Carnegie libraries,
six have been demolished; three – in
Westport, Hokitika and Dannevirke –
have been deemed earthquake-prone;
two – in Balclutha and Marton – remain
as public libraries; and seven now have
new roles, including a visitor informa-
tion centre (Cambridge), a costume
hire and Indian restaurant (Dunedin),
a pizzeria (Fairlie), an art gallery (Gore),
a gastropub (Onehunga) and a history
centre (Thames).
“I am interested in them as places
of archives and places of escape,” says
Smith. “Anyone can escape into a book.
I did that as a child and dreamt of trav-
elling to places, but I would never have
dreamt I would travel to New Zealand
and do something like this.”
Smith moved to New Zealand in
2012 with her Kiwi husband, designer
and musician Aaron Pollock. In 2015,
she exhibited a series of film stills
documenting Carnegie’s legacy at
the Te Tuhi art space in Auckland. In
December last year, however, before
the completion of this book, Pollock
died after being diagnosed with a brain
tumour.
“He was alive and well when I started
the project – it was just another project.
So, the fact it is done now and he is not
even here is hard. It’s hard to bring this
out without him. But it makes me think
a lot about legacy and what that means
and what you leave behind.”Andrew Carnegie
Mickey Smith
AS YOU WILL: CARNEGIE LIBRARIES OF
THE SOUTH PACIFIC, photographs by
Mickey Smith, essays by Charles Walker
and Gabriela Salgado (Te Tuhi, $50)