Beloved elder brother of Barbara and father of Janet, Jonathan and Andrew. Stepfather to Edwina. Adoring grandfather of Duncan, Emilio and Isabela. Survived by his wife, Janet L Doust. Formerly married to Margot Doust (deceased).
Former State Librarian of NSW and life-long supporter of the State Library, and all libraries, as repositories of history, knowledge and enjoyment for everyone.
Accomplished chef, lover of music and fine organist and pianist for more than 80 years.
He lived a long and varied life, surrounded by books, music and the love of his family and friends. He liked to travel but was just as happy at home.
His family are grateful to the staff at Carey Gardens Red Hill for their tireless love and care for Russell in his final years.
Russell Fletcher Doust, 1927–2025
By David Jones
When he was confirmed in 1973 as Principal Librarian of what was then known as the Library of New South Wales, Russell Doust inherited a bureaucratic, siloed and fragmented empire, a minuscule part of the gigantic Department of Education. His predecessor, Gordon Richardson, had run the institution on almost military lines, issuing General Orders, discouraging informality, banning men with beards from serving at the front desk, and sustaining the view of his Library as one ‘of permanent retention’, which I always thought an unfortunate phrase, suggesting that it needed a dose of Epsom salts. Richardson was all-powerful. He was Principal Librarian, Mitchell Librarian and Principal Archivist, sometimes writing memoranda to himself as one officeholder, and acknowledging them as another. The Library was very hierarchical, with department heads looking after their own interests, and some not speaking directly to those with whom they’d had a falling out. The younger generation found this quaint but irksome, and by the 1970s were beginning to question the status quo.
Doust held the position of Principal Librarian, then State Librarian, from 1973 to 1987. The atmosphere began to change as soon as he took on the role, and lower level cross-departmental communication began to flourish. Doust seconded Warren Horton from the Mitchell Library to act as his assistant and to sort out some bottlenecks. Later, Doust put Horton in charge of a working party of younger librarians to suggest the desirable future course of the Library. This resulted in 1976 in what was known as the LERN Report (Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Role and Needs of the State Library of New South Wales) — reading it today reveals just how far behind best practice the Library had fallen.
Change was slow but progress was discernible. There were steps towards computerised cataloguing, although there had been a punched-card based automation project for newspapers, journals and other serials for a number of years. The various parts of the Library started to use the same edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, ending the practice of the Mitchell Library having its own adaptation of a different edition from the one the General Reference Library used. A publicity officer was appointed. An active staff development program was initiated. Equipment in the copying service was updated. The rules for lending State Library books to local public libraries were relaxed. Opening hours were changed to suit users, and the traditional 9–10 am closure for staff to reshelve books — the ‘Put’ — was scrapped. Professionally produced exhibitions were mounted and changed more often. The conservation workshop was upgraded and backlogs of repairs reduced.
Informal support was given to a union move to improve salaries and gradings, resulting in a NSW Industrial Commission case, including comparisons between graduate librarian and graduate geologist salaries, that culminated in the Sheldon Award and, in due course, the creation of the paraprofessional grade of library officer. There were moves towards industrial democracy, with a staff-elected appointee to the Library Council of NSW. A Management–Staff Consultative Committee was created. Minutes of Library Council meetings were made available to staff. And dissent, sometimes descending into satire and on one occasion possible defamation, was, if not encouraged, at least tolerated.
First names started to be used. Beards appeared in public. Dress standards were relaxed, subject to occupational health and safety constraints. Relationships with other libraries, particularly the public libraries throughout NSW, became closer. Contact with other state and with university libraries also began to flourish, and an earlier underlying rivalry with the National Library of Australia vanished.
State Librarian Mr. Russell Doust with some of the $90,000 worth of engravings first commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks more than 200 years ago.
Doust did not do all this by himself, of course. Apart from his own team, he had considerable support from members of the Library Council, particularly from skilful political insiders like Richard Hall, wheeler-dealers like Dulcie Stretton, and shrewd but humane business figures like Mark Hertzberg and Ken Wilder. Perhaps Doust’s most notable success was securing support in the mid-1970s for a major extension to the Library — the Macquarie Street building — from a sympathetic Premier, Neville Wran, and an avid reader and library supporter, Deputy Premier Jack Ferguson.
Naturally, Doust experienced hiccups along the way — a serious accident put him out of action for many months at the end of 1977 and there were some difficulties in his personal life. But he returned to work early in 1978, as determined as ever to shape the Library to meet contemporary and future needs. When Warren Horton, by then his deputy, left for the State Library of Victoria, the vacancy for deputy was highly sought after. By then, the old tradition of internal promotions based on seniority — which made the last issue of the NSW Public Service List the most thumbed book in the whole Library — had long been supplanted by wide public advertisement and selection on merit. The successful candidate, Alison Crook, was an inspired choice and Doust encouraged her in taking the Library further into the new era of client-based service, innovation and rationalisation.
Doust chose to retire in 1987, aged 60, after a suitable settling-in period for the new deputy — this would stand Crook in good stead when applying for his job. (Under the retirement rules of the time, he could have remained until he was 65.) Doust’s performance as Principal then State Librarian was distinctive, coming after a succession of equally distinctive principal librarians: William Ifould, ‘The Chief’, from 1912 to 1942, austere and authoritarian; John Metcalfe, from 1942 to 1959, brilliant but erratic; Gordon Richardson, from 1959 to 1973, remote and unready to adapt to a rapidly changing library world. Russell Doust broke free from these models. He encouraged innovation. He disrupted some of the Library’s comfortable practices, to the disquiet of some older staff, one of whom said to me, with a sigh: ‘Mr Doust doesn’t want to be a librarian any more.’ As head of the State Library of NSW, he was more than a librarian. He had to be a manager, a negotiator, a political animal in the nicest sense of the word. He had in fact to be the bridge between two worlds, the old ways and the new opportunities. And, on reflection, I can see that he had the courage to make this bridge not only strong, but a bridge of no return.
Dr David J Jones worked at the State Library of NSW from 1970 to 2008.
Russell Fletcher Doust is vacating the office
State Librarian of New South Wales on 27
March 1987. This will be his last working day
the State Library, although his formal re-
ement date is in September.
Russell was appointed to the staff of the
then Public Library of New South Wales in
July 1944, as a Junior Library Assistant.
The library then had the responsibility for also staffing
Government Department and Teachnical
College libraries, and over the next 18 years
he worked in the General Reference Li-
iry and its research service, as a Library
Assistant in the Sydney Teachers College Library,
and as Librarian-in-Charge of Newcastle
Balmain and Alexander Mackie Teaching
Colleges. He returned to the Public Library
building in 1960 to work in the Extention
Service, and in 1962 was promoted to the
position of Senior Archivist. He was promoted
to Deputy Principal Librarian in 1970,
and appointed as Principal Librarian (now
State Librarian) in 1973.
Russell has over the years been very active
professionally. He was General Secretary of
the Library Association of Australia from 1965
and General Treasurer from 1966-67.
He has been a member of the Australian Libraries
and Information Council since its establishment
in 1982 and represented it on the
LERN Network Committee since 1985. He is a
foundation Fellow of the Association, and one
of the first librarians to take out a Master of
Librarianship degree at the University of
NSW South Wales.
Although it is possibly not known to no many of
his present staff, he was, like most of his contemporaries including John Macallister,
f Hazell and Allan Horton, an active unionist
in his younger days in the Public Library,
This is in fact where I first met him, and I
have vivid memories of the many ‘the Public
Service Board’s offer is outrageous!’ speeches
that they regularly made at union meetings in
the 1950s and early 1960s.
When sitting opposite Russell at a meeting
in the National Library recently I spontaneously
asked him to list what he took most
pride in achieving in his career. He decided
after some thought on the following:
1. The closer integration of the State Library
of New South Wales with public library
services.
2. Implementation of ‘special grants’ to local
authorities for their public library services,
and interest subsidy on loans for
public library buildings and other capital
expenditures.
3. Creating a higher profile for the State Library
of New South Wales, including better
relations with the community through
such avenues as the recently established
Library Society.
Russell, when appointed State Librarian of
New South Wales, brought to the position a
clear vision of the opportunities to provide effective
state-wide service. This led to the
amalgamation of the two statutory bodies previously
responsible for the State Library and
free public libraries into a single Library
Council of New South Wales in 1975. This
continued interest in the development of
effective state services is reflected in his own
assessment of his achievements.
Most people with any detailed knowledge
of his career would add two other very significant
achievements.
The first is convincing the New South
Wales Government to proceed with the construction of Building II adjacent to the present
State Library of New South Wales building
in Macquarie Street. This major project,
which is to be completed in 1988, will give the
State Library of New South Wales unrivalled
accommodation and, in particular, the opportunity
to further develop its role as a central
information and cultural facility in Sydney.
The other achievement is of course the decision
by him and the then President of the
Library Council, Mr Justice Rae Else-
Mitchell, to establish a Committee of Inquiry
into the role and needs of the [State] Library
of New South Wales in 1974-75 (the LERN
Report). This report was the catalyst for most
of the major management and operational
changes for the Library Council of New
South Wales in the next few years. It is very
much to his credit that he not only had the
imagination to give a staff committee such
wide-ranging terms of reference, but then was
prepared publicly to live with and implement
the results.
Russell, in a career spanning 43 years, has
developed a wide network of acquaintances in
librarianship and cultural life. He is a person
of considerable charm and wit, and it is a testament
to him that so many also count him as
a friend. The best wishes of the profession go
with him in his retirement from librarianship,
and as he starts a new career with the
National Trust in New South Wales.
Warren Horton
Director-General
National Library of Australia
Russell Doust, state librarian relaxing on Sunday afternoon in Centenial park.
Russell Doust aged 2 and a half at Manly Beach 1930. This was taken on a very hot day. It was 106 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. The Steyne Hotel is in the background
New US parliamentary poet laureate
They've announced that the Library of Congress Names Arthur Sze the Nation's 25th U.S. Poet Laureate.
Admirably:
During his term as Poet Laureate, Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages.
The current American president does not seem to have weighed in on this selection yet.
Little Libraries / Found and altered early 19th-century leather binding with fore-edge clasps. The bookshelves of the altered binding hold seventy-two blank leather- and paper-covered books which open and range in height from 1” to 1.5”.
By Todd Pattison of the Guild of Bookworkers
