Johannesburg City Library

Johannesburg City Library
Johannesburg City Library
	"Old Library" (1935)
Location	Cnr. Albertina Sisulu Streets & Fraser Street 26°12′17″S28°02′19″E / 26.204789°S 28.038587°E , South Africa
Type	Municipal Public Library
Established	1935
Architect(s)	John Perry
	References:

Last updated November 19, 2024

The Johannesburg City Library is situated in the central business district of the City of Johannesburg.^[2] The Library is located in an Italianate building^[3] designed by John Perry which first opened in 1935. It has over 1.5-million books and items in its collection and more than 250 000 members.^[4]

History

In 1889, a group of prominent Johannesburg residents met to discuss the formation of a public library and eventually formed a committee to raise funds, find a building and order the books.^[5]^: 39 With the books ordered from London, the library opened in June 1890 with the committee members serving as librarians but by February 1891, the library obtained its first librarian, Robert C Hemming.^[5]^: 39 It started as a subscription library, its members paying a subscription to use the facilities.^[5]^: 40 In 1894, the library received a grant from the South African Republic government of £250 though two-thirds of the donation was to be spent on Dutch books though the library was kept funded by means of balls, lectures and donations from the Randlords.^[5]^: 40

The first library was a corrugated iron structure built in 1893 known as the Old Church Building.^[5]^: 40 In 1898, a new structure on Kerk Street was built for the library consisting of three floors with shops on the ground level, the library in the middle and dwelling rooms on the third that allowed rents to fund the buildings mortgage.^[5]^: 40 In October 1899, the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out and the librarian and most of the English inhabitants of Johannesburg fled the Transvaal but a Boer burgher was asked to take care of the library and when the British under Lord Roberts retook the town in 1900, he reopened it and ran until the librarian could return.^[5]^: 40

With British management of the Transvaal Colony after 1902, the Johannesburg Town Council was formed and they offered to take control of the library but the members refused but did accept a grant from the council for a free reading room with a limited number of free memberships.^[5]^: 40 Further grants were given over the years and the council obtained membership on the library committee but the library fell into dire financial straits in 1921 after the end of the grants.^[5]^: 40–1 The council was able to force a vote in 1924, which it won, to establish it as a "free" municipal library.^[5]^: 40–1 The library was not entirely free with lending tickets issued on the receipt of a returnable cash deposit.^[5]^: 41

By 1922, the old library building in Kerk Street had taken over the other two floors it used to rent out and the town council offered them the use of land in Market Square if a library and museum were built but on its takeover by the latter in 1924, they would build it and move into the present building and opened on 6 August 1935.^[5]^: 47

In 1937, after a study of overseas libraries, two branch libraries would be opened, as was a hospital library and its first mobile travelling library as well the cancellation of the returnable cash deposit making it a free library.^[5]^: 47 It would open the Winifred Holtby Memorial Library in the Western Native Township, the first library for black readers.^[5]^: 47 After World War Two, the branch libraries had increased to twenty-nine, with eight hospital and two mobile travelling libraries.^[5]^: 48

1938 saw the establishment of the Municipal Reference Library for the collection of publication used by local government and housed there until 1952 when it was moved to the Johannesburg City Hall and is now housed on the 12th floor of the Metro Centre in Braamfontein and called the Urban Resource Centre.^[4]^[5]^: 43

By 1960's the library was running short of storage space and the gardens in front of the library were re-excavated to extend the underground stacks and store more than 750,000 books with space for about 20 years.^[5]^: 50 The library did not allow access to other members of different races as it was during apartheid era. In 1974 the Johannesburg library became the first public library to open its doors to all races.^[3]

It was closed in 2009 for three years of extensive modernisation by conservation architect, Jonathan Stone and renovated by Fikile Construction.^[1] It was reopened to the public on 14 February 2012,^[1] on St. Valentine's Day. The renovation was funded with a conditional grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York of $2-million, and the City of Johannesburg itself spent a further R55-million on the project.^[3]

Architecture

The Johannesburg Library in 2013 JHB-Library-2.jpg — The Johannesburg Library in 2013

The building is an Italianate structure sitting across the road from the ANC's Luthuli House.^[3] The construction of the Johannesburg Public Library took place between 1931 and 1935 and was the result of an architectural competition won by Cape Town architect John Perry.^[1] The building features a massive and imposing triple-arch, east-facing entrance with metal doors featuring monograms reading "LJ" and "BJ" for the English "Library of Johannesburg" and the Afrikaans "Biblioteek Johannesburg". The northern and southern facades are decorated with stone medallions each carved by Peter Kirchhoff with the face of a great literary, scientific, or philosophical figure. Larger figures designed by Moses Kottler, representing literature, music, architecture, medicine, philosophy, and history surround the building. The building is stone with a terracotta tiled roof. It originally surrounded an atrium, but during the 2009–2012 renovations, a new building was built to fill the atrium with three floors.^[1]

Facilities and collection

The library collection consists of about 1.5 million items of some 700,000 books and includes DVDs, CDs, sheet music and periodicals.^[1] With the new construction work, the library's size has increased by 1,967m² from 11,198m² and now can accommodate 566 people as opposed to 255 people originally.^[1] A new coffee shop has been built and the toilets, lifts, electrics, and air-conditioning upgraded.^[1] The new atrium contains three floors. The first two floors is a literacy and numeracy centre containing 212 work stations with free internet access and the third floor is a glassed enclosure designed to house exhibitions.^[1] The theatre section is used as a conference venue and the music section is used for listening to music or viewing film.^[1]

The Music Library collection, created in 1950, has its origins from scores that originated in the lending library and books from the reference library and then money was set aside to increase the collection. In 1953, the disbanded City Orchestra gave the library a collection of 1,700 orchestral sets, 3,000 vocal scores and miniatures scores.^[5]^: 43 The Michaelis Art Library was named after its benefactor Sir Max Michaelis who started the collection off with a donation of £1,000 to purchase art books.^[5]^: 43 The Strange Collection is based on a collection of 2,300 volumes and books purchased in 1913 from the estate of Harold Fairbrother Strange consisting of books on Africa south of the Zambezi and was expanded upon over the years.^[5]^: 42

In addition to the main lending library there is also a number of specialist libraries:^[4]

Central Reference Library
Children's Library
Young Adults' Reference Library
Michaelis Art Library
Multimedia Library
Music Library
Harold Strange Library of African Studies
Newspaper Reading Room
Cybase centre

The Johannesburg City Library is open on Mondays to Fridays, from 9 am to 5 pm, and on Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm.^[1]

Related Research Articles

Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of over 100 libraries within the university. The library is a major scholarly resource for members of the University of Cambridge and external researchers. It is often referred to within the university as the UL. Thirty-three faculty and departmental libraries are associated with the University Library for the purpose of central governance and administration, forming "Cambridge University Libraries".

Birmingham Central Library was the main public library in Birmingham, England, from 1974 until 2013, replacing a library opened in 1865 and rebuilt in 1882. For a time the largest non-national library in Europe, it closed on 29 June 2013 and was replaced by the Library of Birmingham. The building was demolished in 2016, after 41 years, as part of the redevelopment of Paradise Circus by Argent Group. Designed by architect John Madin in the brutalist style, the library was part of an ambitious development project by Birmingham City Council to create a civic centre on its new Inner Ring Road system; however, for economic reasons significant parts of the master plan were not completed, and quality was reduced on materials as an economic measure. Two previous libraries occupied the adjacent site before Madin's library opened in 1974. The previous library, designed by John Henry Chamberlain, opened in 1883 and featured a tall clerestoried reading room. It was demolished in 1974 after the new library had opened.

The National Library of New Zealand is charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations". Under the Act, the library's duties include collecting, preserving and protecting New Zealand's documentary heritage, supporting other libraries in New Zealand, and collaborating with peer institutions abroad. The library headquarters is on the corner of Aitken and Molesworth Streets in Wellington, close to the New Zealand Parliament Buildings and the Court of Appeal.

The Chicago Public Library (CPL) is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. It consists of 81 locations, including a central library, three regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the city's 77 Community Areas. CPL was founded in 1872, in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire.

Manchester Central Library is the headquarters of the city's library and information service in Manchester, England. Facing St Peter's Square, it was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934. The form of the building, a columned portico attached to a rotunda domed structure, is loosely derived from the Pantheon, Rome. At its opening, one critic wrote, "This is the sort of thing which persuades one to believe in the perennial applicability of the Classical canon".

The Johannesburg Zoo or Joburg Zoo is a 55-hectare (140-acre) zoo in Johannesburg, South Africa. The zoo is dedicated to the accommodation, enrichment, husbandry, and medical care of wild animals, and houses about 2000 individuals of 320 species. Established in 1904, it has traditionally been owned and operated by the Johannesburg City Council. However, it has been turned into a corporation and registered as a Section 21 non-profit organisation.

The Mitchell Library is a large public library located in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is the largest public reference library in Europe, and the centre of Glasgow's public library system.

The Harris Museum is a Grade I-listed building in Preston, Lancashire, England. Founded by Edmund Harris in 1877, it is a local history and fine art museum.

There are 24 public libraries in Manchester, England, including the famous Central Library in St Peter’s Square.

Dunedin Public Libraries is a network of six libraries and two bookbuses in Dunedin, New Zealand, owned and operated by the Dunedin City Council. The Libraries' collection includes over 700,000 items, and around 30,000 books and audiovisual items plus 15,000 magazines are added each year. Members can borrow or return items from any library or bookbus in the network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christchurch City Libraries</span> Library system for Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch City Libraries is a network of 21 libraries and a mobile book bus. operated by the Christchurch City Council and Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake the previous Christchurch Central Library building was demolished, and was replaced by a new central library building in Cathedral Square, Tūranga, which opened in 2018. A number of community libraries were also rebuilt post earthquake.

The Museum of Wigan Life is a public museum and local history resource centre in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England. The nineteenth-century listed building is by the noted architect Alfred Waterhouse. It originally housed Wigan Library, where George Orwell researched his book The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936.

Walsall Central Library is a public library situated in the town centre of Walsall in the West Midlands, in the United Kingdom. It is part of 7 branch libraries and a mobile library service, and was officially opened to the public in 1906. The Central Library comprises a lending library, reference library, learning centre and children's library. It holds information in various formats and languages: books, journals, newspapers and magazines, and there are computer facilities available.

The Kerk Street Mosque, also known as the Jumah Mosque, is located in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Westmount Public Library (WPL) is located at 4574 Sherbrooke Street West, Westmount, Quebec, Canada, in the northwest corner of Westmount Park. Designed by Robert Findlay, it opened in 1899.

Joburg Theatre Complex, previously known as the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, is a group of four theatres situated in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa. It was built in 1962, refurnished in the late 1980s and reopened in the early 1990s before it was re-branded in 2009. It is a venue that stages both Broadway musicals and home-grown productions, and is one of the few theatres open in Johannesburg for independent productions.

Ljungby library, is a library in Ljungby, Sweden, that opened in 1982. It was designed by architect Jan Wallinder and have an interior designed by Rolf and Margareta Åberg. It is visited daily by 500 to 800 patrons and is 3,030 square metres (32,600 sq ft) in size. The library also house a small café plus an attached art gallery, which also can serve as lecture hall.

Falkirk Public Library is a public library in Falkirk, Scotland. It is administered by Falkirk Council.

Belgrade City Library is a public library in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is a parent library for more than a dozen municipal libraries and their branches. It is also the largest lending library in Serbia. It is located in the center of the city, in the pedestrian zone of Knez Mihailova Street, next to the shopping mall.

The Randburg Library is one of the regional libraries in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. The Library serves the township of Cosmo City and the surrounding suburbs; it is situated within the Randburg Civic Centre. It falls under the City of Johannesburg's Region B libraries. Randburg Library is leading the cities efforts to digitally transform libraries with initiatives such as mLiteracy. In August 2023, the library was gifted with an inverter to enable patrons to use the library during load shedding. Randburg library is one of 89 libraries in the City of Johannesburg. Libraries are key community centers for learning and knowledge sharing, and educational programs can make a big impact. COJ librarians promote the use of apps such as Overdrive Libby, and African Story Book to create a culture of reading.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Naidoo, Romaana (15 February 2012). "Joburg's jewel re-opened". City of Johannesburg's News Updates. City of Johannesburg. Archived from the original on 8 October 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
↑ City of Johannesburg. "Region F libraries". Archived from the original on 23 November 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
1 2 3 4 Patel, Khadija (15 February 2012). "Johannesburg's new library feeds a city's 'tree of knowledge'". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
1 2 3 "Joburg, my City, our Future – Libraries". Johannesburg City Council. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Kennedy, R.F. (January 1968). "Johannesburg Public Library". The Journal of Library History. 3 (1): 39–50. JSTOR 25540076.

[Joburg03-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Naidoo, Romaana (15 February 2012). "Joburg's jewel re-opened". City of Johannesburg's News Updates. City of Johannesburg. Archived from the original on 8 October 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[Joburg02-2] City of Johannesburg. "Region F libraries". Archived from the original on 23 November 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[Patel-3] 1 2 3 4 Patel, Khadija (15 February 2012). "Johannesburg's new library feeds a city's 'tree of knowledge'". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[Joburg01-4] 1 2 3 "Joburg, my City, our Future – Libraries". Johannesburg City Council. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[Kennedy-5] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Kennedy, R.F. (January 1968). "Johannesburg Public Library". The Journal of Library History. 3 (1): 39–50. JSTOR 25540076.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]