Library Committee

61 files

The Library Committee was created by Council in November 1920. The Committee consisted of the Keeper ex officio & four Academicians, of whom one should be a painter, one a sculptor, one an architect & one an engraver; the four Members other than the Keeper annually nominated by the Council & approved by the General Assembly. It advised on the purchases of books & prints, also overseeing the work of the Librarian. The committee reported to Council once a year. This, the first standing Library Committee, appears to have been appointed for the last time in 1937. It disappears with the retirement of E.V. Wright as Librarian.

The committee was formally re-established on 17th November 1953. The initial membership to be the President, Keeper, Professor of Architecture, Master of Sculpture and Mr Edward Maufe, with the Secretary and Librarian in attendance. The Committee was tasked with advising Council, meeting twice a year, unless specifically convened for additional meetings, and to have the following terms of reference:- (a) purchase of books, (b) sale or removal of redundant volumes, (c) the Catalogue, (d) repairs and maintenance.

The work of the committee was placed on a more footing with the appointment of MaryAnne Stevens as Librarian in 1986 and arrival of Nick Savage in 1987. The name of the committee was altered to Collections and Library Committee in June 1997, in order to more properly reflect the scope of the committee's responsibilities. The committee's remit was rewritten by Council in February 2003. The committee was stated as responsible for the care, management and development of all the Royal Academy's collections. To report to Council on the aims, responsibilities, work and activities of the Collections & Library department; make recommendations to and advise Council on all policies governing the activities of the department, and make recommendations regarding acquisitions to and de-accessions from the Collections & Library. The remit was revised in November 2009, at which point the committee went from meeting twice to three times a year.

The committee was finally dissolved upon the Council's reformation of the Academy's committee structure in June 2022.

The early work of this committee is largely undocumented, other than as an aspect of the Librarian's annual report to Council, which comprised one of the appendices of the Academy's annual reports.

The earliest extant records of meetings of the Library date from 1973, near to the end of Philip James's tenure as Librarian. From that point the record is more or less complete, with agendas, minutes and reportts surviving. Even so, for a while during Constance-Anne Parker's tenure as Librarian the Committee did not meet more than once every two years and no records of meetings survive for the period 1984-1986, a crucial period during which a new Library was designed on the second floor of Burlington House in what had been the Gibson Gallery.

A complete record of the work of the committee survives from 1987 until the committee's dissolution in 2022. Papers are grouped in periodic files until close of 1999. Thereafter files represent one meeting only.