Libraries, librarians and librarianship in the colony of Victoria

This paper examines the role of Redmond Barry in the establishment and management of the four major institutional libraries established in the Colony of Victoria after its separation from New South Wales. The libraries of the Parliament, University, Supreme Court, and the Melbourne Public Library were all instigated by Redmond Barry, a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. They are considered with the aim of determining if Barry saw each as requiring the same management strategy from a personal view of how libraries should be run, or if they reflected the management strategies of other libraries of the same type established in the same time period.