An image of 3 Northumberland County Library magazines for Winter 1937, Spring 1938 and Autumn 1939.

Keeping up with library news in the 1930s

27 Jun 2023 ARCHIVED (over 3 months old) - view latest news

Northumberland Libraries produces a monthly newsletter that is emailed to customers with details of events planned and links to find out more, all online. But in the 1930s the newsletter looked very different and took the form of a quarterly magazine that was circulated to customers and available in the libraries too.

We’re delighted to have in our Local Reference Collection, three copies of the magazine from the 1930s. At this time, the library service was still fairly new and a magazine would have been a useful tool to highlight the stock and promote the services offered. What is of particular interest in the three magazines we hold is the reference to current affairs at the time.

The first is from Winter 1937. The lead article is all about the political climate in Europe at the time referring to the “almost hourly increasing turmoil in international affairs”. The article encourages library users to read widely on the subject of history and current affairs to get a broad picture of the situation. There are lists of recommended books on Europe in general and for specific countries too, including titles on the League of Nations. Of particular interest is the reading list for Germany, with titles such as “Nazi Germany explained”, “Hitler, whence and whither?” and “The yellow spot… facts and documents relating to three years persecution of German Jews”.

A list of books about Germany in the 1930s

The Spring 1938 issue mentions people not holidaying abroad that year and opting to stay at home. There is a list of recommended holiday reads focussing on exploring Britain. Interestingly three of the titles are still available in our Local Collection:
Northumbrian crosses of the pre-Norman age (1927) by William G Collingwood,
A tour in Northumbria (1938) by Douglas Goldring,
Stones of Northumberland and other lands (1930) by William Sitwell.
 
Then in the Autumn 1939 issue the lead article is, understandably, “The Library in Wartime”. The writer comments how words like “black-out” and “evacuee” had already become commonplace. Evacuees had started to leave the larger towns for the villages and the library service was adapting to the growing need in the rural areas. The city libraries in Newcastle, Wallsend and Tynemouth had transferred stock to the County Library for distribution to the rural villages.

An extract from an article about the library in wartime from 1939.

The County Library was determined to carry on as full a library service as possible. There is a quote from a letter from the Home Office to the Secretary of the Library Association, 29 June, 1939:
“Sir John Anderson is well aware of the valuable work done by libraries both during the last war and after the conclusion of peace, and he is of opinion that in the event of a future war libraries could again render useful service to the nation by maintaining, so far as circumstances permit, their recreational and educational facilities.”

The Northumberland County Library Magazines are part of our Northumberland Local Reference Collection and can be viewed in the search room at Northumberland Archives.