The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian by Pat Walsh Read Free Book Online Page A

theory or a fiendish plot to foist a Protestant librarian on Catholic Mayo. The Bulletin’s January 1931 edition listed twenty queries that they directed not at President Cosgrave, but at the so-called ‘brass-hat boyos’ that the paper alleged were running the LAC.
    Among the questions which the Catholic Bulletin raised, was who had devised the conditions with regard to age, qualifications and experience for these appointments? And had these conditions been altered? The Bulletin alleged that there was an ‘aggressive ascendancy’ that was particularly concerned with medical and library appointments, two sensitive areas ‘affecting the morality of the Irish people’. ‘The Protestant ascendancy,’ it wrote, ‘will continue in being, with all its assumptions of superiority, as arrogant as they are unfounded, and with all its venomous purposes of imposing its alien thought, its special standards of moral conduct, standards now publicly and palpably debased, on the Catholic people of this country.’ 5 This was the basis of the Bulletin’s conspiracy theories, though the insertion of a Protestant in the library service of County Mayo does seem like a somewhat convoluted way of undermining Catholicism in Ireland. However, there were questions to answer. There was enough uncertainty surrounding the activities of the LAC to raise some doubts about the selection of Letitia Dunbar Harrison.
    â€“ Miss Dunbar Harrison was not yet twenty-five.
    â€“ Miss Dunbar Harrison did not have a library qualification.
    â€“ In the first advertisement for the post Irish was listed as an essential requirement. In the second, this was relaxed.
    The LAC had an answer for each of these questions. In cases such as this, work experience could be counted to make up the required age. This was custom and practice at the time. The advertisement had stated that a library qualification was desirable rather than essential. President Cosgrave had explained in the Dáil that the reason the Irish language requirement had been relaxed was because of the difficulty in recruiting experienced librarians with the requisite competence in the language. Miss Dunbar Harrison would have three years to reach the desired standard. As county librarians worked alone in many of these newly set-up organisations, it was felt that practical experience was more relevant than an academic qualification. There was a certain ambiguity as to what counted as practical experience. The Library Association of Ireland had received a letter from a different unsuccessful candidate, Miss Kerrigan, asking for clarification of what exactly the LAC meant by ‘library experience’. 6 In his letters to the press, Canon Hegarty had also questioned this procedure. Was it service in a library that counted as ‘experience’ or was it service as a librarian?
‘Vouched expenses of locomotion’
    It is perhaps instructive to look at the job description and conditions of employment for the Mayo post.
    The Conditions of Appointment
    County Librarian – Mayo
    1. The post is whole-time, permanent and pensionable.
    2. Salary £250 per annum with vouched expenses of locomotion when travelling on official duty.
    3. Applicants must be not less than twenty-five nor more than forty years of age on 1 May 1930, with the provision that actual service as librarian not exceeding two years may be added to bring a candidate’s age to the minimum limit of twenty-five years.
    4. Duties of county librarian: – To act as secretary to the county library committee, to check and keep all accounts, to compile lists of books for submission to the book-selection committee, to attend all meetings of the committee and other meetings at which the library scheme may come under review, to prepare reports and be responsible to the committee for the proper management and supervision of the scheme throughout the county, to superintend the staff of the