 | a bibliographical newsletter Issue 33 Christmas 2023  |
British Library cyberattack
The only source I regularly use to update the Devon bibliography, the weekly list of new additions to the British national bibliography, has been closed to me since 23 October and seems likely to remain so for some weeks to come. It underwent a cyberattack from the Rhysida Ransomware Group on 30 October, and the data stolen is being offered on the web with a starting bid of £600,000. It would be sold to a single buyer and the group has set a deadline for bids of 27 November.
It seems that public bodies are particularly vulnerable to such attacks and through my contacts with the public library in Caen, I know that it too was affected for months, together with the entire administration of Caen-la-Mer by a similar attack.
So, it would seem that I will have to revert to my strategy for updating outlined in issue 31 of this newsletter. I have turned to Amazon and WorldCat to produce an interim listing of forthcoming publications for 2024. I have also been using the opportunity to locate PDF files of reports on important topics in such areas as water resources, climate change and food poverty. It also means that I can pursue other lines of enquiry, notably working on the community listings in the Devon communities bibliography which is very deficient for the period after 2001.
Centenary of Devon County Library
The communities bibliography may well come into its own in 2024 when Libraries Unlimited will be celebrating one hundred years since the County Council adopted the Public Library Act of 1919 on 13 March 1924, with the first County Librarian being appointed on 1 July. Prior to the implementation of the Act there had been five rate supported public library authorities serving only 47% of the population and covering only 1.3% of the surface area, as the table below shows:
Authority Population 1921 Square miles
Plymouth 210,036 9.28
Exeter 59,582 7.37
Torquay 39,431 6.10
Newton Abbot 13,837 6.49
Bideford 9,125 5.30
Moretonhampstead. 1,550 12.33
Total 333,561 46.87
Devon 709,614 2,590
Percentage 47% 1.8%
So now more than half the population and 98% of the surface area could receive a rate supported public library service for the first time.
There have been meetings to discuss what form the celebrations might take, but ideally all service points and all aspects of library work should be involved, including each community's heritage. Some branches are very active in this field, for example in Crediton where during lockdown Mark Norman worked with local heritage organisations to deliver a series of Zoom talks. Hopefully closer links can be forged between Libraries Unlimited and the Devon Heritage Centre to pool library expertise within the county, to make the unparalleled resources of the Westcountry Studies Library more accessible to communities and educational bodies across the county, and to use the branches as eyes and ears across Devon to ensure that today's local publications are better gathered and preserved for the future. Hopefully too it will be possible to look at the stock records of the heritage collections in Exeter Library to see whether they can help to reconstruct the missing stock records of the former Westcountry Studies and Exeter City Libraries. As the affair of the British Museum thefts rumbles on, the importance of records of the acquisition and disposal of stock looms ever larger.
Community heritage activities could well attract funding to support a series of displays in branches, perhaps with a digitisation project to update the parish packs distributed to branches and schools. Such resources could be used by schools for initiatives similar to the BBC's Domesday project in 1986 and would form a lasting resource for the community. Perhaps, with the demise of the mobile library service, the village centres of the 1920s and 1930s could be revived with resources placed in schools where there is no branch library. An alternative could be in the often enterprising community hubs, for example in Cornwood, where the Cornwood Inn Action Group, the community benefit society which owns the Cornwood Inn, aims to run the pub "as a social and cultural hub, benefitting the whole of the parish of Cornwood and its surrounding area, with an emphasis on inclusiveness and combatting rural isolation".
Devon Reading Rooms
I have been investigating the reading room movement of the later 19th and early 20th centuries and it indicates that many villages in Devon were better served with reading places then than they are today. Reading rooms form an important part of Devon's literary landscape. Originating with the Mechanics' Institute movement of the 1820s, which at one time or another found homes in Barnstaple, Crediton, Devonport, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Plymouth, South Molton, Stonehouse, Tavistock, Teignmouth, Totnes, Torquay and probably elsewhere, the reading rooms were established in several hundred locations in Devon. They owed their local origin to a range of initiatives by the local church, paternalistic landed gentry or schoolteachers - one was even set up in a converted railway carriage, but many were attached to working men's clubs which provided recreational activities such as billiard rooms as well as reading rooms. These latter were often confined to newspapers and magazines, but many had significant libraries. I am in the process of revising a listing of Devon reading rooms to 1924 which should help to inform work to celebrate the centenary of the county library service in the coming year.
Exeter Civic Society's blue plaque to George Gissing
On 8 December the Society unveiled a plaque at 25 Heavitree Road to commemorate the writer George Gissing (1857-1903) who rented a room to work in there for a few months between 1892 and 1893. Gissing lived in Exeter between 1891 and 1893. The plaque was unveiled by Professor Richard Dennis a Gissing enthusiast and expert. The unveiling was followed by coffee at the Barnfield Theatre, once the home of the Exeter Literary Society which Gissing joined, and then a walk of Exeter sites associated with Gissing and his novels, led by Prof. Dennis who, the evening before the plaque ceremony had delivered a lecture to a full house at the Devon and Exeter Institution entitled ‘George Gissing and Exeter: a transformative writer at a transformative time in his own life’. The Gissing Trust, which runs the George Gissing Museum in his birthplace of Wakefield, made a generous donation towards the cost of the plaque. I was involved to some extent in preparation for the plaque, and was delighted to be able to attend this most enjoyable event, which is described with photos on the Exeter Civic Society website.
And finally, a New Year's Gift
