| Administrative History | Henry James Hamilton Drummond (d.1989), former Librarian, Aberdeen University. Mr. Drummond came to Aberdeen in 1951 as sub-librarian to Dr. Simpson. The greater part of the library administration fell to him, most notably in connection with numerous building projects which culminated in the reconstruction of King's and the building of the Science library. In 1966 he succeeded Dr. Simpson as university Librarian, as post he held until his retirement in 1972. |
| Description | Interview with Henry James Hamilton Drummond recorded on 22 May 1986 by Colin McLaren.
Transcript of Interview :
M Mr Drummond, you came to Aberdeen in 1951 as Deputy Librarian, what were the circumstances that led to your appointment?
D The then deputy was Bill Mitchell who had left as you probably know to go to Newcastle as librarian and the post was advertised and I thought I would be interested. I vaguely knew Douglas Simpson before, he was down at Edinburgh at a meeting, some archaeological meeting of the Ancient Monuments board or something like that and he came to see me in the library at Edinburgh where I was an assistant librarian and said would I be interested in the job. He knew of me as an archaeologist and we had at one or two meetings of the Society of Antiquaries, something like that. I had been assistant to Gordon Child who was a lecturer in Edinburgh before I got interested in library work. So he came to see me and said would I be interested and I said definitely I would. I put in an application and was duly considered along with any other applicants for the post. So I duly came up for an interview and there was three or four of us being interviewed and I think it was between myself and Dennis Douty who I think was then deputy as St Andrews and I got the job. Dennis and I have been good friends ever since, I got the job and I started here on 1 December 1951.
M You had been an Assistant Librarian in Edinburgh, you had no formal library qualification?
D None whatever.
M Is that significant, was the Library to some extent less professionalised in those days?
D Yes definitely. Douglas Simpson himself was one of the last of the academic teaching staff librarians and he wanted somebody like himself. Whether that was a good idea or not, its not for me to say. But I came without any professional qualifications. I started on library work because I was invalided out of the air force in 1942, my wife was living with her parents in Edinburgh at that time with our children and I went back to the university where I had been on the staff as an assistant lecturer in archaeology. There I saw Gordon Child and he said there was nothing doing here there are no students here and it's a sort of luxury department, we have more or less closed down for the duration. But he said I think you might go and see Dr Sharp in the library, he might find a job for you because they are rather short of staff. So I got a job as an assistant librarian. I liked it and I got so keen on it that I thought I would make a career of it and in those days it didn't seem to matter whether you had professional qualifications or not. I started right at the very bottom of the lending counter, putting books away and doing everything like that and eventually I was put in charge of the periodicals department and I was still in charge of that when I got the chance of coming up here.
M But to come up here as Deputy to a person who was himself a scholar librarian meant presumably that a quantity of administrative work must have fallen on your shoulders?
D It did, almost from the very beginning but not quite from the beginning, but I had only been here two or three years when Douglas had a bad coronary and was off for the best part of eight months and I was more or less thrown in at the deep end then and just had to get on with it. But I'd had had very varied experience in Edinburgh in all departments, cataloguing even some rare books and ordering periodicals and lending cards and so on. I knew quite a lot about it. I was ten years there, so I knew quite a lot about it and I had my own ideas about the running of libraries. Douglas and I got on very well indeed and I suppose he saw that I was reasonably competent to carry on in administration and he left a lot of it to me. After his illness of course, well he always said we ran in joint harness which is what it amounts to, he was there to take the responsibility and I discussed things with him and just went on.
M Of the staff who were there when you arrived, Simpson apart, some presumably could go someway back into the early days of the Library in its form under Anderson: was this of assistance to you?
D Yes it was. There were not that very many left from pre-war. Maggie Brown, she was in charge I think of the lending counter, a formidable lady. I think she'd just left when I arrived though I met her on various occasions afterwards. There was Miss Muirhead - no, not Miss Muirhead, Miss Walker, Kirsty Walker, and I always got on very well with her, I liked her and she seemed to approve of me. We got on very well, I learned a lot from her, a great deal from her and we still exchange Christmas cards. Pat Mugliston was already on the staff when I came and she's still with us of course.
M One has the sense of almost a family nature to the staff in those days and indeed seems to have survived into the late 60s when I came here. Is this a correct impression?
D Yes they were very happy staff. Douglas Simpson was a very benevolent boss. He got on I think very well with most of the staff and left them to get on with their jobs. After the first year or two we discussed things, we were talking about how the library was going, what improvements we can make and I had various ideas and he always helped me to put them into effect. It was a friendly place, always very friendly.
M Can we just talk about Simpson for a moment because he is a figure who looms very large one feels in the University as a whole and perhaps we could just think of him in his various roles. First of all as a scholar, where do you think he now stands in terms of archaeological and bibliographical scholarship?
D His main reputation of course is in the field of castles, ancient monuments and a lot of his judgements as far as I can make out which he made in visiting various castles both in Scotland and in England are still accepted. Take Fyvie Castle where he did a lot of work, I think some of his ideas have been superseded by later work but that wasn't really his fault, he saw things as he saw them then and I would say that his standing as an antiquarian is still very high. In bibliographical studies I'm not quite so sure, he never did very much in that line. But he was an outstanding antiquarian and as chairman of the Royal and Ancient Monuments Board or whatever and the Society of Antiquaries, he was a very moving light there and as a scholar in his own right as a historian and as an archaeologist antiquarian he was outstanding I think and of course his main forte really was in his public speaking.
M Yes, well as a populariser in public speaking, yes.
D And some would say he popularised a bit too much but on the other hand those lectures he gave under the auspices of the local education authority were immensely popular. They went down very well indeed he always brought in large audiences. He used to take out parties of various bodies including the library staff. He was always a very popular leader and expounder and was rather inclined perhaps to have purple passages in his lectures and his writing but they were none the worse for that.
M To what extent did his role as a populariser and as someone whose reputation spread into the region benefit the library in any way?
D It benefited the library a great deal I would say because most people in the North East weren't interested in library matters or historical antiquarian matters. If anything cropped up to their knowledge they would have to discuss it with Dr Simpson and then they would come and seek him and if they wanted to get rid of a collection of books they would come to the library. It was certainly his position as a well known figure in the North East must have helped the library a lot.
M What of his role within the University as Registrar of General Council and the other duties he took on? Did these impinge very much on his role in the library?
D Well up to a point it did. He tried to drag me into that and I wasn't having it. He said would you like to come on as my assistant? I said no thank you I want to keep clear, I'm not a graduate of the university and I want to keep clear of anything to do with the General Council. But it did take up a lot of his time.
M The role or the involvement of the Librarian with General Council had of course gone right back to the days of Anderson who had been very tied up, but you in a sense were starting afresh whereby the time you were Librarian you were purely concerned with the administration of the library.
D Yes I never had anything to do with General Council or anything to do with the administration of the University at all.
M Is this because apart from your own predilection that way that the Library's problems or responsibilities really required this full attention? Was it growing to such an extent that it was really now necessary?
D Yes definitely. It wasn't a job as I saw it even as a deputy, that you could share with anything else, it was very much a full time job, in fact latterly became too much of a full time job even for me.
M What sort of problems confronted you as Deputy and subsequently as Librarian, problems in the sense of the financial side of the library, the space of the library, could you just run through those for me?
D Fortunately most of my time here was spent at a time which was financially reasonably hopeful and things were done differently then. Every five years each department including the library had to submit its quinquennial estimates for the next period of five years. I don't think they do that now. We used to have to give in our recommendations for additional staff, recommendations for the bookfund and anything else, buildings alterations anything like that, and Douglas always left this to me after the first few years, especially after his illness. We went over it together naturally so that we went to Library Committee in full agreement about what we were going to put forward. And we always went on the assumption that if you ask for a little more than you expect to get, you may get enough to be going on with. I do remember one occasion, it must have been about the late fifties when Tom Taylor was Principal, he of course was an ex officio member of the Library Committee, I think the Principal was ex officio, and we put forward our recommendations for the next quinquennium and the Library Committee were looking them over and I always remember Tom Taylor's remark 'good heavens these staff recommendations are not for the quinquennium they're much more like for the millennium'. In point of fact I think by the end of the quinquennium we had exceeded them. That was rather the attitude of the Court in those days. The Library was a small department, doesn't grow very much and doesn't need much in way of staff. Unfortunately that was the Court as a whole. I'm not saying that Tom Taylor wasn't reasonable he was but that was his first reaction.
M Where would see this attitude towards the size of the library and the role of the library changed because I think now it would function very high at any level of thought to both its financing and its structure? Would you put a date on when the library assumed a new significance?
D I would say probably in the late fifties early sixties somewhere about then. It's difficult to pinpoint it exactly.
M When it would coincide presumably with the growth of new departments and some rise in student numbers?
D Yes. And certainly looking back on it I don't remember at any time the library being regarded as being too demanding in its expectations.
M We've spoken of the role of Dr Simpson and the impact of his character, to what extent did the Curator of the library have a say in library policy because they seem to be men who one associates with the history of the university - people like Farquhar MacRitchie, W S Watts, Dr Weatherly and of course A C O'Dell. These were all men of considerable impact on the university as a whole.
D Yes, they varied considerably in the role they played as Curator. Farquhar MacRitchie made very little impact on the library. O'Dell a lot, he was very interested in the library, and Bill Watt too. He was Curator while Dr Simpson was off ill and I relied very much on him and we got on very well together and he was a great help to me and he was very encouraging to me and I found him of immense help and ever since then. O'Dell I found a very good helpful Curator and Paul Weatherly. Farquhar MacRitchie I knew very little about, I knew him personally but he never took a great deal of interest in the library.
M It was during one of these curatorships, I imagine possibly Professor Watts', that a large amount of conservation work was done on some of the library's earlier materials, certainly in the rare books. By whose initiative was this?
D It was Bill Mitchell who started this before I ever came. He was interested in binding and he went over the books and selected those which needed repair and in those days we had enough money to send them to binders like Cockerell and Powell. We must have spent a lot of money of the years. I don't know how their bindings are standing up to things nowadays. I don't know who started this, it was going when I came and I just carried on. Douglas left all that to me. We were able to spend quite a lot of money on repairs. Whether we could have done just as well by spending rather less money by sending them to places like Dunn and Wilson I don't know but one felt if you sent them to a man like Cockerell and Powell that they would receive expert attention even if it was a bit expensive.
M We've spoken of the curators, what of the Principals themselves? You've mentioned Sir Thomas Taylor in one context, how did he and subsequently Sir Edward Wright, what sort of interest did they take in the library?
D I think Tom Taylor recognised the library as one of the key departments in the university but he never seemed to give a great deal of thought or time to it. He would attend Library Committees but not regularly but he was always there in the background. Douglas knew him of course very well and they used to have talks about the library occasionally but I always got the impression that Edward Wright was really more, surprisingly enough in some ways, more library orientated than Taylor had been. Of course Taylor had his own library, his own personal library and the Law library which he used. He very seldom came in here as far as I remember. Whereas Wright came in a lot and I always found Wright very helpful, extremely helpful. Those were the only two Principals of course I had anything to do with.
M They were supported by two formidable secretaries, Butchart and Angus. What roles did they have in the growth of the library?
D Very little really. I had known Butchart personally before, I'd met him on a skiing holiday and I always liked Butchart. He was a bit brusque in his manner but he was always very helpful. Of course long before I became Librarian he'd gone and Angus I found rather different.
M In what way?
D He was a lot more difficult to get on with. He was very reasonable, very understanding, but I don't know, I just got the impression he considered the library was not quite his province and that he wasn't particularly interested. I was probably quite wrong because after all he was quite a scholar in his own right. I think I'm right in saying that. He wrote various articles and he was interested. He did use the library a bit but maybe just felt it wasn't his province to interfere or appear to be interfering in the library, but he was always there to discuss things with. I remember phoning him up on occasions and being rather taken aback by his brusqueness on the phone but he was always there to help. Of the other administrative officers I always found Nelson, the finance officer, very helpful and of course James Kelman as the buildings officer, he and I got on very well and he was always very popular. If I wanted anything for the library I would go and discuss it with him and if he thought it was reasonable he would try and push it through. Of course over the building plans for the Science Library, I can't remember when Kelman came but he must have been involved in the Science Library and of course all the subsequent plans, he was always very helpful. I can't remember who he predecessor was?
M I'm not actually sure if there was one or whether he sort of came more or less in a new role.
D There was James Main, he was buildings too, he was always helpful too.
M The buildings obviously count a great deal and while you were Librarian what appeared when the university expanded in terms of building a great deal were the halls of residence and the Taylor Building and so on but it was in your own time that the Science Library as it was then called …
D Yes, of course the first building activity after I came was this so called extension and I remember planning for what we called the 'big flit' when we moved everything into this building and I remember the opening of the wing by Sir Alexander Gray who had been on the staff here and he was Professor of Political Economy at Edinburgh and he gave a very good speech and I think there is a copy of it somewhere. Then after that we got involved in plans for the Science Library and then there was talk of a new, we realised, always realised for many years that this library, the King's Library, was hopeless as a permanent building for the Arts and Social Sciences. There was talk in those days of a completely new library for the non-science departments. They went on talking about that for years and it kept on coming up at the Library Committee and there was even an idea that we should build out on the playing fields up here somewhere. But that seemed to us in the library, to Douglas and myself, to be nonsense and it would be far better from every point of view to expand on the Science Library site because that site was strengthened so the library could expand almost indefinitely and there would be a big saving in staff and reference books and the like and administration generally. So the idea of another library here was scrapped and before I retired they had started to plan phase II. The idea then was that the Taylor Building should become the Law library which it has now and that this library, King's, should be used as a kind of undergraduate reading room bringing the departmental libraries over in here. That idea was accepted in principle but it never got very far because as you know its been superseded by other and probably better ideas. I was never much in favour of these departmental libraries myself, but they've all integrated now I think. Which I think is a much better idea but in those days they were still talking about undergraduate reading rooms where they could bring all these libraries together.
M When you came in 1951 the University was still small by any sort of degree and presumably it thought in a way that reflected this both in terms of its buildings and development but you of course saw the great change. First of all how would be characterise the University when you arrived as a community?
D That's rather difficult to answer. I was never a very social person at all and it seemed to me a very friendly community and I got on well with any staff I met and with the administration, the students. It was a very friendly community but it is very difficult to say any more than that. It was a small enough community for you to know, if not everybody intimately, you knew most of the staff by sight anyway.
M Would you say its remoteness from or comparative remoteness from Edinburgh and certainly from London led in any sense to a parochialism about of outlook?
D I suppose there was an element of that. In those days I wasn't conscious of it but looking back on it now I can see that it was a little of a problem, I wouldn't say it was very evident at all.
M You said you didn't move into the society of it a great deal, was this from choice or were you living in a place which didn't make it feasible to do so? Or was there not really a social side to the university in that sense?
D Well there was, but I was never a very social individual and Douglas used to encourage me to go over to the staff common room for morning coffee, which I did to begin with but that was a thing I disliked, I just liked to get on with my job. I never bothered about coffee. If anyone wanted to come and see me I was very happy to talk to them and discuss any problems or if I wanted to go and see anybody about library matters I would do so but I didn't fraternise very much. Of course that may be a fault and was recognised as a bit of a fault and I should do more in that line but I just felt I wanted to get on with my job and people could come and see me which they did a lot and I would go and see them if I wanted to discuss anything about the library in relation to their department.
M What of the student body, did you come into contact with them very much either as users of the library or in any other way?
D Not very much. When I first came here, the Deputy was called sub-librarian in those days, I managed to get it, I thought sub-librarian wasn't, most of the other universities except I think St Andrews called their second in command Deputy and I got Douglas to agree to a change and get it through the Court. But when I came as sub-librarian there was no separate room I had a desk in a main hall just outside the Librarian's room which I found a bit awkward especially if people wanted to come and talk to me. You'd try to keep the students from talking and if you had someone coming to see you and talking it wasn't really a very good example. So sometimes Douglas would say if you want to talk to anyone bring them into my room if I'm not there and he very often wasn't there. But I didn't like that partly for that reason and partly because half the time I seemed to be spending going to a group of students and saying if you must talk do talk more quietly. And occasionally one of the attendants would bring a student to me saying this man was found trying to take a book out of the library and I've had to tell the students to stop talking but I just talked, gave them a sort of reprimand, but looking back on it now I never had any trouble with students.
M Did they use the library as a learning resource or did they tend certainly for part of their year at any rate to use the departmental libraries? Was there this sort of division of interest?
D I never got the impression that they used the departmental libraries very much really. They certainly used this library, they used the main reading room a lot. They used to come in the morning and dump their bags and their belongings and more or less sit there all day except for going off to a lecture. There were enough seats at that time that it didn't matter. My impression was they used the library very intelligently really, but some of them never came near the library at all and some certainly would have used the Taylor library. Some of them didn't like that library. My own granddaughter when she was a student here, though she was doing Law, she hated that library, she liked coming here much better.
M It was at the end of your period as Librarian and in the period of your successor that the library contemplated and ultimately went over to various procedures dictated I imagine by the requirements of sound management to cope with the growth of the numbers using the library, the growth of the book stock and the general problems presented by finance and other things that developed in the seventies and eighties. To what extent do you think that was the right time to have made the change, might it have been made earlier, could it have been postponed?
D I'm afraid I was never very technologically inclined and I knew it would have to come. In fact I went to some courses and lectures in the university on computers and the like and I knew it would have to come and we started making soundings, getting ideas about how we could start automating library practices, but I never got very far and the impression I got from talking to one or two other librarians was 'don't rush into this, wait till the first generation of these ideas have been put into practice and then take up from there'. So I'm afraid by the time I left nothing very much had been done except making enquiries, but I did realise it would have to come and I was personally very glad to get out before it took over.
M The library itself has changed in appearance, the great hall had the mezzanine floor put in, there has been various work done to it including obviously work for safety and security procedures. Had there been crises in the history of the library that involved safety or security?
D Well one I can remember best was when the sprinkler system which was installed throughout the main hall went badly wrong. This system was imposed on the library I think by a member of the Court who had a personal interest in the supply. I may be wrong, I may be doing him an injustice, I can't even remember who it was. But the system was installed, long before I came and Douglas and I often discussed it was not a good idea supposing it went off unnecessarily, but the argument against that was that the library is very vulnerable to fire with all the wood on the ceiling and walls, very vulnerable indeed. So the sprinkler system remained until an awful day, I don't remember what year it was, just before the alterations to the main hall, it went off one night, nobody I think knows quite what started it off but we came in the morning and found the main disaster area was the English bay up in the gallery, that's the south east, I think it was the English bay, but up in the gallery at the south east corner. The books there were almost ruined and the amount of money that was spent installing heaters to try and dry them off and dry off the woodwork must have been quite considerable and quite a lot of them had to be rebound. There may have been some write offs, I don't remember exactly how much but it was a disastrous episode. Fortunately I think it was confined mainly to that one corner. Then thereafter the sprinkler system was taken out.
M Were there other crises?
D The only other thing I can remember was when on one occasion when one of the ceiling lights in the main hall suddenly came loose and crashed down onto the reading desk immediately below it. It was a big drop. Of course that was before there was any flooring over and then it landed I think just more or less just right in the middle of one of these reading desks with students sitting on either side. They must have had a terrific fright but fortunately there were no injuries.
M Did you regret the necessity to have to put in the mezzanine flooring in the great hall?
D Not really, I thought it was in many ways an improvement. Some of the old graduates of course used to come in and say what have they done to my beloved King's Library, but I never particularly liked that great big open space. Douglas Simpson used to talk about it as a sort of gothic masterpiece. But I thought of it as improved in many ways, it certainly gave us more floor space, more shelf space and in some ways more privacy really. And of course these very high shelves in the library, 10 shelves high, they were hopeless.
M Yes, they must have presented quite a hazard to members who were in any way disabled presumably?
D Yes. I can remember several members of the library staff who were not liking them at all and they wouldn't go up there so we had to get one of the attendants to come and do it, fortunately there were never any accidents, I don't remember hearing of any accidents about the ladder slipping or anything like that.
M During your retirement you prepared the very valuable catalogue of the continental imprints that we have in the Pi Collection. Did you, or were you in any way, involved in building up that side of our collections or did you really more or less accept them as they came to us passively?
D No, I tried to build it up because I was always interested in early printed books and I found when I came here this really very quite remarkable, valuable collection. It interested me because Bill Mitchell my predecessor had been interested in them too but more from the side of their bindings than for the contents of the book. So I thought well enough has been done on the bindings apart from seeing to the repair of some of the ones still remaining to be done and I got interested in the books themselves and I tried as far as I could. I did a lot of the recataloguing of the older books when I still had time, when I was still Deputy. I still had time to do that and we started trying to build up the collections from buying from Sotheby's and whatever, and often from booksellers and we were able to spend a few hundred pounds a year in those days. Of course you could buy quite a lot for a few hundred pounds. I was always very interested in that side of it and I decided especially when I found out I had to retire early that I would like to do a catalogue of them because there was no separate catalogue and I thought it was as interesting a collection as could be found in most university libraries in this country.
M Do you feel enough use has been made of those sort of resources within the library by the teaching staff in particular in their research?
D I don't know. I doubt it, but it wasn't for want of trying to draw their attention to it. Certainly we had plenty members of staff who were interested. People like Leslie MacFarlane and the people in the history of science like Bill Whiteman. But I think more use could have been made of it. I've really no idea how much use is made of it nowadays but at least people know about it.
M I think your catalogue has certainly made it more accessible which has helped a lot.
D I was very glad to do it and I was glad that the University was able to publish it.
End of Interview
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