Educator,
author, editor, administrator, association activist, librarian, John Levett
has made an exemplary and far reaching contribution to the library and
information profession in Australia and to the theory and practice of librarianship.
He began work as a library cadet at the Newcastle Public Library and joined
the Association in 1954. From 1961 to 1968 he was chief librarian of the
Lake Macquarie Shire Library (NSW), serving a socially disparate and geographically
scattered population. He was deputy State Librarian of Tasmania, Hobart,
from 1968 to 1970, when he became director of the Resource Materials Centre
at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. He was appointed director
of the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records in the College
and subsequently transferred in 1981 with the Department to the University
of Tasmania. From 1992-4 he was professorial chair of the Department of
Librarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University, Melbourne.
John
has taught and written about a variety of subjects, including the sociology
of libraries; administration; the role, function and values of contemporary
public library service; children's literature; the selection and evaluation
of library materials and research methods in librarianship. Much of his
teaching has been at postgraduate and Master's level. His personal dedication
to professional educational standards and values enabled him to attract
and lead quality staff and produce high calibre graduates.
President
of the Association in 1991, John has served on a variety of Association
committees covering censorship, public libraries, social issues, audio-visual
services, financial support for State and public libraries, publications
and international relations. He was for five years a member of the Board
of Education and a general councillor for four periods from 1969, 1978,
1983-4 and 1990-2. He became a fellow of the Library Association of Australia
in 1988.
Students
and colleagues, involved with him in academic and professional activities,
attest to his role as a constructive critic and to his ability to stimulate
thought and action on values, professional and community responsibilities
and qualitative responses to change. He has inculcated in those around
him a lasting intellectual and professional commitment to librarianship.
An
outstanding achievement has been his editorship of the Australian Library
Journal. He has produced the Association's flagship publication, with one
break, since 1981, ensuring quality and substance in its articles, encouraging
new authors and leading debate on sometimes controversial issues in its
editorials. He is often called the conscience of Australian librarianship
because of his fierce defence of its fundamental values.
John
Levett has enriched librarianship, provided intellectual leadership and
benefited Australian society at many levels over three decades. It is fitting
that he should receive the Association's highest award, which commemorates
HCL Anderson, principal librarian of the Free Public Library of New South
Wales from 1893 to 1906 and one of the great early Australian librarians.
