‘Unidentified female librarian’: The women of Victoria’s Parliamentary Library

A hundred years ago, the Joint Committee of the Parliamentary Library decided to advertise roles specifically for women. The two successful candidates – Flora Brennan and Mary ‘Mollie’ Clark – began work in the library in March 1927, entering a workplace that had until that point been exclusively staffed by men, and would remain predominately male for several decades.

One hundred years later—despite the many ‘unidentified female librarians’ in old photographs in the catalogue—the current staff of the Parliamentary Library, including all those in leadership positions, are predominantly women.

To mark the 175th Anniversary of the Victorian Parliamentary Library, this paper provides a history of female staff in Australian libraries and the legal and societal changes which occurred between Mollie and Flora’s first day of work and today. These changes have contributed to the workforce moving from a male- to female-dominated industry. The paper explores the stories of Flora and Mollie, as well as the first female Parliamentary Librarian, Josephine McGovern. The paper also charts the history of women in Parliamentary Libraries across Australia, including when the first female staff were hired and the first female Parliamentary Librarian was appointed, and provides an overall account of the gender make up of the library’s workforce over the past 100 years.