Pride and Glory: Marcus Milne and his vision

"Let us see the pride and glory of a public library....in the magnitude of book circulation among the people, in the number of new readers enrolled, in the speed with which enquiry for any book is satisfied, in the quality of books lent for home reading and in the number of children led to good reading and the use of the library"

Marcus Kelly Milne used this quote by Lenin in his introduction to the Aberdeen Public Library Annual Report for 1941-42. His timing was impeccable given that the Soviet Union was a key ally during the Second World War. His rhetorical flourish was also impeccable; Milne was no Leninist, far from it indeed, but he was never one to miss the opportunity to use a good piece of prose to advance the cause of the library.

For thirty years until his retirement in 1968, Marcus Milne held sway over the libraries in the Granite City. Arguably some his finest moments came during the Second World War when during a time of extremely adversity, he introduced many innovations. He enthusiastically promoted the Scottish Library Association's policy (of September 1940) encouraging public libraries to make temporary membership easier for those displaced by war or for members of the armed services stationed away from home. He thought creatively about outreach, sending books to ARP posts and even to HMS Scylla, a frigate adopted by the City of Aberdeen. In October 1941, he introduced Books you can borrow a current awareness bulletin providing recommendations for books, arranged by theme and with a lively editorial by himself. Milne managed to make the public libraries in Aberdeen positively buoyant during a time of extreme crisis and left the service in a good position when he went off to become an officer in RAF late in 1942.

When he returned after the end of the War, his enthusiasm was undimmed. Between 1950 and his retirement in 1968, he oversaw the opening of four new branches, the introduction of the mobile library service, a housebound reading service and radically restructured the organisation of the central library. Between 1965 and 1967, he was a staunch supporter of the establishment of a library school in Aberdeen. He was openly critical of the attitudes of the Library Association in London for their perceived hostility to the notion of a library school in Aberdeen. As with most things, Marcus Milne had his way. His career was crowned by being President of the Scottish Library Association in 1967.

Marcus Milne demonstrated that a time of crisis often leads to the best innovations and he certainly showed that during the Second World War. He was a big man with a big personality and was known throughout the profession in Scotland and, here in the Granite City, he was in fact know as "Mr Aberdeen" because he was so active in so many things. He died in 1989 at the age of 87.