The Miner's Libraries of South Wales from the 1860s to 1939

This thesis studies the Miners' Institute libraries of South Wales between the 1860s and 1939, partly by re-assessing the current perception of their history, role and function, but mainly by examining a wide range of appropriate primary sources. Miners' Institute libraries are placed in a broad contextual framework, and a review of the academic work that discusses them, is followed by a critical guide to the primary sources that cover their history. A chronological approach traces the initial factors behind Institute development, highlighting the important role of reading rooms and early libraries. The golden period of Institute building between 1890 and 1920, and the simultaneous growth of the libraries, is looked at in detail. Emphasis is placed on the previously underexamined period of the 1920s and 1930s, when the Depression and mass unemployment created major problems for Institute libraries. The role of outside agencies, such as the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, organisations of 'social welfare', the Miners' Welfare Fund, and the Country public library systems, which helped in maintaining the libraries, is stressed. The involvement of Institute libraries in the professional library world in Wales is explored. Management, financial and membership aspects of the Institutes precede an examination of how their libraries were organised, including book selection, censorship and book purchasing practices. Cymmer Institute and Abergorki Workmen's libraries provide two illustrative examples. A detail investigation of the reading material made available by the Institutes is undertaken via close analysis of twenty surviving library catalogues. The position of fiction, Welsh language materials, and the literature of the social sciences and politics, is given special attention. Issue records and borrowers' registers from a number of Institute libraries are examined to discover what the local readership chose to read.