Carol Mills
Academic librarian, book historian, bibliographer and benefactor by Ann-Mari Jordens
On her fourth birthday, Carol Mills’ grandparents gave her a little card inscribed with the following wish for her future:
‘May you open wide Joy’s door,
On the morning you are four,
Enter into fun and laughter,
All your days be happy after.’
Neither Carol nor her grandparents could have guessed in 1946 how much joy she would find throughout her life by entering through the doors of libraries. Carol has made most valuable contributions to the world of books, as a university librarian, bibliographer and historian of early Australian book publishing. Her most recent contribution is her decision to make a major bequest to the National Library of Australia to help it to continue its work of enriching the minds of readers in generations to come.
Born at Penshurst, Sydney in 1942, Carol grew up in a house without many books. Her future passion for books, their history and preservation, was first ignited when as a curious child she discovered on top of her father’s wardrobe, a faded red-covered volume with yellowing pages—his treasured Pals Annual for 1925, the most successful Australian boys’ magazine of its time. She published an article on its history in 1990.
From 1968 to 1984 Carol was Librarian at the University of Canberra. In 1975 she decided to prepare on a voluntary, part-time basis, a modest bibliography of literature emanating from the Northern Territory. It soon evolved into a massive project, the fourth and last volume of which was published in 1983. She also gained a higher degree in librarianship in London during the late 1970s. Throughout the 1980s she published a series of articles in the Lu Rees Archives on early Australian writers and book illustrators.
From 1984 to 2000, Carol was Librarian at the William Merrylees Library, Charles Sturt University at Wagga, in New South Wales. Her publications while in that position included articles on the history of the New South Wales Bookstall Company, and an index of the nineteenth century journal the Melbourne Review.
Her skills and ingenuity as a librarian were tested in a new and very challenging context when she was seconded from 1993-95 to the University of the South Pacific in Suva.
Professor Alan Robson, Acting Chairman of the National Library of AustraliaCouncil, presenting Carol Mills with a silk-bound box at the Council lunch, 6 June 2003.
In 1992 she gave a paper at the Australian Libraries and Information Association Conference on that library's history and role in the Pacific. Her understanding of the problems faced by libraries and readers in that region were revealed by her articles, published in 1994, ‘Children and Reading in the Pacific’ and ‘Aid for Libraries: Should one look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth?’. The following year she published an article which offered very practical advice to architects, designers and librarians in relation to libraries in tropical areas. She suggested a variety of inexpensive and relatively simple ways to preserve paper and protect books from insects, mould, cyclones, earthquakes, rain and the myriad vicissitudes a tropical environment is prone to inflict on them.
Carol continues to contribute to the world of books even after her retirement. In August last year she added her collection of correspondence and papers covering the period 1960–2000 to the National Library’s Manuscript Collection, and shortly I will have the privilege of recording her story for the Library’s Oral History Collection. Through her generous bequest, Carol will continue to contribute long into the future.

