William Charles Berwick Sayers was a member of a small but remarkable group of librarians who distinguished the British public library service during the early decades of the Twentieth century. Most of his career was spent with Croydon Public Libraries, first as deputy to L. Stanley Jast, and then as Chief Librarian. But his work as a practising librarian, though well above average, and in its day outstanding in the provision of library services for children, was eclipsed by his success as a writer and teacher of librarianship, particularly in the field of library classification.
Published
Partial
1. WCBSs hand-written exercise book entitled Stray Verses 1902-1910 1916-1918 with 63 poems transcribed from his notebooks.
2. Olive Emily Clarkes (WCBSs future wifes) autograph Album compiled 1910-1915 with a contribution by WCBS in 1911 (she married him in 1915) and contributions by James Duff Brown and by staff at Islington and Darlington Libraries.
3. WCBSs notebook early 1940s with notes for the Library Association Classification Examination 18 May 1942, notes for lectures on Classification at Croydon Polytechnic 1941, and details of the blitz on Croydon from 13-24 November 1940. This ends with the 24 / 25 November 1940 and a later note explaining that this was when a bomb hit the South Report Centre in the Town Hall and WCBS was injured and put in hospital for some months.
4. WCBSs first draft entitled Some Canons of Classification (in a library binding) which was published as Canons of Classification (1915). The draft combines reprints of his thesis submitted for the Professional Diploma and his papers read at the Library Association in 1907 and 1910 with a few pencil annotations.
5. WCBSs desk diary for 1928 including (amongst other things) a poem by him and the titles of talks given at Croydon Public Library which include Selections from the Works of a Croydon Poet (no doubt WCBS).
6. Six slim volumes of manuscript music sheets with words by WCBS and music by several of his friends and occasionally by WCBS too.
7. Two song sheets with words by W. C. Berwick Sayers and music by Herbert Oliver published by J. H. Larway in the 1920s.
8. A copy of Balaustons Adventure by Robert Browning (1889) inscribed in pencil with a poem composed by WCBS lauding Browning.
9. the Foremost Trail by C. Fox Smith (1899), a prize book awared to W.C.Berwick Sayers by Heath and Home for Verses on Dreyfus in 1899 with three relevant loose newspaper cuttings, one of them annotated by him.
The initial collection of WCBS material was collected by Croydon Archives Service from the daughter in law of WCBS in 1997. The additional material was purchased by a donor at Martin Smith Second Hand Books in Andover Market in 1998
Collections level record created by Borough Archivist, November 2017