Liliane Wetzel

Her early career

Liliane Wetzel was born in Rennes in 1905, and her father was a secondary school teacher. She graduated in history and geography in 1926, and in 1927 obtained a technical diploma in librarianship. Liliane Wetzel began her career with a few years of teaching as an assistant to a history chair at the Lycée de Femmes in Rennes, then at the Lycée Lamartine in Paris until 1929.

She then left teaching to work in the library of the Faculty of Medicine in Marseille for six years, before being appointed head librarian of the Lille Interuniversity Library from 1937 to 1942. On 15 December 1937, she took part in a meeting of the University Library Committee. By the time she arrived, the institution was in a bad financial situation. She would be working to reduce the deficit. She travelled to Paris to obtain a grant of 100,000 francs from the director of the ENS. During her time as head librarian, she had to deal with roofing problems and water damage that damaged the library’s books.

In 1937, she was vice-president of the librarians’ union and a member of the committee of the French Librarians’ Association. She was a librarian committed to defending the interests of her profession.

A librarian during the war

She was still employed in Lille when the Second World War broke out. On 4 November 1939, the rector of Lille received confirmation by telegram from the Prefect of Ille et Vilaine of the arrival of three carriages full of books from the Lille library, which had been transferred to a safer area. Liliane Wetzel organised the evacuation of the university’s collection of precious books at the same time as her departure to be with her family. In February 1940, back in Lille, she lent the library premises to the French Librarians’ Association for accelerated training in children’s, hospital and factory librarianship.

During the war, she was appointed by the rector to inspect libraries and educational institutions. Liliane Wetzel had a vehicle registration card for this purpose. The closure of the university library by the city of Lille continued until June 1941.

Rejecting all forms of collaboration, Liliane Wetzel refused to provide the occupying forces with maps of the region, and was imprisoned for two months for refusing to do so. Despite these challenging conditions, in 1941 she wrote a ‘Study onLibrary Reform’. In the first part of this study, she describes the situation faced by France’s libraries in 1940: there was no central management, head librarians were dependent on rectors or mayors, and there were problems with staff status and salaries. In the second part, she makes proposals to improve library operations: the employment of accountants and shorthand typists, a compulsory budget provided by universities to libraries, the standardisation of cataloguing rules, the reorganisation of spaces (creation of conference rooms, a lending area separate from the working area), the development of libraries in penal institutions and even the creation of a book tax. The improvements she called for came directly from her experience as head librarian (in a letter to the rector of the Lille education authority, she asked for a shorthand typist and an increase in library boys’ salaries). It’s worth noting that some of the ideas presented in this report are applied in municipal and university libraries today.

In 1942, Liliane Wetzel was promoted to head librarian of the Contemporary International History and Documentation Library. She left her post in Lille and became curator of libraries in 1962. She was appointed to the national library in 1969 and died in Vendée on 11 January 1975.

Notes written by Chloé Minnaert and Sarah Lagache.