In his obituary of Jean Whyte, Brian McMullin calls Whyte 'one of the dominant figures in Australian librarianship in the second half of the 20th century'.
At the time of her birth, Whyte's father was manager of a sheep station, 'Yadlamalka', in outback South Australia. Before Whyte was three, her mother was killed by a shark in South Australia and Whyte and her younger sister were cared for by governesses. Her father married again and after Whyte left school she was expected by her stepmother to stay home. However, Whyte wanted to continue her education and she became a part-time student at Adelaide University in 1941.
While studying, Whyte supported herself by part-time work in the Adelaide State (then Public) Library and became interested in pursuing librarianship as a career. She qualified as a librarian in 1946 and began teaching librarianship to trainee librarians at the Adelaide State Library in 1948. Whyte went on to complete her BA in 1951 and graduated from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School in 1956. Brian McMullin writes in his obituary of Whyte that her years in Chicago 'reinforced her commitment to the North American pattern of...graduate study within a tertiary institution, as opposed to the prevailing British system of external examinations administered by the professional body'. When, in 1975, Whyte became the foundation professor in the Graduate School of Librarianship at Monash University she was able to put this commitment into practice. She retired from Monash as emeritus professor in 1988.
Before her work at Monash, Whyte was a librarian at the University of Sydney from 1959 and, from 1972, Director, Information, Reference and Research at the National Library of Australia.
Whyte was a member of many boards and panels including the Board of Education of the Library Association of Australia, and she was editor of the Australian Library Journal (1959-1971). She received many awards and honours including the H. C. L. Anderson Award and an honorary D. Litt from Monash University.
Whyte was also a poet and became interested in hand-printing which she learnt with Harrison Bryan. At Monash she was instrumental in setting up the Ancora Press. She was also interested in the visual arts particularly contemporary Australian painting. She was well travelled and had a wide circle of friends in Australia and around the world but 'despite the years spent elsewhere, Whyte remained at heart a South Australian'.
Source: Brian McMullin, 'Yadlamalka Girl Shaped Australian Librarianship', Age (18-19 April 2003): 19.
