Clifford Amandus Burmester was a great-grandson of Thomas and Ann Stone and the grandson of Lucy Susannah Stone who married William Richard Field in 1869. The following biographical note is part of the description attached to the record of his papers which are lodged in the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
They include biographical papers and memoirs. “The memoirs which were written in about 1977 and are 167 pages in length, cover his childhood and education in Western Australia, as well as his long service in the Parliamentary Library and National Library. The other papers comprise a copy of his unsuccessful application to join the Parliamentary Library in 1934 and his brief outline of the history of his forebears, including his great grandfather Thomas Stone, who emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land in 1819, and his father Henry Peter Burmester, the son of an immigrant from Germany. “
Clifford Amandus Burmester was born on 16 June 1910 in Boulder City, Western Australia, the son of Henry and Ethel Burmester. His father was an engine-driver in the Water Supply Department and his early years were spent in small towns on the goldfields. In 1922 the family moved to Perth and he attended the Claremont Central School and later Perth Modern School. He was appointed a trainee teacher in the Education Department and in 1933 graduated as a Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the University of Western Australia. For a time he was a correspondence tutor in the Department of History.
In 1934 Burmester applied for a position in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, but the job was given to L.F. Fitzhardinge. He was successful the following year, being appointed a Legislative Research Clerk. He enlisted in the AIF in 1941, serving mostly in the Northern Territory. He returned to the Library after the War and in 1947 was appointed the second Liaison Officer in London. Among his many achievements in this post were the successful negotiations to secure the Nan Kivell Collection, the purchase of the Kashnor Collection, and the inauguration of the Australian Joint Copying Project.
Burmester’s first marriage to Winifred Lamb ended in divorce. He married Ruth Southcott in London on 1 January 1948. They had three sons. Burmester died in Canberra on 18 August 1991.
On his return to Canberra in 1951, Burmester was appointed Chief Reference Officer and held this position for 15 years, initially in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library and after 1960 in the National Library of Australia. As well as being responsible for reading room and reference services, he played a major role in book selection and had oversight of the Australian Section, headed by Pauline Fanning. In the 1960s he was heavily involved in the planning of the new building. He formulated the Library’s acquisition policies at a time of enormous growth of the collections and in 1966 became Principal Librarian, Development Services. Following the sudden death of Athol Johnson in 1967, Burmester became Assistant National Librarian, serving under Harold White and briefly under Allan Fleming. He was a key figure in organising the move into the new building in 1968. He retired in January 1971. He was awarded the Imperial Service Order in 1970.
In his retirement, Burmester undertook a number of bibliographical and scholarly projects. The most important was National Library of Australia: guide to the collections, published in four volumes between 1974 and 1982, which drew on his enormous knowledge of both the formed and the general collections of the Library.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/29454498
