The identity of the Society was for more than a hundred years inseparably bound up with its Library. At a meeting on 26 June 1868, Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue recommended "the formation of a colonial library, to which all interested in the welfare of the colonies should have access," an aim affirmed by the Society's first elected chairman, Viscount Bury. The Society's first librarian was appointed in 1869, and the first salaried librarian, Australian-born Joseph Sylvester O'Halloran, in 1885. The person mainly responsible for the Library's remarkable development and international reputation was Evans Lewin, Master Librarian for thirty-six years, 1910–1946.