The State Library of Victoria (the world’s third-busiest public library) has a function room dedicated to the Library’s first listed female staff member who they employed as a library assistant in 1908 at the age of 27. By 1931 she had attained a Batchelor of Arts degree. She never married but all her nieces, nephews and their descendants regarded themselves as “children of her mind.”
How do I know this? Simple: she was one of my maternal grandmother’s older sisters. Her mind was as sharp as ever when her body failed her in 1969 at the age of 88.