Study visit Day 1

My first library visit was to the State Library NSW (SLNSW) and in some ways it represents the pinnacle of libraries and of the the visits i'm to make over the next week and the only library that is a library in and of itself and not used to support the function of another organisation.

The library is impressive on many accounts, from the buildings (you can go on a virtual tour  if you haven't been there for a while) to the breadth of their collection which includes manuscripts, paintings and objects valued into the billions - with some of the best collection of early (European) Australian artifacts


Image: Life Interrupted. Exhibition at the SLNSW http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/

Two things struck me based on the talks and visit. The change in focus to children and education and the digital excellence program. The focus on children is a clever one and has been echoed by other cultural institutions who recognise the importance of securing their futures through building their next generation of visitors and users and the financial gains that can be made from the education sector through visits.

The digital excellence program including the digitising of the collection to provide greater access - much of which is shared on TROVE. One of the highlights of this is the WWI diaries displayed in the Life Interrupted exhibition. I was also interested to see they have also developed an app Curio.  


SITE 2: ABC Library

http://www.abc.net.au/tours/ultimo/

The ABC library was a great contrast to the SLNSW and an example of a library that is there to service the function of the organisation - in this case broadcast. As a result the library's main role was to provide material to TV and radio including the cataloguing of images, sound and film footage (in lots of detail). The hours of the library are long every day of the year and often the librarians have to provide materials in very short time frames (hours). It was also interesting that there were many different cataloguing systems in use which necessitated excellent staff knowledge to operate efficiently and the use of a variety of different systems. The library seemed low on staff, time and budget - which made the fact they gave up 2 hours in a very busy work environment very laudable.