A Library in Transition Report
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This project is a partnership between the University of Melbourne and the State Library Victoria A Library in Transition State Library Victoria’s redevelopment Research Unit in Public Cultures A Library in Transition: State Library Victoria’s redevelopment The University of Melbourne in association with State Library Victoria July 2018 Prepared by The Research Unit in Public Cultures School of Culture and Communication The University of Melbourne AUTHORS Dale Leorke, Danielle Wyatt & Scott McQuire This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNon-CommercialNoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) license and may be shared or quoted from in any way for non-commercial research purposes. This research was funded by a Melbourne Engagement Grant from the University of Melbourne. 2 A Library in Transition: State Library Victoria’s Redevelopment Acknowledgements The research for this report was undertaken independently by researchers at the Research Unit in Public Cultures, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. It was conducted in partnership with State Library Victoria’s management staff, particularly Sarah Slade who was Head of Digital Engagement & Collection Services at the time of the research. The research was wholly funded by a Melbourne Engagement Grant from the University of Melbourne. The researchers would like to thank Sarah Slade and the professional staff and State Library users who took the time to be interviewed for this research. Dale Leorke is a Research Associate in the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. His research investigates the intersection of networked, digital technologies and city planning. His research interests include mobile and location-based media, smart city planning, and the impact of digitisation on cultural institutions. Scott McQuire is Professor of Media and Communications in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is one of the founders of the Research Unit for Public Cultures which fosters interdisciplinary research at the nexus of digital media, contemporary art, urbanism, and social theory. His research explores the social effects of media technologies, with particular attention to their impact on the social relations of space and time, the formation of identity, and the functioning of contemporary cities. Danielle Wyatt is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. Her research revolves around the transformation of culture in a mobile, culturally diverse and networked society. In particular she has examined the changing role of cultural institutions, the expanded ways people participate in the arts, and shifts in cultural policy, as key sites within this broader transformation. A Library in Transition: State Library Victoria’s Redevelopment 3 Executive summary In 2015, Australia’s oldest public library, the State Library Victoria in Melbourne, announced an AU$88.1 million redevelopment of its spaces and services. This report, produced by There is a growing body of qualitative Interviews with State Library researchers at the University of scholarly research documenting professional staff and users reveal Melbourne in partnership with the views and experiences of that there is broad concurrence on the State Library Victoria, examines the professional library staff. But there following aims of the redevelopment: redevelopment at its inception – after is little similar research from the it has been imagined and planned, vantage of library users beyond the ■■■ strong space management but before it has been implemented. narrow ‘satisfaction’ rankings of to demarcate between quiet market research. In this context, the and noisy zones and improve The research situates the State user portraits and qualitative user wayfinding Library’s redevelopment within responses documented here provide ■■■ preserving traditional or existing the broader economic and cultural rare insights into how State Library aspects of the State Library: shifts shaping the public life of cities Victoria – its spaces, collections, its unique ambience, heritage and citizens globally in a digital atmosphere, and technological architecture, accessibility as era. Drawing on interviews with affordances – forms part of people’s a public space, and its role in professional staff and users of the lives, shaping their capacities and connecting Victorians to the State Library, as well as an online aspirations, and their perceptions history of the state user survey, this report highlights of their city. how these broad shifts are impacting But the stories and experiences of upon the Library and reshaping its library users also add a contrasting public role. perspective on the value of the library. They bring two important issues to the fore. 4 A Library in Transition: State Library Victoria’s Redevelopment 1. An expanded understanding the Library. From writing blogs, plays In a media-saturated, distraction- of creative production and stories, to preparing for an acting filled culture, spaces of disconnection Professional staff frame the audition, to volunteering at a cultural are just as important as spaces for redevelopment as a transition from institution, the creative practices perpetual connectivity. Libraries’ an institution based on storage and of these users bound particular enduring association with elevated consumption to one focused on communities together or contributed to places of learning, as well as more creativity. The redeveloped Library the social and cultural life of the city. recent understandings of the library as a ‘third place’, makes them ideal will support creativity by investing 2. Libraries as spaces of in enriched spaces and services for institutions to satisfy this growing disconnection media production, and to support social need. In their proactive adoption of digital experimentation with new technologies, These two observations – that entrepreneurial activity, and innovation. technologies, libraries have become experts in the provision of digital consumption of traditional materials While studies of other libraries reveal is intimately connected to creative that these kinds of resources and literacy training, free WiFi and access to computers, online databases, practices, and that people need services are used and valued, most State dedicated spaces of disconnection Library users from our sample did not and affordances for plugging in personal devices. Publics value these – run counter to the powerful use the library for these kinds of creative narratives driving much of the activities. Instead, their ‘traditional’ resources. However, our user sample consistently emphasised the State discourse, design, and development consumption of library collections, and of public libraries today. their use of the space itself, supported Library as a space where they could a range of creative practices beyond escape constant connectivity and instead concentrate, reflect, or relax. A Library in Transition: State Library Victoria’s Redevelopment 5 Libraries in a Digital Culture Public libraries have always had unfolding can be understood in the Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City to balance divergent interests and context of two broad frames: of Literature, and large-scale events stakeholders.1 Since the nineteenth like White Night, Knowledge Week century, they have played a role 1. The digital economy and Melbourne Festival attest to the in educating populations and Digital technologies have way creativity has become widely conscripting them into a modern transformed the role of knowledge, distributed throughout the city and public sphere. They have served from scarce resource to a currency at implicated in civic branding. Libraries a range of governmental policy the centre of economic development.5 have aligned themselves with agendas, from childhood literacy Libraries are directly implicated creative city and creative industry to bridging the digital divide. And in the new ways knowledge is agendas. Increasingly, they promote they have contributed directly to being generated, legitimated, themselves as places that support local economies by establishing archived, and distributed. They have the creation of content – from film commercial and trade departments positioned themselves as places and music to 3D-printed artefacts and supporting emerging industries.2 that can support the translation of and apps. They have invested in Libraries have also been revered as knowledge into new, productive new technologies, spaces, and civic landmarks, both symbols of forms. On the one hand, this has programs to stimulate new creative community values of openness and involved assuming an active role in practices in a range of different fields, universal access to knowledge and reskilling people to take part in the from running workshops in digital signposts of their city’s credentials digital economy through programs storytelling, to hosting makerspaces, as modern, liberal-minded, and around digital literacy and bridging fablabs and hackerspaces.7 economically resilient.3 the digital divide. On the other, libraries are catering to a tech-savvy It’s my favourite city, apart from my The rise of digital technologies in elite, establishing innovation and home town. Melbourne has an artistic a networked digital culture has entrepreneurialist hubs to support feeling compared to other cities. I like made the task of balancing these start-ups and future industries. the National Gallery and I like [the] civic, governmental, economic,