Places of Connection: New Public and Academic Library Buildings in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

The emphasis in the burgeoning and sometimes outstanding new library buildings and major rebuilds in Australia and New Zealand is on building social and educational capital. This is being achieved through attention to distinctive spaces for user groups, retailing approaches to ambience, interior design, furniture, lighting, signage, pervasive ICT and eating and drinking facilities. There is an increasing number of new joint use libraries between public and educational libraries, which have special design needs. The user response to, and professional satisfaction with, many of the new buildings reflects the growth in consultation with stakeholders. It also reflects architects and consultants with library experience who are responsive to the aspirations of librarians for attractive, flexible and efficient library buildings. Revision of a paper presented at the Library buildings conference Bournemouth UK 5-6 February 2004 ********** Among the more profound things Germaine Greer has written, is that Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace of wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, deep and longlasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. Daddy, we hardly knew you 1989 That valuation of libraries would be readily agreed to by those very many people who in the past, now, and certainly will in the future, have their lives changed and improved through them. After all, the most enduring and flexible learning institution is the library--organised for well over two millennia and predating the first universities and schools by well over one millennium-to provide self paced and self selected transmission of knowledge. As Sir Michael Caine has observed I educated myself in the library, which means I found out for myself what I wanted to know. School taught me what I didn't know and what I should find out when I left school. School should really teach you how ignorant you are and what you want to found out. (1) The library is also unique in giving its name to ... the only profession that derives its name from a particular type of building, which in turn derives its name from a particular physical object, the book. (2) Librarianship is a profession of which, with its inclusive values and commitment to the free flow of information and ideas, the 21st century will have increasing need. Implicit recognition of this is the growing level of investment in academic, public, school and other library buildings worldwide, in both developed and developing countries. As a consequence, at the end of the 21st century its first quarter may well be assessed as a golden age of library building, although there were those--including our professional jeremiahs--who in the last quarter of the 20th century were predicting the demise of the library as a physical place and entity. The Australian and New Zealand library context This growth in new buildings is certainly true of Australia and New Zealand. There are at least 170 new public libraries or major rebuilds being constructed in Australia between 2000-2005 alone, and a similar proportion in New Zealand, with 27 building projects in progress or planned for its 18 city library systems. Academic libraries, after something of a hiatus in the 1980s and early 1990s, are experiencing a similar investment in new buildings and rebuilds. Ironically, it has seemingly proved to be easier to achieve investment in buildings than in improving the investment in staffing and operating budgets of libraries to enable them to achieve their full educational and societal potential. This can be a real test for library managers, given that attractive new libraries invariably attract 15-50 per cent greater use, as confirmed by the experience of the new Leichhardt Public Library in NSW. …

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