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Feature: National Library of Australia celebrates 50th birthday
CANBERRA, Aug 12, 2018 (BSS/XINHUA) – Visitors were greeted with gifts such
as balloons and books as well as exploration tours in the National Library of
Australia as the grand building celebrates its 50th birthday on Sunday.
Sitting on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, the marble building is the
largest reference library in the country. With columns all around, it echoes
the appearance of the Parthenon in Athens.
While the National Library remained an iconic building in Canberra
throughout the years, Margaret Goode, a 64-year-old volunteer in the library,
noted that it changed so much.
History of the library could be dated back to the early years after the
Australian Federation in 1901, when the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library
served both the Parliament and ordinary citizens.
The library was moved from Melbourne to Canberra in 1927, and 33 years
later, an Act formally separated the Parliament library and the national one.
Today, the national library is home to more than 10 million items in the
collection, including more than 3 million books and 600,000 photographs. If
lined up one after another, books in the library could stretch to more than
300 km from Canberra to Sydney.
Goode, who led free tours on Sunday to tell visitors stories about the
library, has been working as a volunteer here for eight years.
“I was trained in the university as librarian,” she told Xinhua. She later
worked in the consulting business, but use the national library quite often.
“When I was going to retire, I wanted to find myself something to do,” she
said.
During the past eight years, she observed that the trove grew bigger and
digital materials were shared by more people.
Anna Gressier, a media officer with the library, noted that each year there
are half a million visitors entering the library through the door, but many
others outside Canberra use the digital library.
“Because we are a national library, we need to make sure people elsewhere
have access to the materials,” she said to Xinhua reporter.
Another change is the use of robots.
A man who only gave his first name as Chris has used the library for 15
years. He visited on Sunday especially to see the robots.
According to the Canberra Times, the library has four delivery robots
sending material to and from the stacks and the reading rooms. Stack
attendant Paul Nordern was quoted as saying that he believed “we are the only
library in the world using these robots.”
Apart from the improvement of technology, Goode also saw changes in the
readers.
“There are now a lot of small children, and more foreign students using
it,” she said.
Dong Daoyi, a 40-year-old man originally from China, visited the library on
Sunday with his wife and two children.
“I have lived in Canberra for 10 years, and I always take my children here
because there are always events for the children,” he said.
Dong has an eight-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter.
“Maybe this is what some Chinese libraries could learn from,” he said, “to
have more children’s activities so that they could fall in love with books
from an early age.”
BSS/XINHUA/ARS/1625 hrs