InterALIA

The newsletter of the ALIA SA Group: October 2005

From the editor

Hi everyone, welcome to InterALIA October, our co-operation and collaboration issue. From the state library to our universities, to theological libraries and your ALIA association, they all are actively co-operative. We hear from more recent group events, and shine the spotlight on the sunshine state.

ALIA SA recently held elections to start the ball rolling on a new committee for 2006. We also held a planning meeting to discuss our events for the coming year, and it's all looking good. I'll leave it to the outgoing convenor, Philip Keane, to bring you up to speed in his column next month. Several of the other groups in SA are looking for new committee members too, so put your hand up if you would like to gain some experience and meet some fantastic people.

Stay tuned for details of our combined christmas event, not to be missed!

From the convenor

I was at an exhibition opening recently, and one of the speakers spoke about the appeal of art galleries and museums as physical places. Apart from this sounding rather obvious, the point being made was that the physical works and items on display have a presence that continues to appeal to people, even though the web provides digital access to so much content.

It reminded me of an article [1] published in July in the Journal of the Medical Library Association in which an expert panel of librarians, building consultants, architects, etc were asked to reflect on many possible changes in the use of library space. This panel predicted that the role that librarians play and the way libraries are used will substantially change. The panel predicted that the new roles for health libraries would be driven by changes in scholarly communication; in particular, the reliance on electronic journal articles in research and health care provision.

While the article was describing predictions for health libraries, the panel thought that the 'library will no longer be thought of as primarily a physical place but as an entity that provides access to highly competent information management professionals. New roles, with important implications for building design, will emerge.' It struck me that this move in thinking from the library being a physical place to an entity providing access to information could broadly describe all libraries now.

However, what struck me more was that, despite the ubiquitous predictions about virtual libraries, the physical library was still considered a central part of the identity and service provided to users. In an article [2] from February this year in The library as Place, Geoffrey Freeman writes that the challenges for designers and architects is to make our libraries flexible and 'reconstructable', and able to adapt to the uses required by their community of users. In endorsing the continuing need for our libraries to be spaces as well as virtual services, Freeman concludes saying that 'the library of the future remains irreplaceable'. The physical library, that is!

Philip Keane, ALIA SA convenor

1. Ludwig, L, S, Starr 'Library as place: results of a delphi study' [152kb pdf], Journal of the Medical Library Association, p315-326, 93(3), July 2005

2. 'Library as place: rethinking roles, rethinking space', CLIR publication, 129, February, 2005