I wonder why I sounded so croaky on the radio this morning? I really don’t know.
It may have been delayed panic from nearly missing the interview when Google Maps and my iPad conspired to send me to the wrong address for the ABC studio – about 10 minutes away. (When I checked my route the night before, I saw that there was no building there and thought that the Maylands river bank was an odd place for a studio to be anyhow… )
The discussion on the future of libraries went very well. Sophie MacDonald has a great post paraphrasing some of the discussion, where I sound more coherent than I was 🙂 Thank you.
Evolution of Readers Uploaded to Flickr by jblyberg
I have a couple of very, very nice emails. In answer to one of them about ebooks, here are some posts that I have written about my experience and opinion of ebooks that you – or others – may find useful.
- 22 things I am going to do now that the library Kindle has arrived.
- Why we chose a Kindle…and about free content.
- Ebooks and ebook readers in Australia
- IPad as an ebook reader in Australia
This is the last post for the 30 posts in 30 days challenge .
Regarding your interview comments, would you mind trying to explain this concept to me?
“Peter Mares: That is a good point, I guess, we think we can’t mix food and books but I suspect there’s a fair few people who read the books over breakfast or over dinner. I believe this new library was going to be called…or one suggestion was The Very Clever Library, but the name in fact is going to be The Grove: Leading Learning Living, so the word ‘library’ has even disappeared.
Kathryn Greenhill: It has, and that’s because it’s a co-located facility, so we’ve got the West Coast Community Centre, the learning centre there, we’ve got the child health clinic there and we’ve got the community rooms there. So the library is one big element, and the library was a driving force towards making this new facility but it’s part of the entire venture, and we thought that actually calling it The Very Clever Library wouldn’t take in all the other things that this facility is going to be for our community.”
I’m not sure I understand your 21st Century Library vision.
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve. What I am describing in this part of the interview is why the new building on the site of the existing library did not have “library” in the title. 12 years earlier, the local government authorities decided to build a new facility where the library and a number of other services were co-located. The library was jut one part of the new building, with separate staffing and management to the other facilities. By calling this “the Very Clever Library” – which was the branding consultant’s original recommendation – it would have not acknowledged the other services in the building. It’s not anything to do with a vision of libraries.
Thanks for the clarification, and the lesson in reality – ANY library is better than NO library.