• Index of this issue

No. 55, March 2006 Special topic: Features in the library building/facilitiy

The National Library of Australia's lakeside building in Canberra was opened in 1968, and like many other large public buildings, has been gradually refurbished and reorganised in recent years to meet the changing needs of staff, users and the technology on which we now depend.  Like other national libraries, there is an ever-growing collection to be accommodated, and planners of the past could not have forseen the technological changes which have occurred in libraries.

Australia Day 2006 fireworks, Canberra, Australia. National Library of Australia on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.  Photograph by Paul Livingston

Collection storage

For some years the National Library of Australia has had to store many items in offsite warehouses.  The major offsite store (National Library Annexe) in a nearby industrial suburb was completed in 1998, and houses much of the older overseas collection.  The shelving in the Annexe is 7.2metres high, and staff need to be licensed to drive the stockpickers which are used for retrieval from the higher levels.  A regular courier service brings requested items to the main building when they are requested by readers through the electronic call slip system.  There is up to a two-hour delay for readers when material has to be retrieved from the Annexe and brought back to the main National Library building.

More recently, the Library was allocated funds to construct a new warehouse, which is being built not far from the existing Annexe.  This new building will house the pre-1980 overseas serial collections, our pre-2001 hardcopy Australian newspaper collection and pre-2006 hardcopy overseas newspaper collection.  It is expected that the new repository will meet the collection needs until 2013.

Reading Room refurbishments

In the past five years the Library has refurbished the Asian Collections and Newspapers Reading Rooms.

Asian Collections

The Asian Collections Reading Room caters to the many visitors who come to use the large collections of Asian script materials held by the National Library.  The refurbishment allowed for a research room to be added, for use by those doing long-term research in the collection.

Asian Collections Reading Room. Photograph by staff photographer.

More recently, the Newspaper and Microcopy Reading Room has been refurbished to accommodate updated equipment.  Digital readers have been installed, so microfilm users can now choose to print items of interest, save them to a storage device such as a memory stick, or email files to themselves.  Many of the commonly accessed newspaper microfilms are on open access.

Other Reading Room changes

The National Library of Australia has a number of Reading Rooms.  There is now some planning underway to see if it is feasible to amalgamate some of these services, to both make more efficient use of staff resources, and to provide a more integrated services to users, who may need to visit several reading rooms if consulting different formats of material.

Electronic call slips, which allow readers to request material directly from the online catalog from their home or workplace, are being progressively implemented, so users can request that material be waiting for them when they arrive at the Library.  Wireless internet is now operating in the main Reading Room, to supplement the large number of fixed PCs, which can be used for catalogue access, internet searching, email and word processing.

An online tour is available at http://www.nla.gov.au/tour/index.html