Digital age takes libraries off the shelf

June 30, 2012

Ryan Stokes ... new technology can enable more people to enjoy collections. Photo: Tamara Dean

There is much more to Ryan Stokes's new role than books, writes Catherine Armitage.

In 2012, it is possible to interview the incoming chairman of the National Library of Australia about his new role with no mention of the word "books".

I realise this as, in vain, I scour my notebook pages headed "Ryan Stokes" for the two simple shorthand strokes denoting those familiar bound paper objects which, after all, still comprise more than half the library's collection of 6.24 million items.

No luck. Everywhere, though, are the words "digital", "digitised" and "digitalisation".

The 36-year-old scion of his father Kerry's diversified media and mining services empire, with a Bachelor of Commerce from Perth's Curtin University, makes no claims as a scholar or a lover of books even when invited to do so. Instead what he brings to the position, according to the federal Arts Minister, Simon Crean, is "a wealth of business, media and entrepreneurial expertise", not to mention connections.

In particular, Crean said in announcing the appointment, Stokes had "shown leadership in driving digital content and developing the digital economy". This presumably refers to his stewardship of the wireless broadband provider Vividwireless, which Seven Group Holdings recently sold to Optus for $230 million.

In his own words, Stokes brings a "great interest" and ''passion'' for the "treasures that are in the library, the uniqueness of that material and its meaning to Australia". He is also an admirer of the world-leading work the library has done in digitising the physical collections and archiving material that originates in digital form, such as websites.

Our interview takes place in a meeting room at his Sydney office where the walls are thick with 19th-century Australian landscapes by famous named artists. It is a reminder that his father has one of Australia's most highly regarded collections of art and historical objects. Some of these have been lent for National Library exhibitions, which is just one way Stokes came into the orbit of both the NLA and the Arts Minister. (He was also the chairman for three years of the federal government's National Youth Mental Health Foundation, or headspace, until 2008 and is on the board of the Perth International Arts Festival.)

Ships in stormy seas are also heavily represented on the walls. But Stokes, whose carefully articulated sentences punctuated by hand movements suggest media training more than assurance, indicates he will seek plenty of counsel to run the ship steady when he officially replaces the former chief justice of the NSW Supreme Court Jim Spigelman as the NLA chairman from tomorrow.

He is impressed by the strength of the organisation and its executive team. The council he heads "brings a great wealth of experience", he says. Its role is "to assist the executive team" and to "help set the direction as we look at some of the longer term questions around digitisation and other collection issues".

The goals for his three-year term as chairman are to broaden the collections and extend the use of technology as a "wonderful enabler" to "broaden the reach and relevance" of the collections for both their information and cultural heritage value.

On the face of it, the digital revolution that has pundits sounding the death knell for the printed word sounds like bad news for libraries. So it's a surprise that the nation's two most senior librarians argue that Google is great for business.

Google is the library's friend because it has "turned people on to information", Dr Alex Byrne, the state librarian of NSW, says. Where once only highly educated people looked things up, "now you see it across the population", Byrne says.

The library's director-general, Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, says the work of libraries and the skills they embody will be more important than ever as people face the task of navigating masses of information and finding the relevant and authoritative bits so they can make good decisions. Reading, she says, is the "building block of digital literacy".

As libraries work feverishly to digitise their physical collections, the interactive nature of digital learning is transforming libraries from studious environments to social ones.

They are no longer places where people go to be sequestered in silent solitude with a book, although that is still catered for. Libraries are instead being remade as safe communal spaces with comfortable furniture in which to loll, "where people come to relax, educate their kids, study for school or university, look up information for careers or business or pursue interests in retirement", Byrne says. In NSW, they also provide electronic access to government services such as car registration and taxation.

This week, it was revealed the City of Sydney is planning a new $40 million library, including an arts and craft space, commercial kitchen, community meeting rooms and a customer service centre. The library is envisaged as the heart of the Green Square urban renewal project just south of Sydney's central business district.

Libraries are "physically much less warehouses of books and now very much the work rooms and the living rooms", Byrne says.

He is all for the idea that the State Library of NSW might open 24 hours a day as part of the City of Sydney's plan to boost its late-night economy. ''It's good use of public infrastructure and provides a stimulating but safe community space in which people can interact, imagine, relax at all hours.'' But security and staffing issues would need careful attention, he says.

So far, visitor numbers are solid. In NSW, more than 3.3 million people, or 46 per cent of the population, were public library members in 2010. In the five years to 2010, the number of library visits rose 15 per cent and the number of books borrowed rose 7 per cent. In 2010, members of the public logged more than 2.4 million internet hours in libraries.

The ability to interact with libraries via the internet means log-ins will be no less important than in-person visits as a measure of the reach of libraries, especially when the national broadband network is in operation.

"We are only at the beginning of conceiving how we can use that capacity," Schwirtlich says. The amount of data the library can supply and the way people interact with it will be transformed. Curatorial experts physically visible to community groups or classes on the other side of the country will be able to conduct virtual tours of collections.

Stokes says "continuing to enrich the experiences available for free" remains a core objective for the NLA under his stewardship.

Schwirtlich reminds that, powerful as it is, Google does not pay for and provide access to the mass of information resources in libraries, which have always played a vital social role in giving people access to information regardless of their wealth.

The ''purposeful, long-term, methodical, expert work of collecting, cataloguing and archiving'' remains vital to the nation, she says. "The future is tethered, shaped, informed and nourished by the past."

Read more at : http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/digital-age-takes-libraries-off-the-shelf-20120629-217fj.html#ixzz1zSQDscpW