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."
