Chris Szekely: Library remodelling vital for the future The chief librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library has his say about the refurbishment of the National Library in the NZ Herald today.
The proposal to refurbish the National Library building and the Alexander Turnbull Library within it is rather more than a "good idea" as noted by Jim Traue, a former Turnbull chief librarian.
It is, in fact, essential to the library's core purpose as defined in current legislation. That purpose is "to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations by collecting, preserving, and protecting documents, particularly those relating to New Zealand, and make them accessible for all the people of New Zealand, in a manner consistent with their status as documentary heritage and taonga".
It is, in fact, essential to the library's core purpose as defined in current legislation. That purpose is "to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations by collecting, preserving, and protecting documents, particularly those relating to New Zealand, and make them accessible for all the people of New Zealand, in a manner consistent with their status as documentary heritage and taonga".
The philosophies prevailing in years gone by resulted in a building and a service ethic that deliberately discouraged people from coming in the door, and are not appropriate in the current age, or in the foreseeable future.
New Zealanders have every right to be welcomed into their National Library, and the Turnbull Library is committed to exhibiting the collections in ways that are engaging and stimulate general interest. I sincerely hope more people will come and appreciate the wonders of the Turnbull's collections.
This in no way compromises our role as a research library. Indeed, research facilities will be considerably upgraded and expanded.
The Turnbull of the future will be one where researchers are still the primary focus, but where general visitors can see the extraordinary collection items, as they can in the British Library or the Library of Congress, neither of which are public libraries.
The digital age did not feature in the 1960s, when the National Library came into existence. In the current age, it does.
This is sensibly reflected in the most recent National Library Act of 2003 giving the National Library the mandate to collect and store electronic documents.
3 comments:
Jim Traue is right. Highly-paid National Library/Turnbull apparatchik Chris Szekely is wrong. Very. For weeks he has been belatedly wandering around Wellington’s main institutional users desperately trying to paper over crevasses created by his boss’s lust for a ‘trophy building’ and an institutional contempt for its users.
The problem is his boss. Her recent press release claiming that the revamped National Library would attempt to match Te Papa’s visitation levels has earned her the North Korean sobriquet ‘Dear Leader’. For a national library, bums on seats are irrelevant. The genealogists, iwi and claims historians, academics, students and writers who mine its sources will reach a far wider audience through their theses, books, websites, films and TV programmes than the bureaucrats and franchise owners envisaged to run this Ceauşescu-like architectural abortion.
On architectural grounds, regular users (I have been one for over 25 years) can only cringe. A few years ago we saw a huge sum of money (give us the figure Chris: I’ve heard $1 million and $1.5 million) spent on a new entrance and foyer. It’s the most incompetently executed architecture I’ve ever seen. A simple door was replaced by a 3-component glass monstrosity. The wide central piece, contrary to any user’s expectation, was non-functional. Signboards (often blown down in the wind) directed users to one of the smaller doors, but it so confused sane people that last year the library staff stopped regular users’ sport of watching newbies stumble into the wrong glass silo by buying massive pots and plants and planting them in the central section to deter people from responding naturally to the incompetent architect’s vision. The expensively revamped interior, all hard surfaces, is an acoustic nightmare, as any book launch invitee will tell you. And it’s all about to be bulldozed to make way for an over-budget $70 blowout.
For months mid-level curators and librarians have been approaching me, asking for users’ groups to blow the whistle. Here’s just one story: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0902/S00195.htm Staff have not been told how services will be delivered over the 2-4 year reconstruction period and have now been told not to talk to anyone. Every communication with users (who as taxpayers fund the thing) must go through the Dear Leader’s office.
The situation remains highly confused even as staff start packing up OUR collections. A building schedule has been set in place and only belatedly has ‘service delivery’ been considered. Everyone seems to have a different story. Anyway, here are some questions for the ATL apparatchik:
Archives: Will only 80% be made available to researchers during the unnecessary reconstruction? What are the 20% to be excluded?
Photographs: Only the Timeframes digitised collection to be available (a tiny fraction of the collection)? What about the Evening Post collection?
Ephemera: All to be inaccessible?
Paintings: Inaccessible?
ATL printed works: Inaccessible?
The new government could help NZ culture (the students academics and writers who use the collections and are about to pay for this disaster, not to mention the publishers whose books are enriched by ATL photos and ephemera) and save the country $70 million by canning Dear Leader’s trophy building.
Signed
Turnbull User
I agree. The interim accessibility issue is very concerning, and has been made worse by the complete lack of communication from library management to users. As a researcher I only have the foggiest idea about what is going on - and, only then, having had those sorts of conversations with staff that staff are presumably not supposed to have had with me. What is the story with ongoing access to photographs, maps, ephemera, prints, serials, pamphlets and so on? Without proper access to these materials during the construction period, it will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to produce the kinds of illustrated books on NZ's culture and history that we've grown accustomed to over the last few years.
The fact that Chris Szekely has frantically lept into print in the last week, as the heat has gone on - when we researchers have never heard anything from him or Penny Carnaby - speaks volumes. But his piece doesn't allay my anxiety. It simply does not answer any of our users' questions. How many researchers have been blithely going along believing the vague reassurances on the library's website that services will continue to be provided? And will they be told they either have a couple of months to rush in or they must put their research and publishing plans on ice for 3 years?
It frustrates me when libraries insist on focussing on their internal processes (as opposed to delivering service to their users who are after all their raison d'etre) and dwelling in the deep dim past when it comes to creating effective communication models for major change in particular...no-one ever believes communication is important bcos they think they already do it..libraries are historically woeful at keeping their users in the picture in the moment...you need to spend some of that money on a professional agency Chris a wam-bam advertising agency most probably who know how to sell an idea for maximum impact..and then pay attention to all the connections between anyone who has a right to access your content ..the old inward looking, process driven, risk averse (when people get gagged)library models just don't deliver the goods...
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