Australia has one of the world’s best reference libraries, available freely to anyone with an internet connection. Severe funding cuts will cripple Trove’s capacity – and that should worry everyone.
Scientific advances – including the recent discovery of gravitational waves – force us to deal with numbers so extreme they’re virtually inconceivable.
Libraries are warm, dry and safe spaces with free Internet, which many people need. But academics and researchers in the 21st century can get along very well without them.
Lara Skelly, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
African libraries have more of an opportunity than ever before to bring the continent’s knowledge to the world. They just need to adapt their traditional roles and functions.
It is no surprise that libraries are coping with a large number of patrons who are homeless or have mental illnesses. Public libraries are, after all, designed to be welcoming spaces for all.
The late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and political philosophers Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe top the list of writers who get routinely abducted by discerning pirates of the book world.
The State Library of Victoria has received the greatest single bequest of rare books in its history, coupled with an endowment for the collection’s preservation. No wonder book scholars are smiling.
Australian’s museums, galleries and other cultural institutions must adopt more of a digital strategy with their collections if they are to remain relevant with audiences. Only about a quarter of the collections…