Technology and Libraries

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Technology and Libraries
Alex Byrne
Welcome to this magnificent State Library of New South Wales which is the home of the
history of Australia and its region: we hold the world‟s pre-eminent collection on Australia
and its region from the maps of early explorers to a growing collection of tweets.
No less magnificent is our learning team. They do a wonderful job of opening up our
collections to students and teachers across New South Wales and beyond. They have
engaged with 25% of the schools across the State by bringing school groups into this Library
for programs, by taking materials to schools especially regional, remote and disadvantaged
schools, via videoconference to the Connected Classrooms, and, as today, by engaging with
teachers. It is all based on the curriculum and employs good pedagogies and innovative
teaching practices. The members of the team demonstrate the importance of teachers.
Teacher librarians are equally important. I have seen that in my professional life but also in
my personal life. My children were fortunate while in primary school in Darwin to benefit from
the skills of a very talented teacher librarian, Celia Otley. The skills and love of learning and
inquiry they learnt from her have stood them in good stead, one being a librarian today, the
other having achieved a doctorate.
At this State Library, our teachers work with a large and diverse range of professionals who
include librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, exhibition and graphic designers,
writers, technologists, photographers and digitisation specialists. Together, those experts in
their fields enable us to open up our collections to students, parents, teachers, scholars and
a million visitors a year.
Today’s connected learners
To set the scene: for under 25s technology does not exist, it is a normal and natural
extension of themselves. The young are social and keep in constant touch, they are used to
learning with their peers in informal settings and are comfortable doing so; use social media
routinely and expect others to; have grown up in a media saturated world where information
and ideas are shared in visual and engaging formats without paying much attention to
ownership of ideas, copyright, authenticity, public and private information etc.
Today‟s connected learners expect that they can converse with anyone in the world; use
multiple technologies to obtain and share information and to report on events; wear portable
devices to communicate with others, listen to music, play games, take photos and videos,
check details, advertise events, watch videos and access the internet.
They expect to have access to information quickly and seamlessly and have not known a
time when this was not possible. New technology skills transfer is seamless. While this is
visible on the streets and beachers, in buses and bars, and everywhere we see under 25s, it
is increasingly true of all of us. We are all the Google generation now!

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For under 25s and many more of us, multi-tasking is a state of being – emailing, texting,
Instant Messaging, chatting on the mobile, listening to music and / or the TV, eating a
vegemite toast all simultaneously while doing their homework is a normal state of being.1
Today’s disconnected learners
Today‟s disconnected learners usually live in lower socio economic areas and rural and
regional underserved communities and have limited access to devices and bandwidth. They
are the have-nots of the digital divide.
As William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, put it: “The future is already here. It‟s just not
very well distributed.”2
Understanding learners
In seeking to understand learners, Mark Treadwell made a fundamental point 3
:
Recent research implies that the brain of humans has three interdependent learning
systems that provide us with a unique set of learning capabilities. While a number of
species have the capacity for episodic learning, no other species appears to have the
capacity to form new concepts ‘on the fly’ or apply those concepts in creative and
innovative ways, as we do. We may share 99% of our genome with Chimpanzees and
97% with Gorillas but that additional 1-3% makes an extraordinary difference to our
capacity to think, learn, remember and apply thinking in innumerable, creative ways.
By mapping the learning process what becomes obvious is the critical importance for
learners of all ages to be able to apply:
Effective prompts to initiate learning
Clever questioning
Inquiry processes
The constant application of the thinking process - Reflect – Review – Iterate
Synthesis and distilling processes
Creativity – allowing the mind to wander through its stockpile of knowledge, ideas,
concepts and concept frameworks looking for unique combinations that have value
Based on our evolving understanding of the learning processes teachers and librarians now
need to focus on developing their ability to “stimulate curiosity through the imaginative and
creative application of prompts that encourage learners to WANT TO LEARN through that
innate curiosity present in all of us”, as Treadwell puts it.4
This demands a huge change in
thinking and pedagogy.
1
Together for Learning, School Libraries and the Emergence of the Learning Commons. 2013 OSLA
2
Quoted in The Economist, December 4, 2003.
3
Treadwell M (2013) Learning to Learn – the evolution of creativity
4
Treadwell M (2013) Learning to Learn – the evolution of creativity.

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What of the library?
Which brings us to the library. Is it a constant in a world of change or in flux as are so many
other aspects of contemporary life?
For centuries we have thought of libraries as buildings or rooms which house collections of
books and other materials, reading rooms and staff areas. Technology has brought greater
complexity, more specialized facilities and the need for more extensive support functions.
Today we deal in content which is intangible, employs a wide and ever growing variety of
media and is available both 24/7 and on the move. Our clients simultaneously operate in
physical 3D space and in digital / mobile space, multitasking and diversely engaged.
Will those trends spell the end of libraries as we‟ve known them and library buildings in
particular? If not, how should we conceptualize, create and manage library space to meet
current and emerging needs? And how will we intersect the physical and the digital? Those
are challenging issues but perhaps even more challenging is how to replace the long
standing commonplace conception of the library as a „house of books‟ with a cogent image
of the new and emerging library.
Metamorphosis
We are seeing a metamorphosis today in which the core mission remains constant with
many aspects of libraries‟ appearance changing. Libraries are evolving from warehouses of
books, journals and other publications with associated services into systems for delivering
information and knowledge in a multitude of formats, both physical and online. While
retaining many of the surface appearances of traditional libraries – buildings, bound volumes
(if fewer), study spaces, service points – the focus of our libraries has shifted dramatically
from the materiality of those elements to the intangibility of making information and
knowledge accessible and useable irrespective of format. This shift has been most apparent
in the operation and design of academic and special libraries but is becoming evident in the
other sectors including public and school libraries. Across the sectors and internationally
libraries are undergoing a process of metamorphosis as they – and we – question and
reinvent many aspects of our operations while continuing to ensure the availability of
information and knowledge across borders, cultures and languages and through time.
But, first, a reflection on the term “library”. It may seem pedestrian to go to a dictionary but,
in this case, it is important to be clear about our terms and their connotations. The American
Heritage Dictionary5
offers the following primary definition:
a place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers,
pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending;
This and other core meanings focus on place, collection and institution, words which connote
physicality, permanence, invariance and authority. And, indeed, when we think of an
archetypal library our minds are likely to turn to a grand library building such as the Mitchell
Wing of the State Library of New South Wales, the British Library or the landmark dome of
the Library of Congress or, perhaps, to the local public library, the school library we know
well or the university library in which we studied and researched.
5
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000 updated 2009, Houghton
Mifflin, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/library.

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According to that dictionary, secondary meanings of „library‟ include “a set of things similar to
a library in appearance, function, or organization” such as “a collection of recorded data or
tapes arranged for ease of use” or “a collection of cloned DNA sequences …”. These
meanings emphasise organisation, accessibility and delivery and their connotations come
closer to the emerging understanding of the modern library as a service or institution which
provides organised access to and delivery of knowledge and information irrespective of
format.
Technology and change
„[B]uildings or rooms which house collections of books and other materials, reading rooms
and staff areas‟ is a description which might have been applied to the Mesopotamian
archives of clay tablets but could certainly be applied to the Ancient Greek conceptions of
libraries as presented in Alexandria and Ephesus. And it could be applied to many of the
libraries we see today.
But the adoption of technology has profoundly changed libraries and we can now see some
libraries which do not house books and other physical materials, have no reading rooms and
no physical presence but continue to fulfil the role of delivering information and knowledge
and have staff who organise information resources, at least by providing a catalogue or
portal, and both promote their services and assist their clients to discover and use the
resources. Such „immaterial‟ libraries are evident in large distributed enterprises, especially
multinational corporations, legal offices and, increasingly, media companies.
For most libraries the change has been more evolutionary so that they still maintain a built
presence as a room, floor or building, retain some physical collections (albeit often
diminished in size at least for the proportion on open shelves), continue to have reading
rooms (and a great variety of other spaces) and provide in-house services to clients (but
often with fewer service points). They are still recognisable as a library even if called a
learning commons, cybrary, hub or something else.
In all cases, technology has brought greater complexity, more specialised facilities (on site
and online) and more extensive support functions. The proliferating and ever developing
technologies demand skills in assessment and procurement, implementation and use,
maintenance and replacement. We have almost finished discarding the analogue
technologies of the twentieth century as we embrace the digital technologies of today and
tomorrow. Nevertheless, some of us are left with enormous heritage resources in analogue
forms from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and earlier, resources which we are trying
to digitise quickly for contemporary and future use.
Digital Excellence
At this State Library we are vigorously pursuing that revolutionary responsibility through our
Digital Excellence Program which will produce some 20 million digital objects over a decade.
That Program will make Australia‟s history and culture available globally, and Australian
Curriculum primary sources, in particular, available in every classroom of the country.
As we digitise those amazing resources, we need to invest no less heavily in curating and
preserving the digitised files as well as the born digital material we capture to represent the
present age.
The digital technologies of today and tomorrow reshape every aspect of the operation of our
libraries. Our tools for providing access to digital resources – journals, newspapers,
databases, eBooks, images and so on – are developing from the catalogue and federated
search to discovery „layers‟. And we are trying to find ways to „organise‟ access to resources

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of value to our clients which we do not own or even licence and which are constantly in flux
as the Internet and its technologies proliferate and we experiment with new approaches such
as „web scale‟ discovery.
Far from simply enabling a client to sit and read a book or view a film, we are now becoming
increasingly concerned with how we can support rendering and visualisation of our digital
resources so that our clients may use, reuse and repurpose them to their utmost potential.
To offer one example, the State Library recently digitised the 3500 stunning glass plate
negatives of the New South Wales goldfields in the 1870s which form the famous
Holtermann Collection which has been inscribed on the UNESCO Register of World
Heritage. The resultant files have faithfully reproduced the extraordinary resolution recorded
by the photographers 140 years ago as we showed in an exhibition which has just closed,
The Greatest Wonder of the World. But, for the viewer to appreciate that resolution fully, to
scan a street scene and look into a pharmacy window and read the labels on the products,
we need sophisticated, high end zoom and rendering software. This and other examples
present new departures for libraries as we become, at least in some senses, media
purveyors and publishers.
Assisting clients
Our services to assist clients have also evolved and expanded as we move from directing
clients to reference books on shelves and helping them to navigate those tools as well as the
library‟s premises. We now assist clients to discover information via tools that appear only on
screens and to evaluate and use resources whose authority isn‟t conveyed obviously
through impressive bindings and inclusion in a reference collection. Online reference
enables us to accompany clients on their informational journeys and to be with them at a
touch on their mobile devices; online learning allows us to help them develop their skills to
find and assess information and to use it to derive knowledge. Developing both technological
and information literacy – among the family of literacies – is vital for all but particularly for
those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.
So today‟s libraries deal in content which is both tangible and intangible and is delivered 24
hours a day 7 days a week via a wide and ever growing variety of media to clients who are
often mobile. Our clients are multitasking and diversely engaged as they juggle work and
study, family and travel, entertainment and exercise, with each one overlapping the other.
They simultaneously occupy physical, three dimensional space and mobile digital spaces as
they sit with friends, study actively or quietly, commute but are all the time connected,
tweeting, connecting via Facebook, sneaking a look at YouTube, listening via iTunes or
checking information.
The end of library buildings?
In an ever connected online world, do we still need „buildings or rooms which house
collections of books and other materials, reading rooms and staff areas‟?
In my view, the answer is simply resolved. Humans are social beings who come together to
share stories, foster friendship, gain insights and create. From simple huts in clearings we
have developed vast conurbations. While we increasingly enjoy the virtual communities we
build through social media, we also like to come together. Many of us have heard students
remark that „I come to the library because I am more motivated to study when surrounded by
others who are studying‟ and all of us have noted the marked growth of collaborative
learning through group projects and shared tasks. But it is not simply a question of providing
a study hall; there is something special about a library, in the conjunction it offers between
information resources, informed instruction, support and interpretation, spaces for interaction
and study, and a safe environment.

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How then should we conceptualise, create and manage library space to meet current and
emerging needs? How can we replace the long standing conception of the library with a
cogent image of the new and emerging library?
I have visited very many extraordinary library buildings. They offer spaces designed for
impact and purpose that include stunning social learning spaces, group and interactive
spaces, hushed individual learning spaces as well as physical and digital collections and the
necessary equipment. But they are more than beautiful purpose designed buildings. They
are spaces for students and also important cultural places which help to transmit cultures of
the past and to shape the present and future. They are not merely „learning commons‟ or
„student hubs‟ but are truly „places of learning‟.
To create these places of learning, we need to rethink the architecture of libraries. We have
moved beyond the „boxes of books‟ which we built in the past with their thin ribbons of study
carrels around the desert like expanses of bookstacks. We are designing and building new
spaces which encourage engagement with knowledge and with and between learners, not
forgetting the importance of individual learning. They are evolving spaces, not just „flexible‟,
spaces which can be repurposed over time as patterns of use change but also daily to
respond to particular needs.
These new libraries are learning centred, not collection centred. This „learning commons‟
places the learner at the centre liberated to explore ideas and concepts by connecting to
other learners, to information and to communities around the world. School libraries are
ideally placed to join this revolution, and many are doing so. Technology plays its part as it
does at this State Library where our video conferencing program is embraced across the
state, offering topics as varied as:
Research skills for HSC students
British colonisation
Poetry writing
Art making sessions based on the Library‟s expansive art collections
Staff professional learning sessions on using the State Library‟s resources in the
classroom
Extension English 1 and 2 and Extension History workshops
The world has gone mobile
I have made references to the rapidly emerging importance of mobile technologies. It is not
exaggerating to say that the world has gone mobile. Mobile phones and texting are
ubiquitous, smart phones are commonplace, iPads and other tablets are walking out shop
doors, eBook readers can be seen in restaurants and buses, music and video are streamed
or downloaded continually, wireless network access is more robust and widespread, moving
out of organisations and homes into cafés and streets. As a consequence we and the clients
of our libraries simultaneously occupy both physical and digital spaces. While sitting,
reading, studying, talking or travelling, we may also be texting, surfing, connecting or
viewing. The biggest change in information seeking behaviour that can currently be
observed is the continual and often simultaneous code shifting between physical, material,
tactile locations and experiences and those that are digital, intangible, mobile.

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These are profound changes to which our libraries are beginning to respond mightily but we
have not – and cannot – yet grasp all the implications of the shift to mobile and continuous
online interaction. The clear message is that we must design spaces and places which work
for our clients in both as buildings and rooms and as digital environments. Conceptualising
these places and spaces will demand that we conceptualise our online services and
resources as environments for interaction with people, information and knowledge.
Last month, here at the State Library, we opened the new AMAZE Gallery – our first new
gallery since 1929! – and simultaneously launched an accompanying app which provides
immediate access to many layers of information about what is on show in AMAZE and
related titbits. This demonstrates our new direction, bringing both physical and digital spaces
and items into dialogue.
An ecology of knowledge
For those of us who have to create new libraries, and reimagine old libraries like this State
Library of NSW, this growing impetus is difficult to pursue as we need to not only create
beautifully designed architectural spaces but to add the dimension of activity, the temporal
aspect in which things happen. We need to focus on supporting learning by creating digital
and physical environments which foster that vital process of learning. We need to take an
ecological approach to creating sustainable learning spaces, digital and physical; spaces in
which metamorphosis happens, ideas sprout, the unexpected arrives.
For school libraries and teacher librarians, this would be expressed in cultivating flourishing
ecologies in which students and teachers engage with knowledge to develop new
understandings and new ideas.
Those ecologies may be expected to grow, develop, change, age and be replaced,
presenting us with a major and very challenging translation from our long held
conceptualisation of libraries in rather static material terms. In promoting and undertaking
that metamorphosis we are reasserting the central idea of the library as a place for learning
and finding new ways to express it, to create ecologies of knowledge in which
metamorphosis happens, ideas sprout, the unexpected arrives ... we learn.