The Alice Springs Public Library is a busy public library in the Centre of Australia serving both the community of Alice Springs and many living in the surrounding Aboriginal communities and remote cattle stations.
The library has a membership of almost 12,000 and receives an average of just under 500 people a day through the library doors.
The library prides itself on being a real hub for the community and it goes to great pains to offer services and programs targeted to it.
Within the library there are two main special collections which I coordinate
The Alice Springs Collection is a collection of books, magazines, photographs, pamphlets, cuttings, etc. which relate to the historical, scientific and cultural heritage of Alice Springs and Central Australia. It was started in 1980 and has become a diverse and valuable collection and it is held in a large room off the main library.
The collection also collects materials relating to Central Australian languages including, but not limited to: Alyawarr, Anmatyerr, Arrernte, Kaytetye, Ngaanyatjarra, Pertame, Pintupi, Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri and Yankunytjatjara.
In addition to physical resources the Alice Springs Collection also holds as significant photograph collection called: the Central Australian Historical Images collection which is a fully digitised, although currently only available in the library through an intranet system, we are, however, hoping to get the collection online within the next 18 months.
This collection is made up of 32 collections smaller collections of images and approx. 5,000 individual images from a range of people and periods throughout Alice Springs history. This year we do hope to have this collection assessed for culturally sensitivity as we acknowledge that many of these images show secret and sacred ceremonies and show people who have passed away.
As a part of this project we hope to introduce a traffic light system:
Green: open access
Orange: requires a warning to be acknowledged
Red: access has to be requested
The Alice Springs Collection is also changing as a physical space as, when I first started, the area had little foot traffic and was almost exclusively used by researchers and ‘people in the know’ as most library patrons did not understand what the collection was and that has changed significantly over the last 3 years following extensive renovations to the space and the introduction of portable DVD players for patrons to watch movies on throughout the day; the Alice Springs Collection DVDs are some of the most popular but patrons are able to watch movies from throughout the library.
The impact of these DVD players have been amazing as they have completely revolutionised the space with more and more people using the space to not only watch the movies but also browse, study and generally hangout as more and more people engage with the collection and the space and realise it is not, as they previously thought, a workroom.
The Library’s Akaltye Antheme Collection has two aims: to facilitate Indigenous people’s use of the Library and all its collections; and to provide insight into local culture for non-Indigenous patrons and visitors. It is my belief that it has been very successful as, when the collection was started in 2002, Aboriginal usage of the library was at 30% and now it is at 60%.
It is a relatively small collection which is all front facing (designed for browsing) and is divided into 6 subject areas that are colour coded another local languages section with 16 different local language groups represented.
There are also 4 computers in the Akaltye Antheme Collection which provide access to external local content, like Central Land Councils Digital Archive and the ICTV inLanguage Portal as well as internally created content like digitised Yirara Yearbooks. Games are also linked.
Indirectly associated with this collection is a silent disco cinema where patrons select movies to watch together on a large screen using wireless headphones which is extremely popular (although part of what lead to DVD players in the Alice Springs Collection was frustration over the same movies being watched over and over). We have also recently added a wall mounted kid’s activity to the wall in the lounge area as we noted that area was particularly popular with families with young children.
The library is currently in a phase of wanting to re-evaluate the special collections as, although they are far from being unsuccessful, we need to regularly re-evaluate to ensure we are best serving our community.
Especially as, with all library services bursting at the seams in a 40 year old building, we move towards getting a new library and looking at what spaces we want to create.
Other amazing projects (producing local content) are:
Geek in Residence
Yestermoph
Indigimoji
