Why, The Living Library?
I had a very wobbly start to university life in Australia. I remember distinctly, the feeling of walking in blind into my university life. I flew back home after a ten year hiatus living and schooling overseas, and I was about to enter the next most crucial phase of my life not knowing where to begin beginning. Like most high-school leavers I didn't have the usual orientation and induction into university or college life. I had arrived from a completely different world altogether and I had missed all that essential priming. With a little leg up from old family friends, I somehow landed in Western Sydney University’s campus.. and my instincts pointed me to the university library.
When you're in a place as expansive as a public university, where so much is being thrown at you from every single side, you can very easily be swallowed by its vastness.
I came up for air in the library.
To me, it seemed obvious, that knowledge and truth wouldn’t escape her. She became my crutch. If I am anything of substance today as a university student, it is because of her. It is because the library became my solace, my refuge, my place of great thinking, and collaboration, my social life and impact. She was generous, and she helped those who sought it with learning and support and some more.
It makes sense, that a place with such extraordinary potential, is the heart of the university.
That, when such a place needs attention and rejuvenation, a second is not spared.
That, the very thing that gives life to the rest of the university, is given attention when it demands it.
Hence, the living library.
The Living Library is more than just a project that I coordinate and lead within the student partner team. To me, it’s a very important part of the shaping the library of the future at Western. We think ambitiously about big questions. What is the role of the library for the rest of the university? What is the role of the library for the region? What role do academics, librarians and students play in the library of the future? What can we do to bring more life into the library?
We also care about the essential everyday. What resources exist within the library and how are they used? How can we communicate what exists in the library better?
Because, in this ever-changing landscape of work and society, university libraries need to be many things. It needs to be a refuge for students and it also needs to be a place of activity and activism. A library where students, staff and communities shape the library in partnership. Our university relies on it becoming all those things because the life of the university comes from it.
The future of the library is the future of university.
Hence again, the living library.