What Are They Up To at the State Library of Victoria now?

GH has an update

A house divided cannot stand

This time last year at the State Library of Victoria, board and senior management were hard at work at their so-called Strategic Reorganisation Change Proposal. That meant chair Christine Christian; chief executive officer Paul Duldig; chief operating officer John Wicks; chief digital officer Paula Bray; director, experience Joel McGuinness; director, people and partnerships Kath Brown. Change came all right: it won’t be long before, of that contingent, only Brown remains.

The quiet top-level makeover since our successful campaign to thwart the SRCP continued last week. The library board revealed its new CEO as Vicki McDonald - in charge of the State Library of Queensland for the last eleven years. McDonald’s background, in fact, is in collecting institutions rather than management. Out-of-the-box thinking right there: the State Library of Victoria hasn’t been run by an actual librarian since Anne-Marie Schwirtlich went to Canberra in 2011. So let’s take this at face value as a good sign, along with the recent appointments to the board of some adults - new chair Helen Silver and new directors Christine Mackenzie and Peter McPhee. This pipe dream seems to have been forgotten too, although this executive appointment continues to rankle, this board member is attracting some unwanted publicity, and nobody wants to mention the war.

Let’s just say that there’s a bit to do: relations to repair between management and staff, reputation to rebuild with the literary community, service standards to restore after their slide during COVID, maybe even a look at the uses to which the library is being put for which it was never designed. In April, for example, there was a disturbing incident in the La Trobe Library, involving the damage to a unique and precious book deposited by the artists Gracia Harby and Louise Jensen, and displayed in its central dais as part of its Looped display.

I’ll let Gracia and Louise tell the story of its destruction as they related it here.

We’d thought the greatest threat to our artists’ books, on loan in our Looped display, was light. Sadly, it turns out the greatest threat was a member of the public launching themselves at the heritage listed dais for a selfie, at an after-hours speed dating event in late April.

As the glass of the lid to the cabinet broke, so, too, did the artists' book beneath it, an edition of the aptly titled, it transpires, Disrupted and rumpled. The shards of glass cut and scratched every section of the concertina and the base on which it rested. Damaged beyond repair, we have been shocked that such a thing could occur. The limited edition was one of five artists’ books displayed on custom-made collage scenic bases created especially for SLV. We remain absolutely stunned and ultimately dismayed that such a thing could transpire. The stuff of fiction, surely, in a safe haven for the curious.

The library is a venue for ‘selfies’ at ‘speed dating events’? This must be why ex-chair Christian last year called the library a ‘temple of engagement’, although it sounds distinctly like ‘party central’. This is what comes of management treating the library simply as a space or a destination, of being transfixed by visitation numbers, and of neglecting its core purposes. Gracia and Louise are long-term library users who have drawn for inspiration extensively on its collection. Yet more than ten weeks later, the matter has still not been satisfactorily resolved.

Speaking of long-running irritations, readers of Et Al will be aware of the imbecilic closure of the beloved cafe Mr Tulk for the benefit of the unappealing corporate catering behemoth The Big Group. We have at last had a glint of what’s to come: staff were advised on their intranet this week that warm and welcoming Mr Tulk will be replaced by….brace yourselves….

While more information will be shared with staff as work progresses, we can reveal that the new café will be named Biblio – which according to the Macquarie Dictionary is derived from the Greek word biblion, meaning, ‘book’.

Screw you

Wow. Just wow. I mean, if ever a group of people did not need to be told the meaning of ‘biblio’, it is surely the staff of a library. But wait there’s more.

With the lease last renewed in 2011, the terms of the new agreement deliver significant value for the Library and is an exciting opportunity to reimagine and elevate the Library’s food and beverage offering.

‘Reimagine and elevate’? I….can’t….even….

Australian company The Big Group employs over 2,000 staff and has extensive experience in events and hospitality.

Cafes not so much. And why the pre-emptive insistence on The Big Group being an ‘Australian company’? Could it betray some sensitivity that a major shareholder is UK-based reimagination elevator Compass Group PLC? Anyway I can’t wait not to go, can you? Because it will be a cold day in hell before I spend a cent in somewhere called Biblio - which, by the way, means ‘book’, did you know? What’s that? Sounds like a grudge in the making? No, it’s already made. And, as Fran Lebowitz said, grudges are simply a sign you have standards.

Still, let’s be grateful for what we have, eh? I’ve been in the Redmond Barry every day this week, the collection is still awesome, the staff are still terrific, and the building sublime. And a library run by a librarian? It’s so crazy it might work.

PS: This part of Et Al is about to take three and a bit weeks of Travis Head-style ‘personal leave’ in an associate member of the International Cricket Council, but otherwise far from cricket, laptop and phone. So be kind to Pete while I’m away, and don’t privatise anything without me.