What's (Still) Happening at the State Library of Victoria?

GH catches up

What a difference an ‘of’ can make.

Everything’s fine, really

Regular readers will be aware that Et Al takes an interest in the affairs of the State Library of Victoria. They will know when I use that name exactly the institution I mean. Yet since 2014 the entity has been known officially as State Library Victoria, when it adopted this nomenclature as part of a ‘repositioning of its brand’.

Of course it had zero impact on common usage. For the public, it has gone on being the State Library of Victoria: have you ever heard anyone refer to it otherwise? But one imagines that a consultant got paid and the board patted themselves on the back for imparting a little sheen of corporate modernity to their ancient establishment. Which, of course, is how change happens, little by little and mostly unnoticed, until one day people twig: something is wrong here; something is off; something we thought belonged to us has been remade without our say-so.

At the time the name was streamlined, Christine Christian had been on the board about a year. She has not changed. She’s not only still there but nearly five years into a four-year term as president. She was ‘preparing to end her time’ in July last year, but somehow it never happened, and she ended up caretaking the library into a publicly disastrous restructuring, alongside a caretaker CEO and a caretaker head of collections. It remains a mystery how an interim administration arrogated to itself the authority to make wholesale and irrevocable changes to the library’s structure; fortunately these good people helped stop it. So Christian’s board continues sitting there like an exhibit in a museum of corporate fashion: you could stuff them, mount them, stick glasses of champagne in their hand, and have a life-sized diorama of professional non-executive directors overseeing a great public institution with the barest of qualifications.

Their ranks have recently been swelled. Back in November, even as the library was pivoting to crisis, a new director was appointed: an individual with a profound and intimate knowledge of library services and collecting institutions yet another management consultant with ‘a track record of effectively articulating entrepreneurial vision and driving operational success in community, for-purpose, public and corporate settings’ and ‘genuine ability to build effective, positive and high performing organisational cultures, and to engage with diverse stakeholders towards shared outcomes in complex environments, with a strong professional network across public and private sectors.’ Because, y’know, that’s exactly what was needed.

The library somehow omitted to announce this - something finally went out on the library intranet a couple of weeks ago. There remains, then, a prima facie case that the library, as Judith Brett noted a couple of months ago, is non-compliant with the requirements of the Libraries Act of 1988, which requires a board of broad expertise encompassing individuals with ‘senior academic office in Victoria in a discipline appropriate to the functions of the Board’ and experience in ‘local government or libraries or information technology’. As Judith put it: ‘The board’s narrow range of experience in finance and management is symptomatic of the current belief that management is a generic set of skills that can be applied across a range of institutions by people without deep experience of the specific tasks and purposes of that institution.’

Now, as Neos Kosmos reports, this case study in overmighty administration has taken a new turn. Habitues of the State Library of Victoria will know how much of its appeal over the last eight years has derived from the corner cafe Mr Tulk, named by its proprietors Michael and Maria Togias for the inaugural state librarian Augustus Tulk. Michael and Maria are two of the best people you could meet in a day’s march - absolutely tireless, totally committed, and all about the State Library being of Victoria. ‘This is the people’s library,’ says Michael. ‘We’ve always wanted Mr Tulk to be the people’s cafe.’ Which it is - big, welcoming, affordable, personal, and the envy of all the other state libraries, where the catering is mediocre at best.

Through deafening renovations and stifling COVID, they pushed on. When the other corner cafe folded, The Guild, they made it work too. When the lease came up for renewal last year, Michael and Maria spent tens of thousands of dollars on a knockout tender, which included an art gallery, a charitable foundation and partnering with an NDIS provider, to train people with disabilities in hospitality. They were told initially they were the preferred tenderers; then, suddenly, they just lost out to the corporate behemoth that caters for the Grand Prix, Melbourne Cup and the Australian Open, and whose name might have been dreamed up by Roald Dahl.

Hard no

I half wish I’d been there for Michael’s meeting with Richard Morrison, the library’s new commercial operations manager, whose previous employer also has its share of problems right now - for anything cultural right now, Jacinta Allan’s Victoria is a fucking hellscape. Morrison, I have on the authority of LinkedIn, is a ‘dynamic and commercially astute professional with significant experience driving strategic growth and revenue generation in the arts and culture sector…with a proven track record of leading high-impact initiatives balancing mission-driven, customer experience, and financial priorities’ and ‘adept at identifying new opportunities, negotiating complex deals and partnerships, and delivering on ambitious revenue targets’, not to mention possessed of ‘exceptional interpersonal and highly developed leadership skills with proven success managing diverse cross-functional teams and collaboratively engaging both internal and external stakeholders.’ But Morrison didn’t collaboratively engage with Michael; he tersely advised that Mr Tulk’s tender had been narrowly pipped; Michael tersely replied: ‘This means fucking war.’

Michael’s now taken a case about the process to the Ombudsman, and to the people via a petition on change.org. The library have demanded he take the petition down, on grounds it violates its lease. So the library find themselves daggers drawn with a cafe bearing the name of the first state librarian. You couldn’t make it up, really, especially the delicious detail that Michael owns his business’s name, of whose provenance the acting CEO was unaware: he thought that Michael was ‘Mr Tulk’.

This was Mr Tulk, guys

Now, tenders are won and lost every day. They are matters of judgement. They are seldom appellable. Still, at the very least, it’s not only difficult to see how the library is served by the loss of an enterprise that has generated so much goodwill for it, but easy to appreciate why an incredibly dedicated couple who have made a great something out of virtually nothing would be wounded by the experience. As for windy legal letters demanding petitions be taken down, let’s just say that it hardly enhances the library’s recent free speech reputation.

So this saga of myopic management, crummy governance and ministerial inattention rolls on. Were there such a thing, the State Library’s LinkedIn profile would have to concede ‘a proven track record of abysmal relationships with commercial partners as well as staff, and a highly-developed capacity for trashing their brand name and alienating the public.’ Which is what happens when you forget you’re the State Library of Victoria.