Submission to Infrastructure Australia

Introduction

The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) welcomes the call for public submissions to Infrastructure Australia.

ALIA advocates the development of an informed society that can partake and participate in skilled decision-making. Accurate, relevant and timely information is the key ingredient to effective decision-making. Australia's long-term economic development is dependent on its ability to use information to make decisions that enable growth, progress and productivity.

Libraries and the library profession contribute to an informed society by acquiring, organising, archiving, retrieving, using, synthesising and analysing information and thereby empowering users so that they can utilise this information in their decision-making processes.

ALIA supports the development of a 21st century information infrastructure with libraries as the conduit for a sustainable knowledge economy.

Discussion of Public Private partnerships (PPPs), and of encouragement to greater private investment in the provision of public infrastructure, is outside the scope of this submission.

Libraries as infrastructure

Libraries are so much part of the fabric of our communities that they can be overlooked in terms of infrastructure. They are, however, a crucial part of a community's social, cultural and economic capital. It is a major challenge to convey to decision makers, the breadth, depth and potential impact on the whole community of libraries. Few other services have the multiplicity of roles, or user range and diversity, or potential to influence so many lives.

The Australian library infrastructure includes the: National Library and state libraries, university, TAFE, public, school and special libraries (eg government department, health etc.). The collections from these libraries are supported by professionally produced catalogues, indexes and abstracts, a National Bibliographic database, digital preservation, interlibrary loan, database consortia arrangements all of which underpins world class research, creativity and innovation.

The infrastructure includes not only physical infrastructure such as buildings, fitouts, computer hardware, collections, but also the infrastructure for communications including digital communication, transport and service networks.

Australians are supported for their development of literacy/reading, education, business, community and digital access through a network of approximately 1,522 national, state and public library service points. Australians use these libraries heavily-they made over 108 million visits in 2005-06. In addition Australians benefit by services provided by approximately 9000 school libraries, 42 university libraries, technical and further education libraries, health libraries, law libraries and other special libraries.

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