Info Zone

State Library of Queensland's temporary public services space

Robyn Edmanson

While the State Library of Queensland's (SLQ) current $70 million redevelopment has thrown up both opportunities and obstacles for the service, its new temporary public services space, known as Info Zone, has proved a 'huge success', according to State Librarian Ms Lea Giles-Peters.

She says evidence for its success is three-fold: more than 78 000 visitors in the four months since opening in December 2003; over 13 000 items requested from the closed access collection, and a doubling of effort to create better online content.

The Info Zone, established as a response to the library's redevelopment, is designed to 'maintain a presence as close to the library as we could', Ms Giles-Peters says. It has about 17 000 square metres of space over a ground and mezzanine level with facilities including:

Reference and information services
Internet access from about 40 computer terminals
a covered outdoor promenade with café-style seating
coffee machine
all daily regional newspapers and seating on the upper level

The SLQ's other services and collections have scattered across temporary spaces in Brisbane, but will come back together at an undisclosed expected completion date in 2006.

The name 'Info Zone' was chosen to signal SLQ's continued existence, but with a 'different service model' which emphasized electronic access, Ms Giles-Peters says. 'We have access to our general reference collection, but it is housed in a building which is undergoing redevelopment, where previously all of that was on open access it's on closed access and we have to retrieve from it. It makes people think about other ways of accessing information.'

Ms Giles-Peters says in choosing the Info Zone service model, the SLQ's priorities are to both increase unmediated access to collections at the same time as 'creating rich content.' She says it offers an opportunity to 'look at different ways of using electronic information' for the two years that collections are not immediately available.

Anticipating the boost the Info Zone will give to steering customers further towards electronic access to collections, she says the library's resources are marshaled toward creating and developing more online content and purchasing materials in electronic format. Examples of projects underway include the creation of The Johnstone Gallery Archives, continual digitizing and indexing of original materials such as photographs and manuscripts and 'creating interesting parts of the collections and telling stories about them'.

The Info Zone affords not only an opportunity to offer customers a different perspective on information access, but the means to partner with other organisations, she says. For example, the SLQ is delivering its music collections and services from the Conservatorium of Music at Southbank. 'This gives both organisations the chance to share skills and understand each other's collections.'

So, while the redevelopment has offered opportunities, it also exposes the challenge of drawing customers long after the fanfare of opening has died. Drawing on the experiences of other redeveloped libraries, Ms Giles-Peters says, 'one of the things which is quite evident around the world is after you re-develop a library numbers increase. That is fine when you first open, but you've got to ensure that you have a program which engages people'.

An example of a strategy of engagement is the creation of a Public Programs Unit targeting children and youth. The Unit will draw on existing services to regional Queensland. Consideration is being given to two programs designed to introduce children and youth to the SLQ's unique collections and services: conservation workshops in conjunction with the John Oxley Library and the White Gloves Tours designed to show children the library's Artists Books and have them create one themselves.

Whilst Ms Giles-Peters is adamant the SLQ is 'not creating a children's library', she acknowledges the library's previous neglect of this segment of its market - a gap revealed after a comprehensive survey of customers at the end of 2003. 'We haven't in the old library set out to engage children and youth and families and this is an area that we are putting a lot of effort and resources in.'

A a