AARL

Pleasures of treasures, trials of treasures

Margaret Dent

Abstract: The National Library of Australia's centenary exhibition, Treasures from the World's Great Libraries, was a runaway success. The curator reflects on the process of creating the exhibition, the reasons for its popularity, and points that might be of interest to other libraries contemplating an exhibition of this magnitude.

Treasures from the World's Great Libraries was the culmination of a year of events programmed to commemorate the centenary of the National Library of Australia, in the year that also marked the centenary of the Commonwealth of Australia which was created through the federation of its states in 1901. The exhibition was purposely scheduled for the end of 2001 to emphasise it as the culminating event of the year's program. A large and complex project, it was the brainchild of Nat Williams, the library's director of exhibitions, and was developed under his direction over a period of more than two years. I was the curator, with assistance at all stages from many staff in the library - in its creation, staging, and management during its open period Treasures really was a huge team effort right across the library. I should say at once that I was not an experienced curator, but was invited to undertake the task for two reasons: having been the library's rare books librarian I had experience in working with rare material, and as a long-standing staff member I had developed useful knowledge of the library and its own collections. Accepting the invitation meant an instantaneous start to a massive learning curve that was tremendously interesting in itself and led to one of the most exciting parts of my career.

As the centenary exhibition, we wanted it to be excellent, and as our gift to the Australian people in the nations' centenary year, we also wanted it to be popular. The response surpassed even our optimistic expectations. Seen from any viewpoint, the exhibition was a phenomenon: the concept, the generosity of the lenders, the exhibits themselves, the number of visitors and the queues, the delighted audience and media response to it, even the catalogue sales.

To begin with, although the library did not set out to invent a new type of library exhibition, it apparently did so: although assembling an exhibition of treasures borrowed from a range of other institutions is not unusual in the art gallery world, our preparatory research indicated that one of this magnitude had not been staged before in a library, and comments from many visitors confirmed that we did break new ground. The sheer willingness of the libraries we approached to participate was uplifting, particularly as none of them withdrew after the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 (though costs increased because of the longer travel time resulting from the need for extra security).

It was wonderful to receive the positive and generous replies to the invitation to participate, coupled with congratulations on the concept of the show. So generous in fact were the lenders that very early we exceeded the original idea of perhaps 40 loans, and indeed we eventually had to reduce the number of loans we accepted, in order to fit the exhibits into the gallery. The number of visitors was extraordinary, but was made even more noticeable by the amount of time that visitors spent viewing the exhibition: on average, over 1.5 hours, and in many cases far longer. Three or four hours were not at all uncommon, but the prize for stamina must go to the visitor who stayed nine hours! As security and environmental considerations required a limit to the number of visitors in the gallery at a time, and a queue for entry formed on the first day it was open, growing longer with every day that passed, the library moved quickly to extend the gallery opening hours. Libraries are not used to handling queues for entry, and particularly not queues of over a thousand people who are prepared to wait in line all night long - but that is what the exhibition inspired. There were many calls for it to tour, or to be extended, but neither of these was possible since many of the lenders had put stringent limits on their loans restricting the display of their items to a single venue.

The communications and marketing staff produced a brilliant marketing campaign, and from the moment the first media releases were issued we were besieged by media interest. In fact the interest was evident months before when a staff member mentioned the coming Treasures exhibition to an ABC reporter in the course of an interview about another exhibition: other programs picked this up and it then became the lead item on the main ABC news bulletin at 7 o'clock that night. After the launch of the extensive electronic and print media promotion, word of mouth quickly became an important factor in the spread of interest in the exhibition - visitors went home and told their relatives and friends that it was a 'must-see'. They came from all over Australia specifically to see it, and indeed some travelled from overseas for it.

Some of the thousands of comments in the visitors book demonstrate how much the exhibition meant to those who saw it:

I didn't get the chance to see this until the last couple of hours before it closed - I think I was the last to leave - but DAMN I'm glad I grabbed the opportunity! This exhibition was just exhilarating - I don't know what other word to use. The history, the diversity, the richness and depth from other cultures all over the planet. Trying to imagine, looking at Mozart's manuscript or the cuneiform cylinder - those same marks just as they were being made by the hands of the writers, the sense of distance between then and now but also the commonality of experiences. Like a lot of other people who have written here I won't forget what I've seen.

It renews my faith in the people of this country that some of them are prepared to queue for hours before dawn, to see an exhibition after dark, that has absolutely nothing to do with sport - but knowledge, literature and enlightenment.

Came to Canberra especially to see this exhibition - overwhelming. Imagine the words and music of Martin Luther, Beethoven, Mozart, Einstein alive in the one room and then add all the others - I was moved to tears with gratitude for the contribution they have made to my life.

Moved my spirit and connected me to my roots. Now I can see why people collect such treasures.

Proof if any was needed, of the integral role institutions such as libraries and museums play in preserving the soul of humanity as it is expressed in word, thought, art and music.

I was moved to tears by the collection of so much human achievement.

A once in a lifetime opportunity to visualise history.

A wonderful and moving glimpse into so many lives.

It's amazing that we can see these things that such famous people touched, wrote and drew on.

The exhibition was the highlight of our honeymoon!

These visitors bought the catalogue in numbers far greater than we had anticipated: although we had originally printed 7000 copies, double the usual print run, it was evident within a couple of weeks that more would be needed, so a reprint was arranged - followed by another and then more, until 15 048 copies had been printed. By shortly after the close of the exhibition, all had been sold and the demand for copies is still so strong that another reprint is in train, subject to permission from the lenders. The catalogue was respected by the publishing industry too, as it received a Silver Medal in the National Print Awards.

The question of why Treasures was so popular is an interesting one. The first part of the answer actually lies, I believe, in the word 'popular' itself, as the exhibits all represented part of human history directly relating to people as people, so visitors found the exhibition an intensely personal experience. They said how moving it was to encounter manuscripts coming directly from the hands of their creators, and to see objects that had belonged to famous individuals and were connected with their work. This gave viewers a direct experience of the creators that knowledge of their work up till then had not offered. Another factor was the reality of the exhibits: all the loans were original items, and such reality in a digital, surrogate age is increasingly rare. Facsimiles and other reproductions bring the content and often even the appearance of an item to all, but people were starving for the 'real thing', the originals of what they had learnt about or known by reproduction or repute. We see film of events on television, and it is compelling, but we are not there. With Treasures, the real thing was there, we stood in front of it and were amazed. I never overcame the amazement myself, no matter how many times I went into the gallery during the life of the show. Yet another factor was that as the range of content was so wide, it truly seemed to offer something for everyone, no matter what their interests. It was lovely to see careful, wobbly children's writing in the Visitors' Book saying things like 'I liked the tiny book best' or 'I have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and I loved seeing the Tolkien dust jacket'. One child said '...the longer you were there the better it got' and another that she would remember it all her life. Adults said this too, but it was particularly touching seeing this response from a child. Of course we could not include everything that every visitor would have liked to see, though in some cases I had considered borrowing an item that was mentioned by a visitor as being a 'missing treasure', but had been unable to get it. Some items simply could not be lent, and the exhibition did have to fit into the library's gallery after all!

What was actually in the exhibition that created all this interest? Numerically, 168 loans from 38 institutions in 24 countries, including Australia, because there are great collections here as well as overseas. There were manuscripts, maps, objects, printed books, artwork, music, and photographs. The items included the Dead Sea Scroll of Deuteronomy containing the Ten Commandments; the manuscripts of Mozart's Requiem and of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony; three thousand year-old Chinese oracle bones; Albert Einstein's manuscript with the E = mc2 formula; a sketch by Rembrandt in a seventeenth-century autograph album; the book which suggested naming the New World after Amerigo Vespucci; a panorama map over two metres long of the Rhine River valley; the manuscript of part of Jane Austen's Persuasion; the French national anthem La Marseillaise; a manuscript on a strip of palm leaf mounted on a reel like a cassette tape; J R R Tolkien's watercolour painting for the dustjacket of The Hobbit; a letter from Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore; and the Gutenberg Bible which was the first book printed in the Western world from movable type. Every single exhibit was a treasure in its own way, and one of the most moving was the 1939 issue of the Warsaw telephone directory - the only surviving record of many Jewish people who lived in Warsaw at the time. One visitor stood in front of it in tears and explained that she could see entries for her family on the page at which it was open. The directory caused such enormous interest that we obtained a microfilm for our collection so that it can be permanently available for family historians.

For the statistically-minded, some details of the exhibition are:

• It was open for 80 days from 7 December 2001 - 24 February 2002 inclusive (except for Christmas Day). A total of 115 081 visitors saw it.
• 24 007 audio guides were taken, which equates to use by 20.9 per cent of visitors. This is a high rate of use, and 97 per cent of those surveyed said that it added significantly to their understanding of the exhibition.
• The website (http://www.nla.gov.au/worldtreasures/) had received 57 274 visits by the end of April 2002, and will remain 'live' until the end of February 2004. It is still creating interest among the public - and the profession: it was a finalist in the Best of the Web Awards at the International Museums and the Web conference held recently in Boston, USA. It was also shortlisted for the recent The Australian: Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing, and for the 50th Book Design Awards in two categories, one of which it won: the ADOBE Best Designed Literary or Publishing Website.

I have described some of the pluses, the 'pleasures of treasures' - and another of them was the sheer joy of having worked on such a marvellous show. What, if any, were the 'trials'? Well, hindsight is a wonderful faculty, and it is easy now to look back and see things we might have done differently. Firstly, we would have given ourselves a year or so longer to prepare the show. We did it in a little over two years, though we knew that exhibitions like this usually take at least twice as long. The cost was having to add more staff to the team, and a very busy life for the team members for the duration. We would still have an overseas trip to finalise some loans and to obtain others best negotiated in person, but we would do it 18 months before the opening date, which would allow us to have a completed loans list earlier for the indemnity application, a longer design phase and more time to gather catalogue text from the lenders.

Adding extra loans comparatively late in the preparation period meant that I was researching them when it would have been advantageous to be working on the text for the catalogue, the gallery display cases, and the website. We had asked lenders to write the text about their loans for the catalogue, on the principle that they knew the background and the context and were in the best position to present the material to the world. While many did, others did not for one reason or another, and we had to write the text for those loans ourselves - 500 words on each for the catalogue and 300 words for the website. Fortunately we had decided that although we would of course have a complete checklist of loans in the catalogue and on the website, we would only actually feature a selection of loans on the catalogue and the website, rather than every single exhibit! A gallery caption was, however, needed for all the items. These gallery texts were limited to 50 words, and I learnt what a challenge it is to condense what needs to be said about a treasure into such a short piece. Viewers did like these succinct captions as they allowed the items to speak for themselves as far as possible.

An international exhibition on this scale was a new venture for the library. We planned carefully for it, and by the end of it we had added the fruits of experience to the planning. The following are some key components of the smooth running of an exhibition on this scale.

A project management team needs to be set up early and to meet regularly, using simple overall project management software to provide comprehensive but easily-assimilated reports. If Gantt charts are required they should be easy to produce, concise and manageable.

For managing negotiations, it is advisable to allow much more time than would be thought necessary to obtain responses from potential lenders and then to negotiate on loans. Communications should be sent by all available means - airmail, fax, and e-mail. Mailing methods that allow tracing of a letter or package are recommended. Even so, it is wise to check arrival if a reply is not received within the expected period. Telephone calls can be invaluable and a great timesaver, but careful records must of course be kept of the discussions and the agreements reached.

The embassies of countries from which loans are requested need to be informed of the invitations being made to their countries' libraries, but their help can also be actively enlisted in the negotiations, particularly when responses are delayed. Embassies may also be able to offer some help with language skills, though they cannot be expected to provide a regular translation service. Language skills among the staff (preferably those working directly on the exhibition) will be necessary, and the library's intranet list of staff with knowledge of various languages was invaluable. Even a modest acquaintance with a language can be very helpful.

Given the delays experienced in receiving replies to communications, it would be advisable to set an early cut-off date for loans to avoid pressure on finalising indemnity applications, catalogue content, valuations, the checklist of items and the gallery layout. The explosion in the number of exhibits at a comparatively late stage in the preparation time for the show brought many wonderful items to the exhibition, but it also brought administrative complications.

A trip to visit some or all of the lenders should be scheduled for early in the project, preferably 18 months before opening, so that 12 months' notice of the visit can be given in the loan request letters. Such a trip can confirm the promise of loans, elicit further desirable items, reassure new lenders, and begin or cement a personal relationship, which will benefit the whole negotiation process.

The exhibition proved the absolute necessity of having a dedicated copyright and permissions officer on the library's staff, as there were so many permissions to negotiate with lenders.

The library itself managed all the arrangements for the loans from Australian libraries, and employed Art Exhibitions Australia (AEA) on contract to set up and manage the overseas loan agreements and transport arrangements for the overseas loans and couriers, including customs clearances. AEA was also engaged to negotiate indemnity cover for the exhibition from the Art Indemnity Australia scheme, which was established by the Australian government to provide greater access for the people of Australia to significant cultural exhibitions, with emphasis on exhibitions from overseas. This indemnity was essential, as commercial insurance for the whole exhibition would have been prohibitively expensive.

Sponsors, both in-kind and cash, were crucial to the staging of the exhibition, and its success meant that sponsors received extensive public exposure. In-kind support received from Singapore Airlines, Art Indemnity Australia, The Australian newspaper, SBS Television (Special Broadcasting Service), Novotel, Lamb Printers and Applecentre Canberra City was invaluable, as was the generosity of the Commonwealth Bank.

The decision not to charge an entry fee for Treasures from the World's Great Libraries was justified for a number of reasons: the exhibition was designed as a gift to the nation, many lenders lent more generously in the knowledge that no entry fee was to be charged, and it allowed access to the exhibition to visitors whose personal finances were restricted. If, however, a similar 'blockbuster' were planned in future, a modest entry fee would be worth considering to offset some of the costs. Factors to bear in mind then would be that an entry fee could well reduce the amount of donations received and that there would be associated costs eg for designing and printing tickets, and then for selling tickets. The costs would be either for library staff time and salaries, or for a ticketing agent. Alternatively, the contract for an audio guide might include a clause that the staff hiring out the audio guide might also be responsible for selling entry tickets - or the audio guide might be included in the ticket price. Whatever system were chosen, preparation for queues from day one would be built into the system.

Given the demand as evidenced by the queues, and the fact that we did unfortunately have to turn some would-be viewers away, could we have either reduced the crowds or allowed more people through the gallery? The chief way to limit the crowds would have been to charge an entry fee, and indeed some visitors proposed precisely this in comments in the visitors' book. To my mind, this would have run counter to our intention to make the exhibition freely available to all, and the evaluation we commissioned of the exhibition confirmed that had we charged a fee visitors in the lower income bracket would have thought twice about coming. As soon as it became apparent that the queues were there to stay, we introduced a number system so that visitors did not have to stand in an entry queue - but they immediately began queuing for the numbers. With demand for entry as strong as it was, and a necessary limit on the numbers in the gallery, a queue of some kind was inevitable at some point, even if it had been transferred to another location by handing over responsibility for bookings to a ticketing agent. Could we have increased the numbers in the gallery? Not without compromising the security and environmental conditions, and the 'visitor experience'. In any case, once visitors were in the gallery, they appreciated the fact that they could see the exhibits without a crowd three or four deep around each case. Could we have reduced the demand by restricting advertising? At the start this would have gone against our intention of informing the public widely about the exhibition so that all who would like to attend would know about it, and it would also have been against the requirement of Art Indemnity Australia (which indemnified the exhibition) to make it as widely available as possible to Australians everywhere. It would also have contravened our obligation to the sponsors, and in fact would have been ineffective once 'word of mouth' took over. We did later take some of the advertisements off anyway, and altered others to let people know about the need to arrive early to get a queue number, and to warn them about limited numbers in the gallery. We also advertised the increased opening hours.

As visitor numbers can be expected to be high for a blockbuster, early development of a Front of House plan is necessary, with a 'dedicated' staff member to co-ordinate it, and plans for staffing whatever queue management system is needed onsite. Preparation of the building is also necessary: is there sufficient car-parking area, has suspension of parking restrictions been requested, is there enough cloak room space for visitors' belongings, can the food services and the toilets cope with the numbers, how often will gallery cleaning be needed, how to minimise disruption to other library functions? Some readers loved the excitement brought by the crowds, while others found it less to their liking.

There are always gallery preparations for a new exhibition, but there were more for Treasures: for instance the security was upgraded and an exit door and a new lighting system installed. Existing cases were refurbished, some new ones were constructed and others bought or borrowed. We did, where practicable, lower the height of cases for ease of viewing by wheelchair occupants and people of short stature, though it is really not possible to provide the ideal height for all visitors. Type size and angle of display for captions are also difficult issues. We did use the largest type size consistent with the amount of space available in the display cases, but some comments indicated that the font size could have been even larger.

As always, the volunteer guides were founts of interesting information and insights on the exhibits, though as the gallery was constantly full it was not practical for them to take the conducted tours they usually offer. They found that the best way was to offer visitors a brief introduction just inside the entrance, being careful not to create a bottleneck for the next batch of visitors entering. One very successful use of the guides' time and talents was talking to viewers in the waiting area outside the gallery.

Finally, would we do it again? You cannot have an event of the magnitude of a centenary celebration very often, and certainly many visitors have asked us to stage a similar exhibition in the future (some even said 'Do it again next year!'). We hope always to offer interesting and exciting exhibitions that will open doors to our collections and windows on the world.

Libraries need to publicise themselves, their collections and their services. For years the literature has been saying that we as librarians, and as the representatives of libraries, need to re-invent ourselves and to publicise what we can do for users and potential users. An exhibition can - and should - be a vital part of demonstrating that libraries and their collections and services are still not only relevant, but are crucial to successful information-finding. Libraries also need to show users and other supporters that we are more than just 'salt-of-the-earth' places, and that we offer resources and services that even regular users and staunch supporters might not know about. An important goal of Treasures from the World's Great Libraries was to salute the role of all libraries, and its success has fulfilled this goal in no uncertain manner. The National Library of Australia hopes that all libraries will benefit from the greater library awareness that Treasures has created in the community.

Margaret Dent, curator, Treasures from the World's Great Libraries, National Library of Australia, Canberra ACT 2600. E-mail: mdent@nla.gov.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address).