My New Sanctuary

Today I spent almost a day long inside the State Library Victoria. I have to do my assignment and I decided to done some work there. I arrived at almost 2 pm. There are people just sit in the benches, birds almost everywhere because today is in fact a quite warm day. After I checked in my bags and brought my notes and stationery, I decided to go straight to the La Trobe reading room. The State Library is located in the very heart of Melbourne just across the Central and next to the QV, a familiar place to meet people. Yet, it has not lost the grandeur that it has but gives the tone into the city. An interesting mix of old and new Melbourne.

The library was built upon the idea to provide the freedom to information and education. Instead of building (or letting, probably, people hanging around in) pubs and bar, get drunk and get into fights, Sir Redmond Barry, the founder of this great library think of a library that will educate people and many generations to come. He think of a free library (yes, you won’t be charge for membership, only additional services such as tour, copying or printing that will cost you a small amount of money!) that everyone can get the access into this magnificent library. It won’t be surprising to find many homeless people during winter and summer in the library reading newspaper or books that interest them. The only rule that might be a bit unique is that nobody is allowed to sleep inside the library. This is made sense, I think, because otherwise, it will become a shelter and the learning activities that supposedly happen there will not foster.

The library has galleries that held exhibitions for free. And now, the Keith Murdoch gallery (yes, it is named after the father of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch! Keith was one of the important person there although I do suspect that the Murdochs did donate a considerable amount of resources to have Keith's name there, hehehe) exhibiting the work of Karen Catt, photographs of the who’s who in the contemporary entertainment industry. It really is a place of self-indulgence! In the centre of the library there is also another gallery (Cowen Gallery) that shows paintings of Melbourne from time to time. There are paintings of Melbourne in the early settlement up until the very recent one. My lecture, John Arnold said that not all of them are worth as an art, but more as a historical painting, that will give a clear picture of the development of Melbourne. But I must say, that is a very bold and clever thing to do!

In my opinion, the greatest room so far is the La Trobe reading room. It is located in the second floor and it takes the octagonal shape. The shape per se is unusual, but you cannot deny the sense of majesty inside it. It has a glass ceiling in shape of a dome. Once upon a time, the dome had served as one of Melbourne landmark. Although today the dome has to compete with the surrounding skyscrapers, the room itself is definitely fantastic, with reading desks that lined-up like an asterisk with a podium in the very heart of the room.

Inside this room, there are huge collections of Australiana that stacks on the wall. And whilst I took a break after working for sometime, my eyes came across the writing on the surrounding walls. I did not see it before because the writings are carved (?) on the white upper part of the walls. And when I read it, it were some beautiful quotations from famous people. One that I could not help to copy it into my notebook is the quotation from Wallace Stevens, “The word is the making of world.” Beautiful yet nothing is truer indeed.

I cannot help but to observe my surrounding. I try to absorb the feeling of being in the time, enjoying my moment of admiring this enormously built library. I saw an old man with a piece of paper in hand locating some books in the Australiana section, which I told you before, is a massive room. He had to walk from side to side just to find the books although his breathing is hard and he hardly able to move the chair that will helped him to reach books at the top shelves. In Indonesia, if you see such thing, people will come and offer their help. Here, although it is considered the polite gesture, must be addressed carefully because sometimes people will took it wrongly. They might think that you are degrading them as human, because they, in their opinion, are able to do such things. Therefore, I just observing him carefully and admiring him in the same time. It is true that learning is a lifetime experience and the man has thought me to always educate and feed my brain no matter how old I am. By doing so, I think I will experience my life in an alert and aware way because I always feed my brain and it will help me to think that I am here to live up my life.

There are other interesting facilities as well in the library form the children sections up to the mature people. They also have huge collections of newspapers, magazines and journals from around the world in microfilms and some hardcopy of the current editions. They have lots of power points so that people can bring their laptops without have to worry running out of battery. The internet connection is free and if you bring your own laptop, you do not have to worry about access limitation. They do advise people who use the public computer to limit their utility until 15 minutes only if other people are waiting. What a great arrangement and people here do as it says! The library also has its own unique café, Mr. Tulk, named after the first librarian, Augustus Tulk, which gives the library a social touch. I cannot stop myself of talking about the library because I cannot stop but to think how a wonderful idea it is, to have a public library that meet everyone’s need (unless if you are looking for romance books) and it is for free! I now found myself in awe of the way people here have the respect of education, culture and invest their time, money and thoughts to build the library in such a way. No wonder people here loves to spend time at libraries and museums even at holidays!