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I think Reid Library – its importance to students – initially comes from its location.
Well it’s interesting because now, of course, the Reid occupies an absolutely central position
on campus. But when the University first moved down from Irwin Street in the city, the centre
of gravity, if you like, was all up at the Stirling Highway end.
It’s unique in Australia in the way that it is totally integrated with the landscape.
It certainly is one of the most beautiful places to look out from, looking onto James
Oval on one side and the tropical gardens on the other. It’s got a very rich history.
In the early 1960s, with the expansion of the university system, a dramatic increase
in Federal funding, and consequent increase in the number of students et cetera, a new
library had to be built.
You’ll be given references during lectures,
which will again direct your footsteps to the library door. The catalogue is also near
to the entrance to the general collection. If you are to make the best use of the library,
you must learn how to use this key to the book and periodical literature available.
The assistants at the Issue Desk will explain the procedure for borrowing a book.
The Reid is a really central place for meeting my friends, meeting classmates, catching up
on work and what everyone’s been doing, you know, through the week.
So it’s not just a library, it’s also a social centre, and it’s one of the meeting
places, most important meeting places on campus. I think it's clearly been designed intentionally
in that way. I love studying at Reid. It’s fantastic.
The collaborative section is really good for meeting up with friends, and working on study
together. But I also like the upstairs area where you
can study by yourself. So before I started working in the Reid, I
was studying here, and used to spend a lot of time pretty much right here, on the third
floor, looking out over the oval, watching the cricket.
To come to the library was a good feeling. It’s been there for me through my entire
studies. It’s been there through my Arts/Commerce degree, through my Masters. The collection
is fantastic, and there’s just so much history in this place and so much to learn.
It’s undergone substantial changes, from a ground floor that was crammed full of an
increasing library collection, to what you see now, which is basically a transparent
concourse with students working away on their laptops, or on computers, sitting down in
lounges. Definitely, when I started here, we had the
card catalogues. There was no computers. Obviously the card catalogues have all gone and now
there’s computers everywhere, so it’s a very very different place.
I think probably the biggest change here for the Reid Library was the invention of the
internet, and the subsequent invention of wi-fi. I think students around campus have
definitely benefited from that. Even though it’s changed a lot over time,
particularly over that 20 years, it still seems to have an ability to stay the same
and be a time capsule. It’s pretty hard to imagine what Reid will be like in another
50 years. We’ll have super-fast internet. We’ll
have holograms… Digital, digital, digital, I guess!
It really does seem that it’s going to go forward as a space for learning and people.
It will still be an important meeting place. Students still need to get together.
I think it’ll be a fantastic place to be.