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'We want to provide programs which are responsive to the community and to the visions of our member Councils,' says Cathrine Harboe-Ree, Regional Librarian of Dandenong Valley Regional Library Service. The Dandenong Valley region, providing library services to the municipalities of Casey, Cardinia and Greater Dandenong, is the fastest growing area in Victoria. By 2001, the region will serve a projected population of some 400 000. It has one of the highest proportions of members from non-English-speaking backgrounds of any library service in the State.
Chinese, Vietnamese and Spanish groups are a focus, not only for collections, but for activities encouraging people into the library for the first time. 'I see us as really a cultural centre, where things should be happening,' says Debra Rosenfeldt, Youth Services and Public Programs Manager. 'It's not just a place where you come for information or even recreational reading. It's culture in a much broader sense than that.'
Harboe-Ree points to the ways libraries are involved in a process of very rapid change, constantly redefining themselves. 'There are no rigid definitions of what a library is. Is a library a book depot? Is it a community organisation, a community centre? Should it "outreach"? Our very strong view here is that you don't sit on a collection. That's not a library. A library is a living, breathing institution that wishes to welcome people so they don't come passively into a collection.'
I met Rosenfeldt and Harboe-Ree at library headquarters in Springvale Road, a vibrant busy street in which the lively shops and businesses of successive waves of migrants bring people thronging out to meet, trade and eat. The 20-year-old library was transformed two years ago into a light, open, inviting place. Springvale Services Librarian Lynne Moller notes the need to present the place as warm and welcoming, and to keep displaying new stock. 'We wanted people to see every part of the library when they walked in,' she says. 'That open-air look.' The first thing you see are well-placed information desks and open shelving. There are strong children's and junior fiction collections displayed near popular audiovisual material: on sport and self-defence, for instance. There are ABC and BBC television tie-ins and material on CD-ROM. Says Harboe-Ree: 'In the past, libraries were not well designed as multi-purpose buildings.' So, in one of the region's new libraries, they have provided a big meeting room in the heart of the building that will open out into a sparsely furnished area, 'so you can easily swell an activity to a really big number of people'.
'Our circulation over the last two years has increased by something like 30 per cent,' says Rosenfeldt. 'We measure that also by the numbers of people through the door. It's to do with spending a bigger proportion of our budget on stock-about 20 per cent-so that when people come into the library, they're more likely to find attractive materials, what they actually want.' Then there's the outreach program of which she and Harboe-Ree are articulate advocates. 'These programs are initiatives to get people who might otherwise not be bothered through the door.'
'You're talking to two people here who've been driven by that promotional thing-whether it's developing reference services, doing demonstrations of online tools to health providers in the community, or organising literary and cultural festivals like "Linking Cultures",' says Harboe-Ree. 'We're particularly catering at the moment for the Asian community-because it's so big here,' adds Rosenfeldt. An Asia-Australia culture and literature festival last year 'had 800 people through the door on a Saturday afternoon'. There were sessions with writers Ding Xiaoqi, Fang Xiangshu and Morag Loh. There were stories for young children in Vietnamese and English, Cambodian performers and a Chinese lion dance. Food media personality Elizabeth Chong described the ways Asian cuisine is influencing Australian food-and provided samples to taste. 'She's a wonderful speaker and, as a result of the interest in that festival, the Council employed her to do guided tours of the local shopping centre,' says Harboe-Ree. 'So we're talking about enriching the community in ways which are meaningful.' 'People came from all over Melbourne,' says Rosenfeldt. 'A lot of Asian people from other areas as well as Springvale, and a lot of older people, in their 50s and 60s, who are curious about things that are happening in their community, and the new waves of migrants coming in. We wanted to send a message to our community that we are interested in their cultures, and interested in the issues concerning them.'
The space for writers at the festival was comparatively small, so there was a follow-up program arranged to explore some of the issues raised in more depth. 'We invited people back for a series of evening conversations,' says Rosenfeldt. 'We had about an hour of formal talk with the writers, then threw it open to the audience.' Friends of the Library provided refreshments from local Asian bakeries. A grant from Arts Victoria covered the costs of the speakers. At 10.15 pm, after a 7.30 pm start, people were still anxious to continue. 'We were still winding them up when the cleaners came in.' There are good reasons for initiating such events in Springvale and Dandenong, Rosenfeldt believes. 'They're quite unique here-just the fact that there are writers of any sort in conversation.' Books were made available for sale 'and we also make sure that we have all their books in the Library-so we're promoting our own collections as well.' Grants have covered the costs of promoting such events, in handsome publicity leaflets, some translated into Chinese. A local Chinese newspaper also ran large ads over several weeks, at minimal cost. The Saturday festival was also covered in the Age.
Rosenfeldt is aware that continuing outreach programs are dependent on her ability to raise supporting grant money. The Australia Council funded poet, prose writer and teacher Kevin Brophy as Writer-in-the-Community from May to August 1995. Experienced in nurturing young writers through his 14-year editorship of the literary magazine Going Down Swinging, Brophy focused on the teenagers who are sometimes hard to attract into libraries except to study. 'We met with secondary teachers in schools around our region. We did workshops there. He worked with other writers like John Marsden and Melina Marchetta, Liam Davison and Arnold Zable in our day-long VCE Writing Expo,' says Rosenfeldt. 'When students signed up, we asked them to nominate particular areas, like writing biography, or writing humorously or writing poetry, and then put them in workshops of about 20.' Brophy also tapped into local writers groups, and visited community centres around the region. He was available for individual appointments from his office at Narre Warren Library. Other activities organised have included the Reading Begins at Home program, also centred at Narre Warren, in an area where there are a lot of young families in new housing estates who are interested in fostering their children's development through such initiatives as the Ripper Reader Club. Events targeting parents and children have attracted audiences averaging 90 people. There have also been Sunday seminars on crime and thriller writing, Meet the Author sessions and music performances. 'We sell our services by the way we present the material, by what we buy and by the way we promote it,' says Harboe-Ree.
Rosenfeldt acknowledges the crucial basic support Harboe-Ree has provided for outreach programs as Regional Librarian. With her background as Literature Executive in the Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Harboe-Ree was interested from the start of her time at Dandenong in cultural activities. At the moment, Victoria is engaged in the amalgamation of local councils into larger units and the appointment of outside commissioners to oversee this process, in a great push towards what is seen as increased efficiency. 'Dandenong Valley Regional Library Service did not sustain cuts to its public programs or youth services in this current budget,' she says, 'but we do have an overall concern that activities in libraries like publicity and promotion can be seen as not necessarily part of core services, though we think they are. These things are always questioned when budget cuts are afoot.' Over the next five years, many Victorian libraries will be market tested, she continues. 'This means that a whole service, or parts of a service, will be put out to tender. It might be technical services or it might be entire services like youth. There will be more and more types of providers, not less. If I'm to put a service out to tender, or a neighbouring library is to put their service out to tender and I'm to bid for it, who defines what level of promotional activity, say, should occur as a normal part of the library's operation?'
The UNESCO Public Library Manifesto, written in 1949 and updated in 1973, is once again under review. It defines a library as being 'active and positive' in outlook, 'demonstrating the value of its services and encouraging their use'. It should seek to encourage a taste for books in children and 'the habit of using libraries and their resources'. It should offer adults as well as children 'the opportunity to keep in touch with their times, to educate themselves continuously and keep abreast of progress in all areas of learning'. The manifesto specifically mentions links to our educational, social and cultural institutions and organisations. In short, 'it defines the role of the public library as being positive in the community and actively seeking community involvement,' says Harboe-Ree. 'That vision, that philosophical underpinning of libraries may go, in a narrowing of definition.'
'The best possible outcome of market testing might be that you carefully examine the way you work, and carefully define just what your services and organisation are,' she continues. 'If outreach and promotion are written into the documents, it might be a good thing. The outcome might be that councils carefully consider what library services are. Then we may get better definitions of what libraries are.'
In the upheavals at present going on, is this actually happening? 'It's far too early to say.' She has prepared a paper for the profession in Victoria, and spoken to the Libraries Board, which advises the Minister. 'My two chief concerns are definition and cooperation.'
One of the implications of the changes is that there is no longer any guaranteed job security in Victorian local government. 'The risk for the profession is that newly qualified librarians may not choose public librarianship because of the insecurity.'
Despite the difficulties with which she has to contend on a daily basis, Harboe-Ree is feisty. 'There's so much energy in public libraries these days, with access to the Internet and the sorts of things that Debra and I are doing with outreach. We have a view of our resources that we want to actively offer them to the community. Public libraries are very rewarding places to work in the 1990s.'
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