A Library Planet post by Fiona Kells Torquay is Australia’s (if not the world’s) surfing capital. The world-famous Bell’s Beach – home of the Rip Curl Pro – is nearby and the town is the birthplace of iconic surfing brands Rip Curl and Quicksilver. Marking the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, Torquay is a…
Werribee Library, Victoria, Australia
A Library Planet post by Fiona Kells The Werribee Library (formerly known as the CBD Library) opened in its current location on Watton Street in the centre of Werribee in 2001. It had previously occupied a smaller site on Burnes Place. In 2010 the Library underwent a major renovation. ‘Boutique’-style shelving areas were installed to…
Parramatta Library at PHIVE, Sydney, Australia
A Library Planet post by Paul Jewell. Acknowledgement of Country Parramatta Library is situated on the traditional lands of the Baramadagal clan of the Dharug Nation. I pay my respect to the traditional custodians of the land, waters and sky around modern-day Parramatta, the Dharug peoples. Introduction The new Parramatta Library at PHIVE with its…
Brussels Air Museum, Brussels, Belgium
A Library Planet post by Anthony Kitchener. The Cinquantenaire in Brussels is a lavish set of buildings commissioned by King Leopold II. The construction was financed by his plunder of the Congo. Today, the buildings are dedicated to military, automotive and aircraft museums. Belgium has a rich history of arms manufacture. Many of Napoleon’s cannons…
Friday essay: the library – humanist ideal, social glue and now, tourism hotspot
Stuart Kells, La Trobe University Last year two Danish librarians – Christian Lauersen and Marie Eiriksson – founded Library Planet: a worldwide, crowdsourced, online library travel guide. According to them, Library Planet is meant to inspire travellers “to open the awesome book that is our world of libraries, cities and countries”. The name of the…
The Kyoto International Manga Museum, Kyoto, Japan
A Library Planet post by Annie Wu. Kyoto International Manga Museum was established to gather, preserve and exhibit manga materials and to be a centre for research into manga culture. The space simultaneously serves as a library and a museum, with around 300,000 manga products in its collection, including books, periodicals and woodblock caricature prints….
Disquiet in the archives: archivists make tough calls with far-reaching consequences – they deserve our support
Stuart Kells, La Trobe University Right now, for technological, ethical and political reasons, the world’s archivists are suddenly very busy. Advances in digital imaging and communications are feeding an already intense interest in provenance, authorship and material culture. Two recent discoveries – a woman’s name scratched in the margins of an 8th-century manuscript, and John…
BookSpaces: A personal project to document and celebrate libraries and other spaces dedicated to books
A Library Planet post by Rob Lee. When I was at school, students were not permitted inside my school’s library. It was a space for the librarian and her books. Those of us looking for information, inspiration or just a book to read would wait while an appropriate publication was brought from the shelves and…
World of the Book: State Library of Victoria permanent exhibition
A Library Planet post by Fiona Kells Established in 1854, barely 20 years after the city of Melbourne was founded, the State Library of Victoria is Australia’s oldest public library and one of the world’s first free libraries. (See Jes Layton’s 2019 Library Planet post on the State Library of Victoria for more information.) A…
Library Planet 