What would you do with a stolen day? A day you are meant to be at school and decide to spend elsewhere? Occasionally I would go shopping with friends or hang out at someone’s house watching videos. But my favourite place to spend a “wagged” day from school was the State Library.
I rationalised these days by reading enormous old tomes about history, politics, and art. All subjects I was studying at school.
The process was to check your bag at the cloakroom. No bags allowed in the space back then. Take your required stationery and belongings and find an available desk. Look up the books you were needing for your all-important and justifying “research” in the hundred-year-old catalogue drawers. Write down the call number on a provided torn up scrap of paper and present it to the librarian behind the big old desk.
The librarian I remember most vividly was very short in stature. (I am only 5’2” so she must have been tiny). She had white hair, tied back in a bun. She wore glasses that she looked incriminatingly over the rims of. She always made me feel guilty, like I had committed a crime. In fairness, I was in school uniform, on a school day, not at school.
She would take my scrap of paper, give me a number, and disappear. I never really understood where too, but I would go back to my desk and patiently await the delivery of my books. A very old-style LED display would light up with my number and I would retrieve my books.
Some of the books were ancient. Some of the material was on microfiche, requiring a relocation to the microfiche room. I loved it all.
When I was younger the library also housed the old Melbourne Museum. It was a labyrinth of spaces with grand windows and immaculate parquetry. I remember archaic (and politically incorrect) dioramas depicting the settlement of Melbourne. My favourite space was where dinosaur skeletons hung from the ceiling. The museum was a magical place for a child, or a teenager absconding from school.
Watching the metamorphosis over the last 40 years has been a privilege.
It is still one of my favourite places to spend time. I have a city routine on Thursdays. I wander through the Readings bookshop at the back entrance and then meander through the different spaces absorbing the old book smell and the surrounding promise of knowledge. Finally, I sit in my favourite zone in The Quad and write. My family call it my happy place.
The State Library of Victoria is the oldest public library in Australia and was one of the first free libraries in the world. When it opened, it was open to anyone over the age of 14 years, so long as their hands were clean. In 2018 it was the fourth most visited library in the world. How lucky we are to have this remarkable place in beautiful Melbourne.
Information about the library can be found at https://www.slv.vic.gov.au
You can read more from Kylie Eklund here.
