Melbourne City Library
Reflection
The Melbourne City Library is doing wonderful things to recognise its patrons and use their limited space in the centre of the city in the best ways for its users. While at first I was surprised by the small size of their children’s and Young Adult sections, I soon realised these age groups were not well represented in their clientele so space had been given to other areas that were in high demand – namely, ESL, ELL, and foreign language resources. I also appreciated how they have taken barriers down between users and staff, in their info desks for example, but also how much they let the public serve themselves, in their holds section, self-checkout for example. I like the fact that this frees up the staff to help with more complex questions, queries, and to get on with other aspects of their jobs. I also appreciated their public outreach programs and events utilising internet and social media for their promotion. The staff seem very enthusiastic about these which would clearly help with their development and success.
Evaluation Rating _5/5
This public library opened my eyes to the fact that a public library always should cater to the community it serves, which I thoroughly enjoyed discovering.
The guest speakers gave a very clear context to the library and did a good overview of how the MLC is structured and operates. I felt I had a clear understanding of the library before taking the physical tour.
It would be interesting to have the new Docklands library on the schedule for one of the next groups; however, this one was still very valuable to see.
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- Melbourne City Library
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- OPAC Terminal
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- Large foreign language and ESL collections
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- Video Game consuls!
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- Gallery space in the library
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- Automatic sorter!
A TL's Learning Journal 