Hume Global Learning Village Library Service
For over 100 years, local libraries have given Victorian communities access to a wealth of knowledge and a world of stories. But communities change and libraries are changing with them. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the City of Hume.
One in four residents were born overseas and one in three speak a language other than English at home. Language, literacy and numeracy skills are closely linked to economic outcomes and the result in Hume is that two thirds of local jobs are taken by people living outside the area.
The new Hume library service, funded by the Community Support Fund, the Hume City Council and business supporters The Age and Visy, is a practical response to these challenges.
Built in 2000 in Broadmeadows, an area which had no library, it combines the traditional role of libraries with the potential offered through new technologies.
With further assistance from the Victorian Government, the Library has developed an extensive collection in Turkish – the largest local community language. It provides access to that collection through a new internet catalogue tool that itself operates in Turkish.
It’s an innovation that helps brings a new and disadvantaged community into an important community resource.
The effect of that sort of innovation is highlighted in the experience the Chief Librarian who was taking her turn on the Reception Desk. Noticing an elderly man who was clearly impressed but unsure about what was behind the front doors, she went out to meet him.
He asked, “Is this the library?”
She told him it was and asked if he wanted some assistance.
“Yes,” said the old man, “but how much does the library cost?”
When she told him it was free, he smiled and went inside saying, “I’ve never been to a library before.”
The library in Hume is no longer just a place where ‘people meet books.'
It is a place where the many communities of Hume can come to learn skills, meet each other and develop the new local networks they need.
Read more about Living Libraries Program
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