$9.5 million renovations to La Trobe's Borchardt Library are well underway as part of the Federal Government's "Better University Renewal Funding Initiative."

Transcript

Narrator:

Exciting renovations are underway on the $9.5 million upgrade to La Trobe’s Borchardt Library. It’s part of the Federal Government’s ‘Better University Re-newel Funding Initiative’ and is one of $650 million worth of developments set to transform La Trobe.

Geoff Payne:

The University has been changing the way it conducts the curriculum and many of the faculties are now requiring students to work together is small groups, working on problem based learning exercises and coming to the library to use the library’s resources, work in the environment where you need to have some quiet conversation about what’s been worked on is now an essential part of how people need to use the library.

Narrator:

New technology, electronic resources and developments in teaching and learning styles are driving many of the changes at the library.

Geoff Payne:

The main changes that are happening in the library that students will notice in the near future is the entrance is moving down to level one, so the library will be much more accessible from the central square, the Agora of the University. There will be some works on level two, we have already done a lot of work over the vacation consolidating the staff areas and maximising the space that we can refurbish for public space for use by students and staff of the University.

Narrator:

An extra 845 additional study seats will help cope with student demand which can be as high as 9000 per day in peak times. Areas for post graduate and academic staff, collaborative learning spaces that are technology enabled with screens for rehearsing presentations will make the library a key destination at the Bundoora campus.

Geoff Payne:

It’s going to improve the attractiveness of the University to perspective students and improve the lives of the students that are already enrolled at the University.

Narrator:

Prior to the start of construction the equivalent of 20 kilometres of lower use print materials and materials of electronic equivalents were moved out of the library to a temporary storage facility called ‘The Annex’ in near by Waterdale Road.

Eva Fisch:

There are a lot of very, very low use materials moved over here, we moved things that had electronic equivalents so the facility has older journals pre 2000, it has older books that had already been in storage for a long time, Government publications, again older that hadn’t been used in quiet a long time and our reference collection was becoming quiet dated so we spit it up with the recent high use reference material staying on campus and the older materials coming out here. Getting material is quiet easy, we’re going to be scanning chapters and journal articles and sending them via electronic means, and it’s also possible to order books and government publications or anything in print and we will deliver the print back to the campus that requested it.

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