The SA State Library

Today I was finally able to visit the State Library of South Australia. I was excited about this visit and I was not disappointed.

Apart from the vast collection of books, it is very spacious, has nice air conditioning and has free wifi. It is open from 10 am to 8 pm (Mon-Wed) and 10 am to 6 pm on Thu-Fri. You can check out the updated schedule here.

There is plenty of space to study or work, with lots of comfortable seats. If you bring a laptop, you can plug into many of the sockets and use the free wifi. Membership is free for residents (just bring a proof of residence, like a phone bill). Being a member gives you internet access to extensive databases of publications and journals (like EBSCO).

I was happy to discover another treasure in Adelaide, but at the same time, sad too. It presented a bleeding contrast to our libraries in the Philippines. I was once a cultural researcher working for the Philippine government. Part of our project involved photo-documentation of historical records and books.

We were given access to the Katipunan files of the National Library and I was elated to be able to see newspapers such as La Independencia. When we tried opening the papers (sealed in crumbling, brown, dusty paper) I began to get sad. The librarian had warned us that they had no money to preserve the artifacts in climate controlled rooms. We persisted in turning a page but the paper started crumbling to pieces. We decided to stop our mission and just take a photo of the battered front page of the paper on top of the pile.

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To use the wifi, just connect to Internode and start the browser. When you try to connect to a site, it will display a login page. Scroll to the lower portion of the page and click the Guest button.