University of Sydney visit

I mentioned a visit to the University of Sydney in a previous post, but then up and forgot to post anything about it. It was late in February, and the day we arrived on campus was 'welcome back to school' week. Students were just returning to their school year after the summer break and everyone had that first week of school energy that we're all familiar with. I have to say that it was terrific to be there during their version of President's day -- lots of booths advertising clubs, groups and opportunities for you as a student and live music and free stuff. I was particularly excited about the surfing club. What a neat thing, I was thinking...join the surf club and head out with your mates to catch a wave. It seems like a great form of stress relief. Anyway, campus was hopping - here's a shot of the crowds. The uni has about 45,000 students, so it's roughly the same size as UBC.





The university is just finishing up a new law building. It looked really impressive and modern from the outside:



and once inside, I saw just how modern everything seemed. These benches were delightfully green. I have to admit that I was thinking of our assistant university librarian when I saw these. Very stylish.




To the left of the law building was the library, which is less than modern and reminded me of a lot of other library architecture.



The librarians I met with were a bit frazzled -- partly because of beginning of term panic, and partly because they were going through a reorganisation, which had resulted in major changes to business as usual. Needless to say, the librarians were a bit unsure of what exactly they did anymore and that seemed to cloud my conversations with people. Nevertheless, I learned that the Koori Centre on campus was the main place for student services for Indigenous students. Librarians had and still worked with people from the Koori Centre and in fact, one librarian mentioned that all staff in the library had taken sensitivity training from someone in the Koori Centre, in order to work better with students.


The library is making other efforts as well -- one of which is to include the resources from the Koori Centre in the library's online catalogue. The library already has a well-stocked curriculum collection with heaps of curricular materials in different Aboriginal languages. The library has adopted some of the recommendations from the protocols (see the UTS post talking about these), by including a disclaimer on many books in their curricular collection. It was good to see.


There are inconsistencies with respect to protocols for sacred materials. Ideally, sacred materials (if part of the collection in the first place) need to be handled in a sensitive and respectful way -- an example of this would be sacred women's ritual materials should not be seen, handled or viewed by men. Well, it was acknowledged that there are inconsistencies among libraries with respect to these kinds of materials - while some libraries are very good about attending to the restrictions, other libraries will have that same material on the shelf for circulation. I didn't get the sense that this was a surprise to anyone, but it was clear to me that the comments were made with heavy hearts. There's still work to be done.


In a more recent development, the library had good success with a tour for future students who were attending a 2-day mini university programme. Students who came to the library were introduced to all the library materials (books, databases, archival and special collections, artworks, etc.) particular to their people, the Wiradjuri. Lots of staff were involved, everyone worked hard, and those two days were terrific for the students and for the librarians. It seems that outreach to pre-university students may be a good way for us to expose students to what we have for them and to explain how we can all work together to contribute to the students' academic success.


The library was also keen on offering internships within the library for Indigenous students. I heard this from other librarians as well and it seems to be a way of immersing someone in the library which could have benefits for other students -- having a student explain to students what's available is always more effective in my opinion. And, similar to comments from other librarians, if you are going to try for an internship for Indigenous students in the library, do not expect or make the student the Indigenous-'issues'-only person. I like the internship idea, as maybe that will help encourage more students to consider this profession, which in turn could only enhance the way a library creates a welcoming space for its Indigenous students.


So in spite of the upheaval of re-org, I heard quite a lot from the librarians. I thank them for helping me out and for showing me around. By the way, the university is one of the big 8 (?)sandstone campuses..one of the old ones that's been around for years. Here's a final picture to get a flavour for that old architecture: