The Techs on Tour starting point – eating and libraries

First posted on February 28, 2014

People made their way to Glenelg, first meeting up for a Friday night “fish supper” – at Sammy’s on the Marina a more than pleasant location, excellent service, huge serves of reasonably good food, pricey enough, highly rated by the locals.

At Sammy’s on the Marina – these fish were ‘not’ on the menu!  

We planned our meeting point for Saturday morning and a number of us travelled into the city on “the Glenelg tram”. Disappointingly, this is no longer a lovely old tram but a sleek, modern, run-of-the-mill vehicle – but the service was on time and the ticketing system puts Melbourne’s to shame … although to be fair, that’s not a difficult feat.

First stop, the State Library of South Australia. Our guide was terrific and we were shown all over the many and varied parts of the library. Lots of innovative things are going on there, as they do in all libraries, but I’m afraid what I loved most were the places that many people wrongly think of today as what libraries are all about – the old stuff. The Mortlock Wing and the Circulating Library Room are gorgeous!

The Mortlock Wing, State Library of South Australia  

The Adelaide Circulating Library – It all looks very proper and intellectual

 but there’s a good collection of Mills & Boon on these shelves!  

After lunch at an Italian place in Rundle Street we went to our second library visit, the very newly opened  Adelaide City Library  in Rundle Mall. Until only two weeks previously it had been housed within the buildings of the State Library. Now it is in a shopping centre with the main entrance at street (lane!) level into a ‘library only’ lift, plus two other entrances – from the shopping centre proper and from the high-rise carpark. This was a fascinating space, essentially a rectangle but cleverly divided into a lot of functional spaces that can be re-arranged at will with movable walls, partitions, shelves. No library history here, all very high-tech with local ‘experts trying to get a break’ giving their time free to teach others their skills in return for using the facilities for their own purposes free of monetary charge – anything from using 3D printers, to film, to composing music with computers and electronic keyboards, and more. I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos of all this!

City Library lane-way entrance – photo courtesy of fellow tourist, Edith.

What I learned at the Bordertown library was that all the South Australian libraries are linked. If you live in SA you can borrow a book anywhere and return it anywhere. I saw the back end of this at the City Library – there must have been at least 20 newly arrived crates of books, DVDs, CDs, etc that had arrived from other libraries throughout the state. Glad I didn’t have to shelve the contents! And the couriers are travelling every day!

Perhaps this happens in Victoria too. I’ll learn about that when I become a pensioner in a few months time and  have to borrow books rather than buying them as I do now!