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Yesterday we successfully penetrated the State Library. If you want facts and figures, the collection holds ~five million items over eleven floors in two buildings, most of it underground (they can't go any lower because of the train line running underneath), and it is valued at ~1.9 billion dollars. Probably Australian.
That's what happens when the law requires deposit of a copy of everything published in the state. More impressive was actually seeing a small part of the stack - pervaded by the smell of books - and a few of the forty thousand volumes donated by David Scott Mitchell at the turn of the twentieth century. I don't know the age of the volumes we saw but much of his collection had already spent longer out in the world than it has since passed in the library.
This morning, a counter strike knocked out a gas line at the TAFE where I am studying, forcing us to evacuate before classes could be started.
That's what happens when the law requires deposit of a copy of everything published in the state. More impressive was actually seeing a small part of the stack - pervaded by the smell of books - and a few of the forty thousand volumes donated by David Scott Mitchell at the turn of the twentieth century. I don't know the age of the volumes we saw but much of his collection had already spent longer out in the world than it has since passed in the library.
This morning, a counter strike knocked out a gas line at the TAFE where I am studying, forcing us to evacuate before classes could be started.
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