Mentions State Library of Victoria

A petition is currently calling for the SLV management and government ‘to withdraw any proposed changes and hold a public meeting, where Victorians can have a say in how their library is run’.

What needs to be debated at such a meeting is as basic as the question: what’s a library for? It would appear that, under the current and immediate past leadership, a core function of this cultural institution includes “programs, scholarships and advice to budding entrepreneurs”. Indeed, Christine Christian donated $2 million to the Library for that purpose.

StartSpace, set up with Christian’s money, provides free membership for what it calls “co-working”, plus, for $350 a month membership, access to the “Loft” with conference and printing facilities, as well as training programs and mentor sessions. When then-CEO Kate Torney announced its opening in March 2020, her statement underlined that “StartSpace functions solely to benefit the community and does not operate for profit”.

Torney also mentioned that “leading international professional services firm PwC” (the company contracted but failing to review Robodebt in 2017) was, at that time, providing a training program on a pro-bono basis.

So, while the professional services of a company implicated in the illegal Robodebt scheme are acceptable, writers contracted to deliver workshops to teenagers were, on the advice of the Board led by Christian, not trusted to deliver their program without breaking the law.

The dispute began with the decision to cancel or postpone (both verbs are contested) a program of “Teen Bootcamp” workshops – funded by the Serp Hills Foundation and the JTM Foundation – for young writers. The library had engaged six authors, including Jinghua Qian, Omar Sakr, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, to conduct the workshops.

On social media and elsewhere, the writers had voiced their support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s full-scale invasion of Gaza. 

[…] 

In response to the criticism, library management defended the workshop decision as “apolitical”. Meanjin editor Esther Anatolitis tweeted in reply, “There is no such thing as an apolitical cultural institution”.

A boycott, open letters, petitions, resignations: these are definitive evidence something has gone wrong with the library.

[…] 

A paradox of neoliberalism over the past three or four decades is that, when commercial-style governance is applied in traditionally less commercial spheres – such as libraries, universities, publishing and the public sector – it is often applied more rigidly and narrowly than in genuinely corporate sectors, such as banking and professional services.

But libraries are not just another type of corporation, and a library CEO is not the same as the head of a commercial corporation.

More than 100 staff members at State Library Victoria have written to its chief executive expressing anger at the postponement of a series of writing workshops, claiming the events were scrapped because of the pro-Palestinian views held by the writers hosting them.

The Teen Writing Bootcamps, which were to be conducted by six writers - four of whom had publicly expressed strong opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza - were suddenly cancelled last week without giving the hosts or attendees a clear reason for the move. A statement from the library at the time said the events were postponed due to concerns around the safety of participants, presenters and facilitators.

Three sources working at the library with knowledge of the events have told this masthead the workshops were postponed because of the political views held by the writers.

[…] 

The library’s head of audience engagement, Angharad Wynne-Jones, resigned last Thursday. Three library sources said her resignation was directly related to postponement of the events. Wynne-Jones did not respond to questions, and the library said it did not comment on individual staff.

Library staff who spoke to this masthead, speaking anonymously because they were fearful of their employment being placed in jeopardy, said they were concerned and frustrated by the lack of transparency shown by management, pointing to conflicting internal statements and inconsistencies between internal and external communications.

In response to growing internal backlash at the decision made by library management, staff began circulating a letter criticising the way the writers had been treated. The letter accuses the chief executive, board and executive team of undermining the institution’s values and sending a message of “discrimination and censorship”.