Librarian going digital

Librarian going digital

Dunedin (Thursday, 15 September 2016) – A Dunedin librarian is heading overseas to see how digital technology can shape the future of libraries.

City Library Team Leader Kathy Aloniu has been awarded the Edith Jessie Carnell Travelling Scholarship by the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA). The scholarship provides $6000, which Ms Aloniu will use to visit library digital centres in Tennessee and Florida next year.

The main focus of Ms Aloniu’s trip will be the Chattanooga Library’s 4th Floor, a public laboratory and educational centre that offers tools, technology, connectivity and event space for the whole community.

“Chattanooga is a gig library in a gig city, just like Dunedin. They have real synergies with us, and we have been talking with them over the last few years,” she says.

“Places like Nashville and Florida have a number of other exciting initiatives, so I will start putting together an itinerary. I want to see what we can do – what will interest the people who come in our doors.”

The Dunedin City Council’s Group Manager Arts and Culture Bernie Hawke says, “We are delighted for Kathy, and the award reflects positively on her, the Dunedin Public Libraries and Dunedin’s place as New Zealand’s first GigCity.”

Ms Aloniu says that the biggest changes she has seen in libraries are social and technological.

“Libraries and library staff are still about books and information, but we are also about people. Technology brings great advances, but there is a huge digital divide. Libraries can help with free computer classes, computers to use and free wifi.”

The scholarship was established from a bequest by Mr Archibald Dunningham, the Dunedin City Librarian from 1933 to 1960. It is named after Edith Carnell, a British librarian who worked in New Zealand during World War 2.

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