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The Guardian - AU

Comment

Gideon Haigh

I have a lifelong connection to Victoria’s state library – which is why I am aghast at its crude self-lobotomy

the State Library of Victoria John Wicks Ned Kelly SLV Tulk

The La Trobe Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria — State Library of Victoria’s La Trobe reading room. The library is one of the busiest in the world. Photograph: Jui-Chi Chan/Alamy

Pardon me that this is a little personal.

I first visited the State Library of Victoria aged 12. I held books retrieved from its mountainous stacks with trembling hands. Its stupendous card catalogue blew my schoolboy mind. Search my name in the modern electronic counterpart today and it appears 125 times, mostly for works I researched there. My 84-year-old mother has been a volunteer library tour guide for more than a decade.

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