Page 769 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 5 April 2022
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(i) encyclopedia;
(ii) language learning resources;
(iii) coding resources for kids;
(iv) personal and professional development; and
(v) many more;
(g) that the ACT Government is currently undertaking a community co-design process on the future of libraries through the Imagine 2030 project, recognising that the role of libraries in our community and society is continually evolving;
(h) that governments across Australia and around the world are increasingly recognising the central role that libraries play in improving digital equality and access, such as the successful pilot of wireless internet device loans at Thomastown Library in Victoria; and
(i) that the ACT Government has a strong track record of working to improve digital access and inclusion, including through the distribution of chromebooks to all ACT public high school students and the Technology Upgrade Fund grants program; and
(2) calls on the ACT Government to make improving digital access and inclusion a priority through the Imagine 2030 libraries co-design process, including through consideration of wireless internet device loans and other initiatives to increase access to necessary digital equipment.
I rise today to speak in support of the motion moved in my name. Societies have been recording their histories in many forms for centuries. The first records came in the form of oral records passed through generations. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures of this country have been recording their histories, stories and culture in this way for hundreds of thousands of years. Accounts and stories of the dreaming, traditional ecological knowledge, language knowledge and, more recently, historical information all make up part of this wealth of knowledge in this form of, in essence, an oral library.
As writing developed across the ancient world so, too, did the want to collect and store written articles. This began the tradition of the written library. As far back as 2000 BC, these libraries were beginning to be compiled in Mesopotamia and Egypt, among other places. They were written on clay tablets in various scripts or on papyrus in hieroglyphics. These first libraries were private collections belonging to universities, religious institutions or individuals, but they all had restricted access.
A little later in history, one of the most famous of these ancient libraries was, of course, the Library of Alexandria. Constructed around 250 BC under the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, at its peak the library contained the equivalent of 100,000 books. The original purpose is believed to be an undertaking of the Ptolemaic dynasty to collect all knowledge from the world. A lot of resources were spent sending agents out to collect material for this collection, and bringing it back to Alexandria. However, given the levels of literacy in this period, the extreme stratification of society in Ptolemaic Egypt and the fact that much of the material was in Greek, a language that the majority of the population of the city of Alexandria and Egypt could not even
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