Editorial.

Editorial. A LITTLE WHILE AGO, I WAS ENGAGED WITH A GROUP OF GRADUATE STUDENTSat Monash, and talking about the importance of lay people in the earlydevelopment of the great Australian libraries. I mentioned Sir RedmondBarry Sir Redmond Barry KCMG (June 7 1813 – November 23 1880) was a British colonial judge in Victoria, Australia.Barry was the son of Major-General Henry Green Barry, of Ballyclough, County Cork and his wife Phoebe. , and described him jocularly joc��u��lar?adj.1. Characterized by joking.2. Given to joking.[Latin iocul as `the beak who topped NedKelly'. Blank incomprehension in��com��pre��hen��sion?n.Lack of comprehension or understanding.incomprehensionNouninability to understandincomprehensible adjNoun 1. : on all three counts for some [theoverseas students], and not all of the others were familiar with thevernacular terms. I was made somewhat reflective by the experience, and a short timeafterwards gave a Graduation Address to a very large, and very mixedaudience. I took as my theme racial and cultural identity, and itsrepresentation and definition in Australia. I had searched forrepresentations across the media spectrum, and came to the conclusionthat the largest repository of images, verbal and graphic, of culturalidentity was the libraries of Australia. It is only there that a reliable authoritative andmulti-dimensional canvas can be discerned. As an archive it is,naturally, biased towards documents in the English language. But if youwant to discern with any degree of intellectual depth what it means tobe alive in Australia today, or to have contributed to the developmentof an Australian culture or multi-culture, then it is to the librariesand the archives that you must have recourse. No number of Olympic openings however lavish and redolent red��o��lent?adj.1. Having or emitting fragrance; aromatic.2. Suggestive; reminiscent: a campaign redolent of machine politics. withbudget, icon and cliche, can convey one thousandth as much meaning ascan be retrieved from a relatively small public library collection, onany day of the working year. It is to these resources that we must haverecourse if we would discover more about Redmond Barry the man andjudge, the library to which he was godfather, and the man he condemnedto death and the culture that produced him. The collections of libraries are many things, but primarily andalmost incidentally, they constitute the record and the picture of theculture in which they are embedded. Without this record, a culture hasno residual sense of itself or its origins and components. It cannotbegin to discern what it is, who belongs to it; what its origins are,what are the contributions of its members. Without these understandings that culture is doomed to continualre-invention and re-enactment of the past; without a point of departurethere can be no progress, no journey, no evolution, no growth. The oneunique capacity of our species [in addition to its fascination withself-destruction] is its ability to accrete knowledge and understanding. It does this at about the same pace as a major coral reef grows,and each single organism is a contributor to the entity as a whole. Thelibrary is the major reification re��i��fy?tr.v. re��i��fied, re��i��fy��ing, re��i��fiesTo regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.[Latin r of this process. It has as aconsequence one other important capacity: it makes possible what EDHirsch identified as `cultural literacy' in a small but immenselysignificant [and largely unregarded] monograph published in the UnitedStates in 1988.(1) His thesis was that the strength of a nation lay largely in theculture which it shared, and by whose mores and common heritage it wasshaped. If we do not share the culture, we cannot share the language; ifwe cannot share the language, we cannot communicate; if we cannotcommunicate then the growth which comes from co-operation and sharedunderstandings cannot occur, and the culture will eventually die off, orbe superseded. Hirsch listed, under the rubric RUBRIC, civil law. The title or inscription of any law or statute, because the copyists formerly drew and painted the title of laws and statutes rubro colore, in red letters. Ayl. Pand. B. 1, t. 8; Diet. do Juris. h.t. `what every literate American needsto know of and about' some `5000 essential names, phrases anddates'. There is, as far as I know, no Australian equivalent,although I have for some time and for my own amusement been developing acomparable list. A selection from Hirsch will illustrate the concept: 1066 1492 1776 1914-1918 1939-1945 1984 [book title] absenteeism absolute monarchy academic freedom acronym Acropolis acropolis(əkrŏp`əlĭs)[Gr.,=high point of the city], elevated, fortified section of various ancient Greek cities.TheAcropolis of Athens, a hill c.260 ft (80 m) high, with a flat oval top c. Allen, Woody Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease(ăls`hī'mərz, ôls–), degenerative disease of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex that leads to atrophy of the brain and senile dementia. Amicus curiae amicus curiae(Latin: “friend of the court”) One who assists a court by furnishing information or advice regarding questions of law or fact. A person (or other entity, such as a state government) who is not a party to a particular lawsuit but nevertheless has a Bankruptcy `Between a rock and a hard place' Berlin Wall Berry, Chuck It might be interesting, I think, to look at a similar selection ofnames and terms and to ask how broadly comprehended their implicationsare across Australian society today Despite more expenditure oneducation than ever before, there is a general feeling of adumbing-down, a narrowing of cultural boundaries and a poverty ofunderstanding, especially of language, that bedrock of any society The Manglish which characterises not only the utterances of Olympiccommentators, but also I am more disturbed to say, the writers of newsbulletins for the `National Broadcaster' does not facilitatecommunication and understanding: it blurs, fractures and scrambles it.Meaning is lost, and with it that precision of communication andunderstanding which is one of the great glories of language. Against this pattern of almost wilful wil��ful?adj.Variant of willful.wilfulor US willfulAdjective1. determined to do things in one's own way: a wilful and insubordinate childcultivation of ignorance andthe celebration of boorishness, the collections of libraries are one ofthe few balances. If there were no other justification for theirexistence, this would be a sufficient service to society In this issue Russell Cope takes a further penetrating and criticallook at Australian parliamentary libraries, their treasures and theiroccasionally indifferent host institutions; Libby Fielding reports on asubstantial literature review which examines the opportunities and risksconfronting public libraries in their sometimes half-hearted embrace ofthe internet; Janet Murray reviews research completed and theimplications of providing school library service for disabled children,and Jane Shelling gives us a revealing and salutary close-up of onelibrary's struggle to provide access to e-journals. A reader asks apenetrating question about the frustrations and difficulties inherent inpurchasing the books that ALJ ALJ Administrative Law JudgeALJ Association for Legal Justice (Northern Ireland)reviews and receives some useful advicefrom our reviews editor, Dr Gary Gorman, who has garnered anothercollection of stimulating reviews of interesting books. This is the last issue for the year: once again I acknowledge whata pleasure it has been to work with the staff of the ALIA NationalOffice presided over by Jennefer Nicholson; Ivan Trundle, who manages alarge portfolio of which this journal is only a small part, EmmaDavis-Bell who sees each issue into print and saves the editor from someof his more egregious gaffes; Dr Gary Gorman and his cadre of devoted,intelligent and often amusing reviewers, and all of those others in ALIAHouse who field the questions, and manage the infrastructure, includingthe subscription database. To all of these, my grateful thanks and bestwishes for the coming year. God send that it passes more slowly thanthis one did. End note (1.) ED Hirsch Cultural literacy: what every American needs to knowNY Vintage 1988