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Keywords: Libraries

  • AUSTRALIA

    The geography of loneliness

    • John Chesterman and Ilan Wiesel
    • 01 March 2024

    The key to combatting increasing levels of loneliness and social isolation will likely start in the way we think about cities, public spaces and social care to enable meaningful connections between people, and help to guard against harms caused by habitual loneliness. But we'll need to get creative.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Referendums and reading lists reveal similar societal anxieties

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 October 2023
    4 Comments

    An examination of school reading lists and libraries unveils striking parallels with the debates and concerns surrounding the Referendum, highlighting the pervasive societal anxieties and the intricate interplay of national identity and values, and the ongoing need for empathy. 

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  • RELIGION

    Must suppression bring on depression?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 August 2023
    4 Comments

    Despite taking place 250 years ago, the Jesuit Suppression remains a deeply felt experience. Today, as exiles shape headlines, this chapter in Jesuit history poses a resonant question: How does a faith community endure and evolve when its very existence is challenged by the authority it holds sacred?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Undeterred by Kondo, let your library overflow

    • Philip Harvey
    • 20 July 2023
    6 Comments

    It's all very well to remove excess furniture, but furniture is not books. How many chairs does one need? Chairs are not books. To reduce a library as a household expedience is to objectify the books. Their contents are emptied of value, their history relegated to out-of-date. They have no more meaning than books in an Ikea display room. (From 2019)

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In praise of libraries

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 May 2023
    2 Comments

    As the world moves towards digitalisation, the importance of physical libraries is increasingly being questioned. But as local libraries struggle with underfunding and centralisation, the question remains: where else have we found their equivalent today?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Grappling with AI

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 15 February 2023
    1 Comment

    As the AI revolution begins, the question publishers must consider is how to integrate AI as a tool that enhances human skills and wisdom without replacing them. Ultimately, the goal should be to make our contribution to society more human, not less.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Critical issues

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 07 February 2023
    2 Comments

    Do you get imposter thoughts? Do you have an inner critic who has nasty things to say whenever you set out to create? You're not alone. If you are looking for a fun activity that will bring you into constant confrontation with your inner critic, write a novel. I did, and here’s what I learnt along the way.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Opening up the world: The Utopian vision of Cole’s Book Arcade

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 19 April 2022

    Edward Cole understood that books encouraged community. The businessman could rub shoulders with the tramp in his Arcade. Now, in an age of division and isolation, more than ever we need spaces which facilitate community; light-filled cathedrals dedicated to the love of knowledge and stories, and their power to cross borders, politically, ideologically and culturally.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Carrying the weight of the daily news

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 29 March 2022

    A house bursts into flames as it’s submerged in floodwaters. A doctor tells a cameraman filming a dying Ukrainian child to send the footage to Putin. A newspaper delves into the murder of a young woman. It’s like a fever dream: a pandemic bleeds into the edges of a global war. The news presents information, and it has no moral duty to tell us how we should feel about it or help us untangle the knot of feelings which emerge. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Disciplining delinquent words

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 October 2021
    2 Comments

    Sins have often been divided into those of thought, word and deed, with deed regarded as the worst. Today we pay more attention to sinful words, realising the harm that they can do. Bad words can bring social exclusion. Yet complex questions surrounding the use of words remain. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why I wish I'd never met Philip Roth

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 01 July 2021
    53 Comments

    While we can’t conflate accusations against Roth’s biographer with his subject, this recent Blake Bailey scandal invites us to revisit, through a 21st century lens, the world of someone considered one of the definitive writers of the 20th century.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    That first sanctuary

    • Ian Smith
    • 21 July 2020
    1 Comment

    He enters a university library at thirty-five feeling like an imposter, rougher-hewn from suffering than most students, wrapped in an aura he thinks religious pilgrims experience shuffling along echoing naves of Gothic cathedrals, sombre, joyous.

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