NLA launches ambassador program for 50th anniversary

18 April 2018 Books+Publishing

The National Library of Australia (NLA) has launched an ambassador program to help celebrate the library’s 50th anniversary, reports the Canberra Times.

Authors Kaz Cooke, Benjamin Law, Anita Heiss, Garth Nix and Peter FitzSimons will help to raise awareness of the institution through social media and will tell stories of their personal connections to the library.

Council chair Ryan Stokes said the library’s collection houses stories that help to ‘define who we are’ and that the ambassadors would help tell those stories ‘in their own voice’ on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Cooke, a cartoonist and author, said that one of her highlights was ‘going below stairs or backstage, if you like, to see the conservationists in preservation’.

The library’s collection is valued at $1.5 billion, comprising 10 million physical items and six million gigabytes of digital material.

The library is undertaking a number of other initiatives to celebrate its 50th anniversary, including curating a special Instagram account, @NLA50ppl, which profiles 50 people who work in and around the library’s reading rooms, and holding an exhibition to further explore the year 1968 in history.

Category: Library news