Perth Down Under from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

After amazing food at the local Chinese Duck restaurant, where we find out that people in Australia bring their own beer and wine to the restaurant we go for one big beer at a local pub. This day has been so long and we are so tired that we seem like bewildered eskimos looking at all the summer people in summer clothes. We have not landed yet that is for sure. After a good night sleep in Jill Benn’s appartment we get up quite early to work on our presentation. We want to make a guided tour around DOK in Piclens by Cooliris.
This program is so cool, but there are so many pictures of DOK Delft on flickr that it takes a while to find the right ones.
10.30 sharp Kathryn Greenhill and Constance Wiebrands pick us up and we decide to make the theme of the day: 5 things to do in Perth on your day off with a librarian.
First thing we start out with is King’s Park. A wonderful park on a hill overlooking the city and the two arms of the river. The sun is hot and we need sunblock as the Baobab trees provide no shadow. In this park you can actually walk through a path high up in the trees, which is fun and we see Kakatoes and Australian Magpies, which are totally different from our Magpies, The second thing to do in Perth is of course shopping. We need a new firewire cable as the silly people at Apple decided that it would be a great idea to change the entrance for the plug so that everybody needs to buy a new wire. Here is marketing for libraries my friends, why not change the library card for every new Harry Potter that is published and make people pay. The third thing to do is eat and we have lunch downtown talking about all the great things and horrible things that involve our jobs in the library. The situation here is different and at the same time it is not. The greatest difference is that here the central organisation provides the libraries not so much with money as with books. This leaves the library not so many choices as what to do with their budgets and it seems like horror to us. What if in the future we have less demands for books and more demand for other media? How are these libraries going to be able to meet with the public’s changing demands, We have to further investigate this, but one needs not to have a huge brain to understand that this is not the best option to fund libraries.
The fourth thing to do is to visit Conny’s library at Curtin Univerity of Technology. They have just opened a new iZone, which has been designed in cooperation with the students and looks stunning. Drawing mats, big screens, it is all there and the place is packed with students. This is best practise indeed. We video the whole room and it looks great. There is also a lounge a restaurant and a place for an exhibition. This place makes us happy again and you see the result. All computers are used, even on a Sunday. We say goodbye to Conny and decide to go for the fifth thing, which is a local parade at Freemantle, in which local librarians participate as Snowywhite, Harry Potter, Rapunsel and so on. Jetlag hits in hard at this Lewis Carol hallucination. We leave to close our day at the beach where Willem de Vlamingh landed in Australia in 1697 as I recall correctly. This Dutch ancestor did not see anything worthwhile. Goes to show how wrong you can be. We meet up with Tricia and Sue and talk about their plan on building a new beautiful library on the coast. It is strangely familiar as they find it hard to come up with a name that is satisfactionary to all the three communities that pay for the library. We had the same problem not so long ago when the three different departments merged and became DOK, the library concept center. We did come up with a name, but will not reveal anything yet, They still have to decide. What I do know is that these two librarians are so enthusiastic and full of life that the result will be stunning. We hope to come back for the opening if we ever survive this trip.
That evening in less than an hour a fever comes up that burns me up. Hearbeats rise to an absolute record and a nasty cough sets in. Panic on how to do the presentation at the State Library like this. Pills pills pills. We arrive a little late and can not get the mac work on the beamer at first and I am ready to be carried off. Finally the presentation starts and from then on it is more than ok. A good group of librarians, who participate in the video and come up with good answers and in the end with good questions. They love our tour of DOK and are interested in the Game flightcase. We should find someone to make them here in Australia as they are expensive to transport, so if you know someone please mail the Shanachies. Now we are in a hotel near the airport. Tomorrow at 07.30 am we fly to Brisbane and get the new Mothership. I hope Jaap is not getting the same virus, but seeing the blood pouring down from his eyes there is little chance.’ I see a light still shining from the west down to the east, any day now any way now, I shall be released’ Bob is singing in my head. Sleep, nature’s sweet restorer, come to the rescue.