NSW State Library Collection Repository and Western Sydney Centre
Client: State Library of NSW
Collaborators: Savills
Location: Western Sydney, NSW
Year: 2016
Taking the collection to the people
Brief
The State Library of NSW is one of the country’s preeminent cultural organisations, with the remit to collect and preserve a world-leading heritage collection. With its collection storage facility in need of a significant upgrade, the state library of NSW sought a long-term storage solution, but also wanted to grasp the opportunity to reach audiences beyond the Sydney metro. This led to the proposed concept of a Western Sydney Collection Repository and an associated public-facing centre.
Approach
Left Bank Co. were engaged to partner with Savills to develop and produce a vision document for this new facility, for the purpose of articulating the vision and framing the business case to treasury. Through a series of workshops with the library’s leadership team, drawing on existing research and evidence and in close consultation with Savills, we developed a vision for how this collection repository could also be an important cultural asset for the people of Western Sydney. We produced a compelling strategic vision document that captured the need and opportunity, as well as details of how it would operate and perform, with a wealth of evidence to support the concept.
Impact
Although this proposal was initially unsuccessful with treasury, it has prompted renewed discussions about the library’s needs in terms of storage and rapid retrieval as well as other satellite projects that could bring its collection to a wider audience.