Planningxchange

In PX104, our interview guest is Vanessa Schernickau, the Chief Executive Officer of the Geelong Regional Library Corporation (GRLC). The GRLC provides library and information services to residents and visitors across the Geelong region on behalf of five local government councils. The network consists of a central library, 18 community libraries, three mobile libraries and website. It provides free, universal access to lifelong learning, reading and discovery.  The Geelong Library began in 1858 as part of the Mechanics Institute. Vanessa talks about her first library book and a lifetime love of libraries. She talks of the dynamic changes that have led to the modern library model. This model has changed with the times and now a substantial component of user requirements are not associated with physical books.  As the industrialist and great patron of public libraries Andrew Carnegie famously put it more than a century ago, “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is