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AROUND CAMPUS
LANGER LIBRARY TURNS 50! This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Langer Library, officially opened by Mr K Cairns, Minister for Housing, on 26 March 1972 when the College's population was approximately 600 students. JAN LEWIS
Senior Librarian Langer Library
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nown officially as the Karl Langer Memorial Library, it is named after Dr Karl Langer, the Austrian-born and Queenslandbased architect and town planner, for his significant contribution to the architectural design of the St Peters Indooroopilly campus, the most notable of which is the Chapel. The location of the Chapel and Langer Library, facing each other across the College’s Campus Heart is no coincidence. Part of Dr Langer’s masterplan for the Campus Heart and reflecting a classical Greek influence with a place of worship at one end and a place of learning at the other, these two buildings represent the most essential elements of St Peters Lutheran College – learning and faith. The library building itself has been an amazingly adaptable structure with its open plan design and prominent location. At the time of its opening, a unique collection of resources was established which has since been developed to support over 1,500 students in Years 7 to 12. The library also provides support to students in the Upper and Lower Primary Years and the Springfield campus, as well as to teaching and administration staff, and parents. It has also played a key role with libraries of other Brisbane secondary schools with network meetings, Teacher Librarian professional development, reading competitions and sharing of resources. The Langer Library is a product of over 50 years of planning and implementation and is an inspiration to many. We acknowledge the foresight of its development by the then Head of College, Dr Carson Dron. We also pay tribute to Helen Palmer, the founding Librarian who managed the library until 1992. She developed a wonderful library service and collection. Over the years, we have benefited from many dedicated library staff who shared in the library’s vision to be pivotal in the delivery of St Peters’
Plus Ultra | June 2022
educational objectives and goals, supporting the curriculum and recreational needs. We focus on the development of students as life-long learners who can access and utilise information resources. The facility has seen a few changes over the years, especially physically. It is no longer the old standard of tall book stacks, silent with ‘shushing’ staff. Today, Langer Library is a vibrant and welcoming space with services and resources to cover the current Australian, QCAA and International Baccalaureate curricula. It is a wonderous hive of activity six days a week, open for extended hours to support boarders and day scholars – some days open well before school starts, until 8.30pm at night. On Sundays you will find boarders there for afternoon study. Technology has always played a vital role at the library. On opening in 1972, the Langer Library housed progressive technologies, equipment and resources including audiotape players and recorders, U-matic and then VHS videotapes, filmstrips and 16mm films loaned from the Department of Education’s film library. Library staff were thrilled to be supplied with a memory typewriter producing catalogue cards for the 90-drawercard catalogue system. These were all technological wonders in the 70s and 80s. In 1984 St Peters was one of the first schools to operate a Video Commander distribution system which was based in the library and enabled a collection of over 14,000 videos to be distributed to classrooms across the upper campus. By 2001 the library had 4,700 class bookings for video playbacks. This grew to over 19 VCRs to over 83 classrooms and eight student TV monitors in the library. In 1991 we introduced the automated library catalogue – we had five computers in the library. The library’s book stock was completely online by 1993 and 1996 saw the introduction of the internet and a CDROM network. In 1998
