Remote Australian Library System Receives Gates Award

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 8/20/2007

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s 2007 Access to Learning Award, worth $1 million, goes to the Northern Territory Library (NTL),  a regional public library system based in Darwin, Australia, serving isolated indigenous populations. The award, given by the foundation’s Global Libraries initiative, cites NTL’s innovations in bringing computer and Internet technology to its users. As part of the award, Microsoft, a Global Libraries initiative partner, will donate $224,000 in software and technology training curriculum to upgrade the organization’s 300 library computers, which serve an area with limited telephone service and few bookstores, schools, or other institutional buildings.

"The community libraries are helping to address the social and economic inequities indigenous communities face," said Jo McGill, director of NTL, in a Gates Foundation news release. One innovation: the Our Story database, which allows archiving of digital recordings and photographs on library computers, draws people to visit the libraries and to contribute to the database themselves. The library will use the award to increase training opportunities for its community library officers and library users, expand Our Story to more communities, make electronic books from the Our Story database, and expand its early literacy program.