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Photo: Rob Banks OPPOSITE the State Library of Victoria is one of the city's 10newsstands. Its big doors, opened wide to passersby, busilydisplay scores of magazines and newspapers. It's a visual overloadbut, once examined, these publications speak of the diverse specialinterests we humans enjoy. We are, they quickly reveal, a verypeculiar lot. There are scandalrags, acres of goss and gloss, anddesignsavvy lifestyle mags bloated with pretty pictures butdecidedly light on text. There are gruff magazines about cars,trucks and motorcycles. Or dip into a miasma of puzzle andcrossword compendiums, sleek computer periodicals, sciencejournals, sports and newsfeature weeklies or scaryladmags with muscles, bosomy girls and recycled sex tips. And, ofcourse, there are good oldfashioned newspapers. Periodically, for almost 40 years, library staff have beenswooping on this newsstand (or others) to collect on anallotted day an example of every single item for sale. Advertisement: Story continues below It is a snapshot of a particular moment in time, of what we arereading and thinking (or not thinking) about. It captures a sliceof contemporary culture that now, as the 21st century hits itsstride, is becoming ever more difficult to define, explain andpredict. As librarians study these inkonpaper publications examininghow and why our reading habits have changed since the 1970s,complex questions are provoked. What do the things we read sayabout us, individually and as a society? What do we hope for whenwe read, what pleasures does it afford us? How do we readshort bursts or longer stretches? Will our living librariesone day become museums, full of curios indeed, what is thefuture of the printed word and should we resist change thatthreatens to make the modern printing press, and the way we Rosetta Stone consumeinformation, obsolete? Will it all be twittered away into abbreviation? Humans have been making and consuming written texts in one formor another since the Sumerian and Egyptian empires more than 3000years ago. Their clay tablets and papyrus scrolls faithfullyrecorded information, turning thoughts, ideas and events into asymbolic language. As a consequence, we began to outsource ourmemory functions from the mind's interior realm to the physicalworld tablets and scrolls were but a prototype for today'sUSB data sticks and digital storage. Eventually, slowly, over centuries, those ancient forms ofstoring and distributing information gave way to the pages boundtogether in the formats we know today newspapers,magazines, journals, books. Just as those ancient scroll makers andtablet carvers had to change format, generations of publishers and printers have watched their techniques and forms be obliterated bya succession of new technologies. But these mutations happened over long periods, quite unlike themassive and lightningfast changes our contemporary reading habitsand cultures have undergone since the arrival of the internet,cyberspace and increasingly sophisticated computerbased and mobiletechnologies. Now, books, magazines and newspapers are said(usually by those with vested internet interests) to be starting togive off the dusty aroma of ancient artefacts. Here at the library, the collections manager, Des Cowley,unloads some cardboard boxes off a trolley.

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