Bringing Research Knowledge Together

Up to seven million research volumes and important artefacts from around the world will now live together in a library fourteen times larger than Egypt’s legendary Great Library of Alexandria.

Located at La Trobe University in Melbourne, the controlled environment storage and access facility is the second stage of the CAVAL Archival and Research Materials Centre (CARM). The facility, boasts 78 kilometres of shelving – the distance from Geelong to Melbourne – and was made possible through a partnership between eleven Australian universities.

Opening the library today, Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr praised the universities for working together to overcome a shared challenge that allows academics access to key research material.

“The digital age has changed the way we store and access knowledge. Books remain vital, but storing them imposes a significant cost burden on universities,” Senator Carr said.

“By working together these institutions have developed an innovative and cost-effective way to free up university library space, whilst making printed resources accessible to a wider community of users.”

Senator Carr highlighted the importance of high-quality research infrastructure for Australian universities. “The productivity of any research institution depends on the quality of its staff and the quality, quantity and accessibility of its other physical resources,” he said.

“It is critical that members of the research community work together, in partnership with government, to meet our infrastructure needs.

“More than ever the Government is encouraging collaboration between universities. This is through initiatives like the Collaborative Networks Program, Cooperative Research Centres and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. I am delighted at the new partnerships these programs are fostering."

The universities who made this facility, know as CAVAL CARM2, possible are the Australian Catholic University, RMIT, Deakin University, La Trobe University, Monash University, Swinburne University, the universities of Ballarat, Melbourne, New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria.