Media Release

Students and Teachers to Benefit from Library Website Ergo

Tomorrow the State Library of Victoria will launch a website designed to help secondary students find information, understand the research process and interrogate information from a variety of sources.

The site, called ergo, uses the unique collections of the State Library of Victoria to help VELS and VCE students to better understand the research process, essay writing and study techniques. It comprises more than 230 distinct pages and includes some 500 photographs of materials held in the State Library’s collections.

Ergo provides an overview of pivotal and intriguing points in Victoria’s history, often offering alternative views on the accepted stories of our past. The site examines four main historical themes: Crime in Victoria, Victorian Rights, Victoria’s Geography and Colonial Melbourne. Within these subjects is detailed information on women’s suffrage, the fight for the eight hour working day, Indigenous rights, Ned Kelly, the Melbourne gangland wars and many more topics designed to engage and interest students.

Teachers are provided with direct curriculum links (VELS 5, 6 and VCE), information packs and document templates to assist with lesson planning.

Ergo content producer and teacher, Linda Angeloni, believes ergo will be of particular benefit to students from years 7-10, known as middle-year students.

‘Middle-year students are at a very important developmental point in their education. If they are not adequately engaged with interesting, accessible and comprehensible information at this stage many struggle to find scholastic form in later years.

Ergo is designed to interest students by introducing them to a wide-range of materials and new ways of thinking about learning. It is empowering because it asks students not to accept information at face value but to interrogate and investigate it for themselves. Investigation and questioning leads to genuine learning while providing the tools vital to successful study and life skills generally in later years,’ she said.

Ergo is populated with video interviews of prominent Victorian writers and historians such as Helen Garner, Robyn Annear, Tony Wilson and Dr Andrew Brown-May. Each guest speaks about the importance of research, particularly research of primary sources, in producing solid, convincing or scholarly works.

As an online resource ergo is available to anyone with a computer and internet access - 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The site uses text, videos, photographs and practical exercises to address various styles of learning.

State Library of Victoria CEO and State Librarian Anne-Marie Schwirtlich said she was very pleased to see ergo launched.

‘Librarians have been helping people find and navigate information for as long as there have been libraries. Ergo is a simple, elegant, thoughtful and important extension of that role.

Every secondary student in Victoria can benefit from ergo and they can do it in class, at home or wherever and whenever they choose to learn.

This continues this Library’s goal of providing, in as many ways as possible, Information, Ideas and Inspiration for Everyone,’ she said.

Ergo will go live at 9am Tuesday 15 April and will be launched by author and historian Robyn Annear at Coburg Senior High School.

www.slv.vic.gov.au/ergo

Media inquiries

Matthew van Hasselt
Media relations coordinator
State Library of Victoria
Ph: 03 8664 7263
Email: mvanhasselt@slv.vic.gov.au