An Early Monash Pioneer: Appointed 1964, Retired 2003

Monash University had its first intake sixty years ago, in 1961, and has quickly grown from zero to 70,000 students. During this period the role of the library was transformed by the appearance of electronic information resources. Marta Chiba and others with the interests of the library at heart reached out to local and wider institutions in order to develop a world-class library in a short space of time. In her last year of life Marta Chiba wrote a memoir of the almost forty years she had been with the science library at Monash, years that almost exactly coincided with the first forty years of the University’s existence.
This article comprises her words in that memoir with a little contextualising information added. It is a record of envisaged and seized opportunities.