20 years on - our Librarian, Mrs Colleen Shipley, shares her perspective on her first 20 years at MGC

On the 20th May 2002 I began my job as Librarian at Marlborough Girls’ College, but it was incredibly different to the job I have now. To celebrate, commemorate I’d thought I’d share with you a little bit of what life was like back then. I apologize to anyone who comes across terminology they don’t understand - just revel in your youth.

The library housed the school’s main computer rooms with others being used for computer classes. It was a busy place but mainly used for typing up assignments. The biggest lesson students had to learn was to regularly save their work in case the computers ‘crashed.’

Research was done using books and encyclopedias - the hard copy version alongside Encarta on CD-Rom.

Everything on the Internet was true except Wikipedia which was only 16 months old.

Internet Explorer was the go to search engine and we multitasked while we waited for pages to load.

If we wanted local information we searched a site called Index New Zealand and ordered articles by sending a fax to the National Library who sent the article back by mail within seven days!

Photocopying was done using purchased $2 photocopy cards to make the copier go.

This of course was a separate piece of equipment to the printer.

When students lost their paper timetables or diaries - they looked up their timetable on a stand alone desktop that was regularly updated using a floppy disk.

Tomorrow when the war began was the most popular series while we waited for Harry Potter's 5th adventure.

Booksellers visited in person and we got lots of mail.

When people wanted you to do something for them - they came and asked in person.

20 Years on - books aren’t completely obsolete as predicted.

But my Librarians took great delight in reminding me that when I started in this job they weren't even born yet.