It is not often that I write or talk about books. Yes, I am “proud to be” a librarian, but there is just so much more nowadays that draws our attention and urges us to expose images, weblectures, maps, research data and articles besides our bold books. What I do know is that we want these books to circulate, be hold, be read and be loved.
So we will make a first step in changing our policy by allowing our readers to keep the book they borrowed for a longer period, and will renew the loaning period automatically, if no reserves have been made on the book. I am curious to see how this turns out – we still want the books back in our book gallery after some time, but who knows, perhaps we should be rethinking the whole “borrowing” concept. Because books are there to be hold, read and be loved, not to be on our shelves. Things change. But not so fast.
Of course we are proud to have this beautiful book gallery – it is iconic and makes our library complete.
The past month (January 2013) we celebrated the 15 year anniversary of the Library building and had an exhibition in our Library Learning Centre, where we showed our ‘ iCone’. When plans were made for a new Library building on the campus, the requirement that a new building should be ‘future proof’ was included in the set of requirements. So yes, our building is future proof, with unique features, such as the (energy efficient) grass roof, a special way of cold and heat storage and of course our fascinating layout and design.
However, we have been working hard ourselves the past five years to keep also the usage and identity of the building `up to speed’ with our changing user requirements. We now offer a diversity in study spaces, places to work together, lounge and relax chairs, exhibitions, workshops, a fine cup of coffee/tea – a true one day stay. Things that were not included in the original `future proof’ requirements. So things indeed change. And sometimes faster than you think.
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