This article is from the August 2002 Issue of Update.

The Library of Birmingham will capture the opportunity for everyone to access learning, information and cultural expression with 21st century style and through all of the existing and emerging technologies. Through written, print, audio, visual and interactive technologies the new Library of Birmingham will link the people of Birmingham to the world. It will bring the world to Birmingham.’ Library of Birmingham Prospectus 2002.[1]

The project to replace the Birmingham Central Library with the Library of Birmingham has its origins somewhere in the world of regeneration, which forecasts opportunities in urban planning, cityscapes, construction, learning, enterprise and entertainment. It is also emerging as a centrepiece of the city’s bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2008.

The current library is the busiest building in the city, with 5,000 visitors a day from all backgrounds. Its success must inform thinking for a future library. It has splendid collections of archives, rare books and photographs but these are currently for the initiated and expert user and are only occasionally opened up to a local audience. There remain many opportunities for exploitation — for local or wider benefit.

Birmingham Central Library is a unique resource but few would call it beautiful. More critically, its infrastructure is crumbling — a troublesome legacy of its concrete construction.

Creating a concept

However, the greatest challenge for the library team is not the architecture, the planning or even the hectic timescale. It may not even be the fundraising. All these are predicated on creating a concept for the Library of Birmingham that will best serve users, partners and stakeholders.

In the first 10 years of its life most of its users will not be those who use or have a stake in the present Central Library. They will be people who are not yet born, have not yet moved to the city to live or to study, who haven’t yet set out in business or decided that their all-consuming passion will be the story of their family or their heritage.

So we are conceiving a library in the context of:

• huge demographic, social, cultural and economic change;
• massive, accelerating and endless change in the technologies of communication;
• slow but sure change in the patterns of education;
• growing recognition of learning for life and lifelong learning;
• dissolution of barriers between self-learner and expert-teacher.

New city libraries worldwide

The design of a library opened today, such as Norwich, Alexandria or Seattle (opens 2003), would have been conceived over the last five, maybe 10, years. We are now trying to see some 10 or 20 years ahead in a time of even greater and faster change. Against our current mission — learning, information and culture — we envisage changing expectations in a changing world:

• Lifelong learning will be the norm in our increasingly complex but communicative society and, as formal education takes up a smaller portion of longer lives, learning will take more forms — solo study, group and family learning, self-learning, experiential and interactive learning.
• Citizenship and government will be more diverse. Governance will be multidimensional — community, local, regional, national, transnational. Access to the means of citizenship will be pervasive — in the home, the workplace, the school. In the Library of Birmingham there will be access in a supportive environment where guidance will be on hand with context, history, and evaluation — as well as with the technology. The city library will be the hub of a city network of libraries and learning and cultural facilities. It can be delivered to all the communities of the city to the region and beyond.
• Culture — creativity, enterprise, innovation — will be expressed through new and increasingly diverse technologies. Literature and the reading experience will be sustained as a source of inspiration and understanding. The library’s cultural resources — photographs, archives, rare books — will be renewed through digital technology and be the basis for unprecedented experiences for local people and visitors.

Ideas are forming and reforming

• Diversity. In the cosmopolis that is Birmingham, there will be a multiplicity of cultures, faiths, races, interests, attitudes and values — all continuously changing. We will need a new take on social, cultural and economic diversity that goes beyond a monochrome view of UK society.
• Learning. While it may be some time before libraries are widely accepted as the primary place for access to learning, the Library of Birmingham will be an exemplar of a place for self-directed learning in a supportive environment.
• Information. The Library of Birmingham will not stand alone. Rethinking Birmingham’s central library means addressing all libraries, each one a part of a network of learning, community and cultural centres.
• Creativity. With literature — creative reading and writing — at its core, the library is more than ever a centre for the widest range of creative pursuits, building on its historical literary resources and drawing in communities of readers, players and creators for personal enrichment through the emerging enterprises of new creative industries.
• The people place. Above all it will be a place for people to get close to people. For that the library remains ideal. Come and go when you want. Be yourself. Find out. Connect. Regenerate ideas… and we’ll help you.
• Discovery. It should be a place of vibrant discovery, formed out of its historic, unique and iconic collections.
• Cultural capital. As we aspire to be the European Capital of Culture in 2008, with the new library as a flagship enterprise, we ask what is culture and how will we connect the ‘culture’ concealed in the library’s assets with the varied and varying lives and communities of the city?

So many questions …

We have to invent our library of the future. Reinventing the library is something we are frequently called upon to do — for instance in the latest Audit Commission report, Building Better Libraries.[2] At present we are probably nursing more questions than answers:

• How do we ensure the city library remains a major feature of the city’s cultural landscape?
• How will this library come to be owned by the country’s most diverse community? How will the Library of Birmingham succeed in quantitative measures in a city of 50 languages, every level of wealth and poverty known to our economy and a huge divergence of lifestyles and values?
• What will we want to know about in two or three decades from now? What ‘architecture of knowledge’ can be conceived that will reflect the future preoccupations of society? What will be the shape of knowledge in 20 years for the library learner who is into science or geography, politics or enterprise? How do we reinterpret and access archives and local studies resources to reflect the identity of the new societies?
• Where is the distinction between cultural experience, informal learning and entertainment, and how do we distinguish our respective roles against all those desires?
• What relationship should there be between the resources and the delivery of the library that meets users’ expectations? Will the library deliver accredited learning? With whom and in what partnerships?
• Can the library even more than now be a safe haven for children and a stimulus for the young adult? Can the excluded get inside?
• If, as we are stating, the library is both a central and equal part of the city’s library network, how will it differ from, serve and influence the smallest community library? As part of a network what will it deliver — remotely and on site?
• What will be the role of the staff post-People’s Network, when the interactive, supporting role is fully in place and the routines are just that? Assistant? Guide? Mentor?

On the regeneration agenda

The envisaged targets for the Library of Birmingham include:

• provide a mainspring for economic and social regeneration through learning, information and culture, supporting the city’s aspirations as a regional and European commercial centre;
• evolve in partnership with other libraries/resources in the city and region;
• generate a focal point for local civic life in the city centre and all of Birmingham;
• be an inspiring building, attractive and accessible in appearance, content and delivery, with an outstanding sustainable service culture;
• serve as an exemplar in sustainable, eco-friendly design;
• appeal to the widest cross-section of the population. Exist for, and be defined by, a diverse multi-ethnic, multicultural society and balance the diverse needs of all with the specialist needs of the minority;
• excel as a place for children, young people and families;
• integrate new creative and communications technologies with conventional printed and archive collections.

Consultation and involvement

These cannot be the only answers. There is a considerable challenge to face in learning what people might want or expect and addressing potentially negative concerns. We have to ensure people are informed of background and facts, thereby building ownership, and try and understand something that is years away.

An extensive programme of consultation and user involvement has started with users, non-users/citizens, current and potential partners and other stakeholders in the city, the region and beyond. It will be particularly important that the consultation process draws on the aspirations of children and young people, who will be the main stakeholders in the future of the Library of Birmingham.

This is a unique opportunity to shape not only the Library of Birmingham but libraries in general as this will be the most ambitious consultation exercise undertaken by Birmingham Libraries. It will involve arts organisations, youth councils, voluntary organisations, the Young People’s Parliament, and partner organisations, supporting our work on the project.

Other developments around the world

Although libraries of the scale and significance of the Library of Birmingham appear to be very few, there are a number of cities where a new city library is being developed. The strategic reasons are not dissimilar, including economic regeneration; city centre renaissance; cultural expression and identity; e-learning and interactive information; and promoting the city to the world.

There are also several city libraries which have been built in recent years or are currently going through the planning stages (see panel, right). All have lessons to offer. Like the Library of Birmingham they are people-centred; technology-driven and adaptable; and culturally relevant — built for diversity. To varying degrees, all the cities share features with Birmingham. They are major cities and regional centres with large populations; have a desire for innovation; have imperatives for economic growth and success, needing to combat poverty and exclusion; and aspire to global visibility in inter-city competition.

For their libraries there is a combination of aspirations or targets:

• a significant central facility and resource;
• a heavily used library with related cultural services;
• hub of a network of local libraries and other centres;
• collections of significant heritage value, newly accessible;
• breaking the mould in extending the exploitation of technologies;
• library services of economic value to the community.

Libraries have to be part of a bigger idea. When this happens on a civic scale, people respond. To judge by international example, people are responding all over the world.

References

1 Prospectus (www.birmingham.gov.uk/lob).

2 Building Better Library Services. Audit Commission, 2002.

John Dolan is Assistant Director, Library & Information Services, Birmingham City Council Leisure & Culture. Ayub Khan is Principal Project Officer, Library of Birmingham.