Disheartening the visitor

For a long time — nearly twenty years — I had a very clear candidate for Worst Entrance To A Public Library Ever, though thankfully that particular entrance barely survived the millennium. I've now found one that's worse. No names, no pack drill, it wouldn't be fair to the staff who I know are trying their best in very trying circumstances.

The other day I popped into this library. I've been meaning to go and have a nosy for a while. Up to a few years ago this town had a reasonably busy little library, nothing special, in a simple brick two-story box of a building. The shopping area of the town got redeveloped quite extensively, one of the casualties being the old library. It was the replacement I'd been meaning to visit.

The good news is that the building's well-signed in the shopping area and made easy to find because there's a lot of colourful and useful library posters in the window. The first bit of bad news is that it's on the first floor above a supermarket so you can't idly walk past, see the library in use and be tempted in. But the posters and notices in the window try to draw you in.

Sadly, once you are drawn in you're in a small lobby with just enough room to wheel a buggy round to a lift or else take the escalator directly in front of you. Everything is grey: pale grey walls, mid grey ceiling, dark grey carpet, steel grey lift doors and escalator. It's all a bit soulless. Nothing much invites you to go up the escalator: it rises up into a dark grey shadow with no knowing that anything's up there, least of all a library. All in all pretty nasty.

Once you get upstairs it's slightly better, though that's despite the design of the library not because of it. The colour scheme is followed again, relentlessly, with grey metal shelving and an extensive network of exposed pipes in the ceiling space also painted mid-grey, the building designer obviously being a big fan of warehouse shopping chic. Or else one of the Borg. The overall effect was softened as far as possible by posters and displays but there wasn't physically a lot of scope for making it a much more human environment. Which was a shame as there were good things going on in there including a very enthusiastic rhythm and rhyme session going on in the enclosure that was the children's library. Lots of colourful books on the shelves may have helped a bit but this is a local authority that was closing libraries and cutting book funds back when the rest of us were refurbishing and replenishing so the staff didn't have many resources to play with there.

Generally speaking this is just the worst of a trend I've seen over the past few years, new library builds by architects and designers who see the library space as being like an office or else just a room with a few shelves of books in it. For all the consultations that go on it's evident that the designers haven't made any effort to understand how the business of the library is run:

• The need to invite the visitor in, ease them back out again and leave them wanting to come back soon; 
• The different lines of flow for different kinds of use and different kinds of customer;
• The ease of navigation so that somebody standing in the entrance knows immediately where they need to go;
• The essential requirement of lines of sight for staff so that they can provide unobtrusive supervision and support;
• The capability for change in response to early experience of use (like some landscape designers who only hard pave paths after a few months so that paths follow the "cow lines" established by the people using the space) and to allow for development of delivery of the services on offer;
• Most of all, the acknowledgement that the library space is a human space so people have to feel comfortable in it.

None of this costs anything except a bit of effort and a willingness to understand the desired outcomes that are being designed for, Sadly…

Visible security

A long, long time ago, back when we first put the People's Network into Rochdale's libraries, I got worried about the physical security of all the kit we were putting out there. A few months before we'd had a break-in at Langley Library (back when it was in a stand-alone building next to the bus stop): somebody had drilled through a wall panel into the stock room and pinched a couple of the "homework" PCs we had in the children's library. So I worried about it a bit.

To my mind there's two types of security:

• Rendering something for all intents and purposes non-existent to anybody who isn't authorised to know about it.

• Something in your face that says: "We both know there's something here but it would be a pain in the arse for you to try and have away with it.

In a library context where we were wanting everyone to know there were PCs for public use invisibility wasn't an option so we needed something conspicuous to put off the scallies and sneak thieves.

Somebody, I can't remember who, pointed me in the direction of a chap called Peter Radcliffe, trading locally as Nexus Computers who sold computer safes. At the time Peter was selling metal computer safes. There was nothing subtle about these: they were made of plate metal and the fittings used to fix them to the furniture were uncompromisingly industrial. They did the job brilliantly. Only one thing bothered me.

Back in those days computers came in three colours: "white" (beige), grey (beige) and beige (grey). Dead boring. About this time Rochdale was in the early stages of a complete refurbishment of nearly all its libraries. The aim was to make them lighter, brighter and more colourful and I wasn't much keen on installing a lot of battleship grey boxes into this bright new landscape. So I asked Peter if they were available in any other colours. He came back with a paint sheet from the metal-bashing shop he was working with.

"I'll have that," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. In gloss finish."
"You're mental!"
"Can you do it?"
"The customer is always right. We can do it if you really want it. Are you really sure? Really?"
"Yes, please."

The colour? It was

Signal Violet

And so it came to be.

I got a bit of stick about it. Not least because I hadn't spent any time whatever consulting anyone about it (ordinarily I'd accept a good shin-kicking for that but I only had four months to do a complete implementation of the People's Network from scratch across the whole borough and we had just had the one and only planning meeting where we had spent three hours watching a debate about the position of a chair in a particular library). But I stuck to my guns. Still do, in fact:

• This was aggressively-visible security.

• It fitted in with the bright, colourful feel of the libraries.

• They were an easy visual cue. We hadn't consciously gone in for any branding at that stage but it provided a consistent, obvious "Here be computers" message to the libraries' customers.

If I had my time again would I make that same decision? Dead right I would. And Peter still thinks I was barmy.

Abstract thinking 2

A while back I had a bit of a play with some pictures of libraries, turning them into kaleidoscope images. I said that I'd come back a bit later to see if I could pick out the new reburbishments from the older builds. I struggled a bit, I'll admit. Which turns out to be surprising as when you clump them all together it becomes obvious...

Builds and refurbishments before 2005

Builds and refurbishments after 2005

Abstract thinking

I've been having a play with some photos of our libraries, for no good reason other than I found the effects to be pleasing. As you can see, it's a simple application of a kaleidoscope function. I'm wondering if there's anything to be read into the results.

I'll come back to this in a few weeks, when I've forgotten the running order, to see if I can pick out which have been recent refurbishments and/or relocations.

Making an interesting library

This is an interesting new library in Australia. I'm not altogether sure I'd be comfortable living in it (certainly not with those chairs!), but it's definitely an eye-opener!

Looking at it, I'm not altogether sure it would cost a lot more to kit a library out this way, as opposed to something rather more traditional. We've done quite a lot of library refurbishment over the past few years, mostly done in the style of modern book stores, and they've gone down pretty well. With the exception of the new-look Darnhill Library we've not really been adventurous as far as the children's library area's concerned, though. If and when we ever move a library into a fully-fledged joint use building with the public end of different services being integrated, I'd hope we'd end up having some part of the operation feeling like Mt. Gambier Library.