Listen: Jim Eyre of WilkinsonEyre
Faced with a digital revolution, public libraries are adapting and changing from anonymous municipal buildings to accessible community resources. WilkinsonEyre’s recent overhaul of Oxford’s New Bodleian (now Weston) library has opened it up to the public from a ‘closed’ university institution. Jim Eyre believes other libraries could learn from its example. Jim Eyre is a founding director of architecture practice WilkinsonEyre
The public opening of the New Bodleian (now the Weston) Library in March provides a moment to reflect on how academic research libraries are evolving in response to a combination of societal pressures, modes of scholarship and the funding environment. We have seen public libraries adapt over time from their Victorian and early 20th century incarnations. Then, the architecture was one of grandeur asserting civic gravitas, well-suited to an aspirational but hierarchical society in which self-improvement was the only way up.
Later in the 20th century the library, like many public buildings, became a rather anonymous municipal resource. In parallel with the digital revolution, the central city library has returned to its status of civic icon, its architecture speaking less of authority but more as an expression of cultural capital. Good examples are at Seattle and the new Birmingham Library.
These are now thoroughly accessible community resources where all sorts of useful information can be found and exchanged, frequently through digital means. The physical collections are there but they don't necessarily dominate.
My particular experience is with the academic research library. The changes we have seen through the Weston Library project I believe will gather pace and stimulate other institutions to take a more outward-looking stance in response to the wider public's appetite to see unique artefacts. The phenomenal growth in the quantum of digital information that can be accessed via the internet has been accompanied by a thirst to see real tangible material.
It is interesting to dwell on why this is happening: in part it can be accounted for by the ease of access to digital information (including televisual forms) stimulating interest, allowing people to know more of their history and developing an awareness of the existence of specific material. I feel that there is a reaction against the readily available nature of digital material and its curiously transient character.
Information may be available for all to see, but how do we know that it is unadulterated and that we can trust it or that it won't suddenly disappear?
The authentic hard copy, or first edition, or better still manuscript, illuminated or otherwise, is the closest we can get to figures from the past, and along with aspects of the built environment reinforce a sense of our own history.
The research library that is at the heart of a major university needs to compete globally in attracting leading scholars. Comfortable reading rooms with good light and a certain atmosphere conducive to intense study are fundamental (along with the collections), but facilities that allow interaction between scholars are important as are seminar rooms where rare material can be brought out for viewing. What seems to bring the library to life is the delicate balance of public engagement with the reader's facilities. At the Weston we have a large public space with a cafe in the building.
Exhibition spaces and a lecture theatre are at the same level, all accessible to the public. Above, the workings of the library are on show. Readers can be seen going back and forth to pick books from the open-access reference collections.
The building's architecture has been made to adapt from its prime function as a store for books - not even discernible from its 'closed' appearance - to a far more welcoming proposition. In Oxford, though the university has an incredibly strong physical presence in the city, its buildings including the colleges are mostly seen through narrow doorways to a hidden and elevated existence beyond. The Weston Library changes this and is an embodiment of the university opening up and welcoming the public in.
The project came about due to a need to preserve the collections in the right environmental conditions, safe from the risk of destruction by fire and to meet security requirements. But it was the recognition that public facilities would enhance the experience that made funding more attractive to donors. The Bodleian has the most wonderful collections and with these it has the potential to schedule exhibitions and events long into the future, based not only around its own material but also through its own convening power.
Other institutions have extraordinary collections too that may be little known to the wider public. While digitisation can improve accessibility I would like to see resources directed to enabling greater exposure of these collections.
The list of facilities needed to be included in the architectural brief is a simple one, but the possibilities for broadening our knowledge and experience are enormous.
