Jo, on other thread wrote:I actually prefer the concrete Central Library to the new one.
Well, we visited the new Birmingham Central Library today, that's the one surrounded by barbed wire:
http://libraryofbirmingham.com/
It's been open about three weeks.
It's actually quite spectacular, inside as well as outside. There's escalators lit up in blue that whisk you up the first three floors, then one of those flat travelator thingies to the fourth. From there, it's a glass lift to the seventh or an ordinary lift to the ninth. The fifth, sixth and eighth aren't in use yet.
Although it's very spacious inside, it was pretty crowded. We were dogged on our tour of the building by about 50 pupils from Billesley Primary School ...... "Malachi, keep in line and do NOT wander off".
Quite a lot of the shelves are still empty (!) - still laying out the books, I guess - and some of the categories seemed a bit suspect, but there were lots of computer stations and tables for you to work at your research or whatever, including some very cosy, swivelly red armchairs with wingbacks at head height that seemed to deaden the surrounding sound, although once you sat in them, it was difficult to get out of them.
"Malachi, stop sulking!"
On each floor there are picture windows so you can look out of the barbed wire across the Birmingham rooftops and on the ninth floor, there is a rooftop garden as well as a reassembled room from the old 1882 library which displays the library's Shakespeare collections, etc. At the top, I think we were about 180 feet high, the views were stunning despite the haze, and I remembered that yes, I did suffer from vertigo.
"Malachi, one more go, then let the girls use the touchscreens ...."
Right down in the basement is the lending library which is actually quite small and not that well stocked yet, but I found a Terry Pratchett I haven't read for some time, and used it to try out the automated booking out system. The first touchscreen refused to work (I guess Malachi had beaten me to it). The second touch screen demanded a password (which I luckily remembered !), "issued" the book, which you just place on a shelf and somehow it scans it through the cover, and then printed a slip berating me that I already had two books out which were nearly overdue!
Well worth visiting if you're ever in the centre of Birmingham (it's in Broad Street, next to the Rep and the ICC), but try to avoid Malachi, who we last saw being "marshalled" on the concourse outside the front ......
) it does seem strange to have such a huge amount of money spent on one building, when so many smaller local libraries are going to the wall.............. 
