Recently I have come to realise that I can’t go on holiday without visiting a library in the area that I am staying. What can I say, I’m drawn to them. I find it’s always a useful experience to see what is going on in different libraries.

I’ve just come back from a few weeks in New Zealand and my library of choice on this trip was Wellington Central Library, one of the Wellington City Libraries.

One thing that I was immediately impressed with was the use of space. It is fairly open plan but the choice and placement of furniture creates natural zoning. This is especially evident on the ground floor where there’s a multimedia area, comfortable reading lounge and childrens space all interspersed with the library collections, issue and enquiry desks. It sounds cluttered but it really doesn’t feel that way. It defintely had an atmosphere that made me want to stay all day.

The second thing that jumped out at me was the signage, and in particular the Path Finder navigation leaflets covering a range of topics including Searching the Catalogue, My Library, Business Information and Government Statistics. These were prominently displayed on stands around the entrance to the library, the catalogue PCs and staff desks. Crucially they were also placed in relevant positions on shelves.

The last thing I want to comment on was attempts to engage different user communities. This poster in particular stood out to me:

So, if you happen to find yourself in central Wellington with some time to spare, I’d thoroughly recommend a visit. And if you can extend that visit to include a Flat White and an Afghan in Clark’s Cafe (situated on Floor 1) you definitely won’t be disappointed.

British Library

Whenever I organise anything for a group I always get nervous beforehand in case all does not run smoothly. Well, nothing ran smoothly on our away day but thankfully all events were beyond my control so in an odd way it actually took some of the pressure off! First off our train was cancelled at Reading due to a fatality on the line. We managed to get to London on another route but arrived an hour and a half late as a result of stopping at every station between here and timbucktu.

Thankfully our kind hosts changed their plans and pushed our visit three hours back so that as soon as we set foot on London soil we were able to get some much needed lunch. The only problem was our favoured restaurant had a gas leak and had to close. By now we were beginning to think we were doomed to fail at everything we did. Luckily Belgo have multiple restaurants so we were able to walk to one just round the corner and as soon as we had some food inside us things started to look up.

We made it to the British Library on time for our appointment and had a really interesting couple of hours with the BIPC team. I was particularly interested in seeing how the range of our collections and services compared. I found that there were some quite close similarities in our resources and the attitudes and expectations of our users. Yet the services we each offer are vastly different and that in a sense is due the differing nature of our libraries. For me the really useful thing was seeing where the budding entrepreneurs among our students might go for information and guidance after they’ve finished their course. I have come away with some great ideas for the new range of guides we’re currently working on and a deep envy for anyone who has a library space that can accommodate multi-purpose training rooms and a networking lounge.