New library in Kolding inaugurated in February 2006
In Kolding the hybrid library has been realised to a great degree. Focus is on processes: Learning, play, study activities, meetings and cultural experiences. The processes are underpinned by the architecture, including integrated information technology.
The firm of architects Arkitema has designed the privately financed building on four floors, also containing hotel and private apartments, a neat and standardized look.
Once inside things begin to happen. After having returned your material in the automat wrapped in a glasshouse on two floors, you can take a look at the News Wall. Six international, national and local TV stations present current topical events, a Listening Post with dedicated head sets is not yet in place, but the signal is clear: Comprehensive and topical information dissemination. Then on to the Square, a large central space that provides an overview of the library including the first floor and offers information on digital notice boards. Here you find newspapers and journals –including those on the net – and a number of exhibitions are staged here. The ground floor also contains the children’s department with two independent rooms attached. ’0-5’ with a view of the lake is filled with picture books for this age group, and there is a staircase/plateau construction intended for reading séances. ’Children X’ is a workshop-orientated room with big screen, projector, a number of computers and accessories related to the actual subject, for example clothes for dressing up. ’Children X’ is for the most part crowded until bursting point by playing and experimenting children.
Next to the children’s library you will find IT-Lab, housing 25 computers with different programmes. Apart from IT-Lab there are two meeting rooms in association with the circulation area, to be used for example by groups of students and for introductions. Both rooms have smartboards. All booking takes place via the net.
The two large departments ’Facts’ and ’Fiction’ are on the first floor and like in all the other departments shelving and presentation are well-planned, accentuated by plasma screens for subject-related presentation, films etc. Contact to the ground floor is one of the great experiences on the first floor. And then there are the orange seats facing the castle lake: high class. All over the library you find many oases for sitting down, where one can work alone or in groups, read or just relax. The oases are well defined and furnished with classic furniture.
The conclusion is that at the moment Kolding Library is second to none in Denmark. To an extremely high degree the library meets the demands that the citizen can rightly level at the hybrid library anno 2006.
The library is the most frequently visited arena in Den-mark, society’s open forum for learning, cultural inspiration, democratic processes and qualified meetings between people.
Innovation and knowledge closely linked to reflection and recreation. The library is a diverse space for the development of ’Bildung’, identity and context, for each individual as well as for society as a whole. The library is a living symbol of integration in Danish society as well as in a global perspective.
The library belongs to the public and to the public’s potential opportunities for improved quality of life.
Libraries that are not currently being updated technologically, in terms of competencies and physical frames very soon become uninteresting to the users. It is therefore positive to witness a strong innovative tendency in many libraries in Denmark in relation to physical frames, including interplay with digital resources. Work goes on with experimental zone, integration in relation to other institutions and functions, context as regards content and strategy, visualisation of digital resources as well as film and TV, interactivity and learning. Last, but not least, efforts are concentrated on the library as a cultural and identity-developing forum in the local community, and a vital point is that libraries to a very great degree evolve with focus on the citizens’ needs and in an interplay with the citizens.
