As the 21st century dawned, bringing with it an unprecedented explosion in networked electronic information, the doomsayers were predicting the end of libraries as we know them and a declining need for new library buildings. Certainly there has been a shift in focus from the collection-based libraries of the past to a more user-centred approach where access to information takes precedence over its storage, but the libraries in cyberspace have not had it all their own way. Peter Davey, writing in the Architectural review in September 2001 on the role of cultural and art institutions in the new age of the Internet, pointed out that despite the power of digitisation and the availability of a wealth of information in electronic versions, ‘we need physical libraries and the books they contain because culture is far more complex than acquisition and assembly of facts. It is about thought and sensation’. He went on to say, in the context of Snøhetta’s design for the Biblotheca Alexandrina, that ‘it must provide a place in which scholarship is fostered, not just functionally, but socially as well’.

Leaving a 200-year-old building that was never meant to house a library for a 21st-century facility that strives to address the library’s future needs for 25 years doesn’t seem like a daunting task. But mix together sentimental attachments, institutional idiosyncrasies, federal government review of a private building, historic landmark status, and the administrative merger of four library collections into a single library, and life gets interesting – especially when your architect is Robert Venturi, Mr. ‘Learning from Las Vegas’.

With a detailed but not site-specific building program, the librarians at Rhode Island School of Design made the case for a new library three times the size of the existing facility. The site became specific with the donation of an early 20th-century grand banking hall. This paper addresses the role of the librarian in the design and construction process and includes an analysis of the way the new library meets the program objectives. In the early 1990’s after several early attempts to resolve the library’s space constraint at Rhode Island School of Design, the librarian was given a useful bit of advice: Stop trying to find the space. You must focus first on the program. What is it that you really need?

The Docklands campus of the University of East London (UEL) is located in one of the fastest-growing regeneration areas in the UK. It is also one of the most dramatic and visually stunning new libraries in the sector. Good communication with everyone involved in the planning and design process was crucial to the success of the building. The design, the engineering, the widely varying subject areas supported, the dynamics of the library staff and the quality of the external bodies involved, all contribute to the whole. For art and architecture students the large clean space has meant that they are once again able to use the library in a creative way.

The Museum of Modern Art’s ten-year building project provided new, purpose-built spaces for the library and museum archives, one of the world’s premier research resources documenting modern and contemporary art. This article summarizes the planning and implementation of the new space and reflects on its successes after six months of operations.

When the family of a major film maker offers you his archive, what do you do? University of the Arts London rose to this challenge, and achieved a major strategic goal – creation of a state-of-the-art Archives and Special Collections Centre, which would be a fitting demonstration of the University’s mission and aspirations and of Stanley Kubrick’s legacy. Through project management and collaboration, in less than two years, the flagship Centre was established. It will be a beacon of good practice and inspiration for future creative practitioners in the arts.

In June 2006, just a year ago, in Paris – between the Seine and the Eiffel Tower – a new museum opened. The musée du quai Branly is dedicated to non-European arts and civilisations. At the heart of this museum is a médiathèque.