Monday 1 June 2009

Melbourne library's cater to their users in style

On my recent trip to Melbourne I indulged my professional curiosity (admittedly in a very slack way) and checked out the libraries I stumbled across....

City Library in inner city Melbourne was a veritable rabbit warren filled with hovering computer hopefuls, the smell of stale sweat (I will never complain about our refrigerated air on level 2 again), and not one but two Wii stations. The decor was also very Melbourne cool and the place was packed!

Mornington Library was reminiscent of Kingston library but had a cafe with tables (spaced well apart for prams) encircling the little children's area. I know this is probably not on every ones radar and doesn't have much direct relevance to academic libraries, but for me it was like finding the Shangri-la of child/parent friendly library spaces and quite a nice example of looking after all sorts of users.

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