I love my library. My bank account loves my library. My son loves our library. Books are an increasing part of that love, but his earliest associations are of place for raucous rhyme time sessions and a satisfyingly noisy sensory wall where he can push buttons to elicit elephant and tiger noises. It’s about as far away from the old-fashioned idea of rows of silent, stuffy shelves as you can get, who wouldn’t love that?

What is it that we love? The accessibility, the resources and the fact that it’s free. Here’s a great illustration of these elements in a library in Magdeburg, Germany. This library formed part of the refreshing speech from Wayne Hemingway at this year’s IPG Spring Conference.

On an abandoned site, residents in Magdeberg banded together to create their own public space, initially constructed out of beer crates, and filled today with more than 30,000 donated books. It is open air, there is a stage for community events and it never closes. Now that’s a library that thinks outside of the box.

Lesley, Publishing Manager