Birmingham’s £189 million Library Is Officially Open

At long last, the impressive Library of Birmingham, which has been built at a cost of £189 million has been officially opened.  The opening ceremony was performed by Malala Yousafzai, the teenager shot in the head in Pakistan by the Taliban for championing women's rights. Having been treated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, she is now proud to call the city her home.

Birmingham's New Library

Housing some one million books, the library also has more than 200 public access computers, theatres, an exhibition gallery and music rooms. When she conducted the opening ceremony, Malala put her own copy of The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho in the library. Symbolically the book was the last to go on the shelves, and Malala has been given membership to access the archive. In her address, she said that she “was proud that the building had been designed by a woman and the city was now her second home after her beloved Pakistan".

She said that in a way, books were weapons that could defeat terrorism and "the only way to global peace is reading knowledge and education".

"Books are precious," she explained. "Some books travel with you back centuries, others take you into the future. Some take you to the core of your heart and others take you into the universe.
"There's no better way to explain the importance of books than to show even God chose the medium of a book to send his message to his people. This library will continue to enlighten future generations. It is written that a room without books is like a body without a soul. A city without a library is like a graveyard."

The library takes the place of  the previous Central Library, built in the 1970s. It was famously described by Prince Charles as looking like a place where books would be incinerated rather than read.

Library director Brian Gambles, said they were given the go ahead by the council to proceed with the project in October 2007, roughly a year before the financial crisis began. Most of the funding has come by way of borrowing, with a small amount from donations and the council raising funds from sales of land.

Mr Gambles said the building had "echoes of the traditional round reading room with a modern twist". A fusion of the digital and the traditional is absolutely essential to the vision of the library we have," he said of the project, which he has been leading for seven years.

Crowds had being queuing from 09:00 BST in Centenary Square, and as well as Malala, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey and the city's lord mayor Mike Leddy joined architect Francine Houben to officially open the building, while brass band SuperCritical Mass provided music inside.

One particular highlight of the new library is the Shakespeare Memorial Room, which houses  a collection of 43,000 books, including copies of the Bard's First, Second, Third and Fourth Folio editions.

                                                     http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/