Mover Over iPad and Kindle — And Welcome to the New World of the Eco-Library!

This week (April 8-14) is National Library Week in the United States which, by the way, first started in 1958 in order to promote library use and support.  Today, in a world filled with mass-produced Apple iPads and Amazon Kindles, we at Cherlton’s Green Guide are going to kick off this week-long celebration by highlighting and showcasing the most amazing eco-libraries in both the United States and around the world and their valuable contributions to promoting a healthy society and family life.

We shall first begin by tipping our hat off to Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-born, American-made steel tycoon and philanthropist whose foresight and funds not only incentivized the building of public libraries across the United States between 1883 and 1929 and the global establishment of public libraries throughout Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribbean and Fiji – but also encouraged community development by providing an open institutionalized system of self-service access to stacks of books and various cultural and educational resources.  You might say that Andrew Carnegie was an entrepreneurial forerunner of Steve Jobs, an American-born designer, inventor, and co-founder of Apple Inc. whose pioneering participation in today’s digital revolution is predicated on Carnegie’s own belief that knowledge and information is communal property that should be universally accessible.

But in contrast to Carnegie’s architectural designs whose impressive libraries were imposing structures of Classical Revival, Scottish and Spanish Baronial, French Beaux-Arts and Italian Baroque and Renaissance, created as lanterns of enlightenment, today’s ECO-LIBRARIES are fundamentally illuminating in both DESIGN and FUNCTION!   And some even, are no bigger than a phone booth!

Such is the case with the Red Phone Box Library in the small Somerset village of Westbury-sub-Mendip in England which was recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries.  With a population of only 800 people, and a collection of 100 books, villagers can use this ‘eco-library’ 24 hours a day to select books, CDs, and DVDs.  And in London, a double decker bus has been cleverly eco-renovated into a ‘Bicycle Library’ which features a showroom on the first level where Londoners can borrow or buy different bicycles, bike gear and accessories.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the large famously designed eco-conscious libraries of the past ten years such as the Halmsted City Library in Sweden, a three-storied circular building made of concrete, glass, and Nordic larch flooring set within a parkland space overlooking the Nissan River and the town’s historic center.  Even its indoor air ventilation system is eco-energizing and symbolic – mimicking the surrounding trees outside its windows by noiselessly removing undesirable particles within the air.  Then there is the Picture Book Library in Iwaki City in Japan, a privately-owned special library built of glass, wood, and concrete designed to serve Japanese preschool children whilst offering outstanding views of the Pacific Ocean from anywhere in the building.  And closer to home is the Seattle Central Library in Washington state, a crystalline steel-and-glass structure featuring 400 computers, eleven levels and five “floating platforms” built to meet the Sustainable Building Policy of the City of Seattle which includes a water-efficient drip irrigation system and an exterior landscape containing 18 types of trees.   And closer still is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library complex in Little Rock, Arkansas which boasts a green roof topped with strawberries, switch grass, roses, and ferns and other greenery as well as solar panels and flooring made from recycled rubber tires and a parking lot that includes charging stations for electric cars.

But perhaps the best example of an eco-library design in the works is that of the pre-fab, do-it-yourself assembly of modular eco-libraries now being developed for communities along the Amazon River basin in Brazil which will incorporate composting, fish farming, and hydroponic gardens.   Hence, the democratization of libraries for the working poor has come full circle since the days of Andrew Carnegie – but for the fact that today’s eco-libraries now stand as a collective lamp post of enlightened environmental awareness.