The Main Campus Library at the University of Birmingham has been honoured with a prestigious SCONUL Library Design Award. It received the award for ‘Best Medium-Large Library’ 2016-19 and the panel commended the building for its transformational vision and innovative design.
The SCONUL awards, which are given out every three years, celebrate the very best in university library design. The University of Birmingham Main Campus Library splits 17,000 square metres of floor space over six levels with a variety of learning spaces catering to users’ differing needs. Video editing booths, wireless mobile charging facilities and media rooms sit alongside 62 kilometres of shelving filled with thousands of books from the university’s important collections. A below-ground reserve store houses over 1.5 million items, allowing users to access materials from a single location, with staff on hand to enable research.
Director of Library Services Diane Job said:
“We are incredibly proud of our library and the positive impact it has made to students and staff at the University of Birmingham. It is a real pleasure to have accepted this award on behalf of the many people involved in making this complex project into a reality.”
Director Warren Jukes said:
“We are immensely proud to win the SCONUL Medium-Large Library Design award for the second time. Its recognition of how our design prepared in close collaboration with stakeholders helped articulate the university’s vision for their library services enabling innovation and service redesign. To be selected for shortlisting is a great honour but to be picked out from amongst such tough competition, libraries at Kent, Leeds and Roehampton, is astounding!”
We have previously won the SCONUL ‘Best Medium-Large Library Award’ in 2016 for the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester.
