We are passionate about libraries, their customers and their staff. We have come to library interiors from a long experience of celebrating the value of the public library and working to improve and update what libraries offer. As the founders of the reader development movement, we changed the way libraries in the UK engage with their customers. Our ideas, projects and training have reached every library service in the country.
When you appoint Opening the Book, we work with you to achieve deep and lasting change. We see designing a library interior as more than a freshen up with a new paint or carpet or even the installation of new shelving or IT equipment. This is an opportunity to review the fundamentals of the service, to look at how you convey key messages to key audiences, to change the custom and practice of ‘we’ve always done it that way’ and to plan how best to use your greatest resource - the skills and energy of your staff. Long after the designers and fitters have moved on, library staff will operate the new library. How successful it is will be up to them.
Our approach is based on respect and empathy for library staff but we also challenge practice which is losing customers with hard evidence on changes in customer preferences and behaviours. We have a large databank of market research on customer behaviour in public libraries, mostly collected by library staff themselves for our training sessions. We also hold the largest comparative data on adult fiction stock quality, where we ran a 5-year programme for the Audit Commission.
We understand the library brand and can help you convey it better to prospective customers. We know how library design can be a vehicle for organisational change and how a change programme can delivered through library interior design. We have designed and installed more than 70 libraries of all sizes and types and we have always delivered on time and on budget – every one without exception.
Our staff have backgrounds in community arts, education, book retail and manufacture. What we share is a passion for making things happen, for getting the job done and for getting it done right. Our quality standards are second to none – we will always go the extra distance and we routinely deliver more than we are contracted for. We seek to work with people who share our commitment to the future of libraries.
Some authorities have successfully argued that Opening the Book is a unique supplier.