One way to get a sense of a country’s cultural touchstones is to visit its libraries — both the famous and lesser-known ones.

BY MARK DAPIN

Some years ago I was at a conference of international thriller writers (no, I hadn’t known they were a thing either) when a fellow Australian author suggested we visit the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan. We had already been to see Grand Central Station and Yankee Stadium, so I had started to wonder if my tour guide wasn’t some kind of weird public-infrastructure buff. 

But the New York Public Library Main Branch, a Beaux-Arts marble palace of books, is one of the most impressive sights on Fifth Avenue. Opened in 1911, it boasts a majestic marble stairway, grand historic fountains, allegorical sculptures, guardian lions and (of course) six Corinthian columns. 

The colossal building holds 2.5 million books, shelved among and beneath commanding murals, celestial frescoes and a barrel-vaulted rotunda. The setting makes the books appear votive, almost transcendent, as if writing were a gift to the gods. 

Although not, perhaps, international thriller writing. 

It turns out that my friend and I were engaging in library tourism, although I hadn’t known that was a thing either. 

The virtual hub of international library tourism is the website Library Planet, a ‘crowdsourced travel guide for libraries’, which features posts with wonderful titles such as ‘The dok Library Concept Center of Delft, The Netherlands — makes me want to hang out all day’; ‘Ulyianovsk Regional Scientific Library, Russia — a library with a ballroom’; ‘Roving robots, kitchens and creativity at Tampines Regional Library’; and, my favourite, ‘Library of Songdo — No shoes in this pastel party of a library’. 

Library Planet was founded by a Danish couple, Christian Lauersen and Marie Engberg Eiriksson, but recently they handed over the editorship to frequent contributor Stuart Kells, a La Trobe University academic and author of the highly regarded The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders.

‘If you’re travelling as a library tourist, it’s about libraries as spectacle,’ says Kells. ‘It’s about the amazing architecture, the striking interiors, beautiful books in the right context — bindings that match the shelves that match the timberwork that match the ceilings.’ …

[Read the full story here: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/library-tourism]

https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about-library/publications/openbook