Library or child’s bedroom?

Published: 20 May, 2010

Camden Council have covered the walls of the newly refurbished library in Keats Grove with a variety of coloured transfers arguing that they reinforce the corporate identity of the libraries in the borough.
In fact, they make an elegant and dignified building look like a child’s bedroom.

I have 20 or more years’ international experience writing, teaching and consulting on corporate identity and would suggest that public libraries are always instantly identifiable. They are all large quiet rooms used by quiet people and full of books. They could be nothing else.
Of course Camden libraries are much the same as those in other boroughs. However, most people only use their local library and if they use another one it is almost certainly for geographical reasons; for example, it might be near their place of work. There is no comparison, for example, with retail chains, all competing in the same high street and needing highly differentiated corporate identities.

There can be no doubt that the Keats Grove library (and others in the borough) are run by Camden. Its name and logo can be found everywhere in the building. If anything, the trivial coloured transfers detract from the library’s corporate identity and should be removed; although they might stay in the children’s library.
Let us not forget the truth for libraries in the title of Anthony Powell’s novel Books Do Furnish A Room.
PETER GORB
Redington Road, NW3