Birmingham Central Library is the main public library in Birmingham, England, and the largest non-national library in Europe. It is managed by Birmingham City Council. The main section, containing the music library, other collections, and Birmingham Reference Library is located on several floors over Paradise Circus, with the main entrance and lending library in a wing fronting Chamberlain Square.
A new Library of Birmingham is currently being constructed in Centenary Square and will replace Central Library upon completion in 2013. Birmingham City Council plan to demolish Central Library once its replacement is complete. In 2010-11 Central Library was the second most visited library in the country with 1,197,350 visitors.
Read more about Birmingham Central Library: Collections, Earlier Libraries, Architecture
Famous quotes containing the words central and/or library:
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)