Maggie's Place III: An electronic library revisited

Maggie's Place is the name of the Pikes Peak public library situated at the foot of the beautiful Pikes Peak mountain in Colorado Springs, USA. During the last decade the library has received attention from people all over the world within the library sector because it became one of the first fully automated public libraries in the world. My curiosity had been aroused by reading the book ‘The Electronic Library’, written by Kenneth Dowlin who was Director from 1976–1988, as well as other papers and articles about Maggie's Place. Even if we have well‐developed automated systems for most library routines in many Scandinavian libraries and are running many experiments with the aim of increasing the use of new technologies in more library services, this library seemed from the descriptions to be worth visiting. I got the opportunity in June this year—and I wasn't disappointed. The architecture and internal Fittings of the new main library, The East Library and Information Centre, opened to the public in 1987, are magnificent.