You could read at home, or you could read inside an award-winning, architecturally designed building that makes quiet time a joy? If you choose the latter, head to Marrickville library and join the 2000 people per day that visit: be it for the rhyme time that packs out the ground floor children’s section; for the historic art collection that they brought out of the closed stack into the dedicated art floor; or to peruse the impressive collection of international and domestic periodicals, from high fashion mags to special interest publications on everything from politics to organic gardening.
The library has become an immensely popular spot for people to study or work collaboratively, so much so that queues can sometimes form before opening so that people can secure their favourite position. In fact, the library had to add extra seating once they saw how popular the space was. Some people stay all day, with coffee breaks provided by the café on street level.
Marrickville Library was constructed on a former hospital site and they managed to reuse 27,000 bricks from the old building in the new construction. They also maintained the Women’s Ward as the current reading room. The library now boasts over 1,000 linear metres of items, including movies, DVDs, and even robots for amateur mechatronic engineers, plus meeting rooms that can be booked if you have super secret squirrel business to conduct, or just want to brainstorm out loud on group work with disturbing people.