I went today for the opening. Spent almost half a day exploring it. It was packed today - people were queuing outside to get in until the evening! Into a library!
The garden spaces are lovely, and the views are incredible. I didn't get to see the Shakespeare rooms new location today, but I have
seen it in its previous home. It's nice that it'll be public now. They were restricting access to it today though, I think because of the sheer volume of numbers I guess they didn't want to risk anything being accidentally damaged.
I haven't sorted my photos from today yet, but there's quite a lot already on flickr.
Worth a look. There's a piece about the opening on the
BBC website too, of course. Probably plenty of other places too, as the place was crawling with media and press today, but I haven't searched.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the exterior stands the test of time, but I do like the inside! Oh, but don't look at the exhibition outside - it almost made me cry seeing photos of the beautiful old library that was knocked down to build the inverted ziggurat!
ETA: If you're in UK, you can watch the report on
Midlands Today. It's worth noting too that it's mentioned several times about it being Europe's largest public library - the old one was too! It's the same books, just a new space.
