Quebec mega-library set to welcome 2-millionth visitor

The new Bibliothque nationale du Qubec seems to have overcome the image of the stodgy, boring library. This week,just eight months after opening,it's poisedto set a significant attendance record: its two-millionth visitor.

Inaugurated on April 29, 2005, and officially opened to the public four days later, the bright and modern new library has proven evenmore popular thanexpected.

According to library officials, planners had estimated thatapproximately 6,000 people wouldvisit each day. Instead, up to 12,000 people drop by daily.

On the first day it opened to the public, the library drew close to 10,000 people. At the end of its first week of operation, it had recorded more than 63,000 visits.

The record-breaking attendance hascontinued despite a number of problems over the past eight months, including plates of glass from the building mysteriously shattering, a door falling off its hingesand a woman being trapped in an elevator for nearly an hour.

The sleek, glass-wrapped, modern venue was designed by a team of three firms: Vancouver's Patkau Architects and Croft-Pelletier achitectes and Gilles Guitarchitecte of Quebec City.

A panel of architecture criticsselected the library as one of the best designed buildings to open in Canada in 2005.

In June 2001, the Quebec government passed a law to merge the activities of the Bibliothque nationale du Qubec and the Grande Bibliothque du Qubec. Later that year, construction began on a new home for the amalgamated collections.

The finished library, sometimes still called the "Grande Bibliothque," offers patronsaccess to about four million documents, including more than a million books and a large multimedia collection comprising CDs, VHS and DVD movies, musical scores and computer software.

The holdings range fromhistorical and archival material including the first book printed in Quebec to electronic resources such as a vast database of digitized documents. The airy site also includes exhibition spaces, conference and music rooms, a cafe, a job centre and a special News and New Releases section that remains open seven days a week until midnight.