Your library is your portrait

This afternoon I gave a welcoming address on behalf of both Committees to an organisation called Eurolib. Founded in 1997, Eurolib brings together all the libraries of the European Union’s institutions and agencies. As I told our visitors, such an organisation makes obvious good sense, since it can only lead to economies of scale and the sharing of expertise but also it allows libraries (such as ours) to specialise. I told them about one of my favourite quotations in this context: your library is your portrait. It was coined by Holbrook Jackson. When we go to people’s houses, we frequently sneak a look at their bookshelves, thus getting an idea about their tastes and enthusiasms. In the same way, an institution’s library says a lot about it. Is it up to date? Is it well-ordered? Is it specialised? Are their gaps? Both consultative committees are currently hard at work in modernising and transforming their libraries into information centres and service providers better geared to the needs of our members. So I suppose you could say that we have taken down the old portraits and are currently putting up new ones…