Oblique aerial view of the front of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (208 Kb)
Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER
TRANSLATE ENGLISH to Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Español! Explanation
© LIBER and author
Published from: LIBER Quarterly, the journal of European research
libraries, ISSN 1435-5205, Vol. 8(1998), No 2. With permission from K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich, Germany
E-mail: Göran Bäärnhielm
History
The Royal Library in Stockholm was housed in the northeastern wing of the Royal Palace from 1768 until 1877. Then it moved into a new building in the 'Humlegården' (Hop Garden), a rather unfashionable neighbourhood at the time but with space for future expansion. The building itself was inspired by the Bibliothèque Nationale and Bibliothèque Saint Geneviève in Paris, with a cast iron construction supporting the stack floors, well provided with light and ventilation (natural, not artificial). There was no separate map collection at that time.
This was soon to change. In 1926-28 two wings were added to the building as the first step of a large expansion scheme on the pattern of the Preussische Staatsbibliothek, and the Maps and Prints collection was constituted and moved into the eastern wing. The floor space was 200 m2, including stacks, one room for the librarian, one study room. Later another 200 m2 of stacks were added on the floor above.
Oblique aerial view of the front of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (208 Kb)
As is natural in a national library, the amount of printed matter increased all the time. The spacious stacks were packed denser and partly converted to staff area; extra stacks were installed in an underground annexe close to the building, in disused air shelters and in a building outside town.
In 1975 the planning of a supplementary library building started again. At that time the plans for the Maps and Prints Collection were rather ambitious: a combined reading-room and working space of 600 m2, offices for a staff of 16, stacks of 900 m2. The projected building, modern in style, was presented in 1983, and was mainly welcomed by the library staff, but rejected by local opinion and by the city authorities because of its encroachment on the park, which was no longer on the outskirts but in the very heart of the city.
In 1975 the planning of a supplementary library building started again. At that time the plans for the Maps and Prints Collection were rather ambitious: a combined reading-room and working space of 600 m2, offices for a staff of 16, stacks of 900 m2. The projected building, modern in style, was presented in 1983, and was mainly welcomed by the library staff, but rejected by local opinion and by the city authorities because of its encroachment on the park, which was no longer on the outskirts but in the very heart of the city.
View on the back of the 1983 extension-model of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (394 KB)
Oblique view on the side of the 1983 extension-model of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (341 KB)
So discussions started again, and it was questioned why such a space-consuming store-house activity as a national library should be housed in the high-rented city centre instead of in the countryside as in Norway. Finally an architect at the National Board of Public Buildings suggested putting all books underground and converting the stacks above ground into staff area. The cast- and wrought-iron structure, which was highly modern in the 1870-s, was now deemed not sufficiently fire-proof. Then the idea was put forward of blasting out tunnels in the solid rock underneath the building, thus offering a most reassuring shelter for the national print collections for ages to come
The staff reluctantly accepted this as the price for remaining in the city centre, well aware that flooding is a greater risk to libraries than fire.
For the Map Collection this meant a break with the principle that had made good service to the public possible, namely the combination of reading-room, offices and stacks.
Present office with working-space in the foreground, Royal Library Map Room, Stockholm, Sweden (244 Kb)
The price for retaining this would be that we all went underground as in the Library of Congress, and that was never thought of. It was pointed out that the West Berlin Staatsbibliothek had the stacks at a distance, but the differences in catalogues and staff were not taken into account. The main problem, the communication between stacks and reading-room, was finally solved so that a Special Collections Reading Room -admittedly rather beautiful- was established in the main building, close to the main lifts going down to the stacks. The Map collection offices were located in the western wing in direct contact with the reading-room, which will be used also for manuscripts, rare books and other material that needs surveillance, for newspapers and other large-size materials. The question of surveillance remains unsolved so far.
Reading-room
The area is 220 m2. There are seats for 23 readers at ordinary tables, four slightly larger tables which could be put together to give an area of 2.8 x 2.5 m. A reference collection of approximately 200 m, 40 m of these for cartography and maps, also 20 atlas volumes and a cabinet for sheet maps. There will be computers for catalogues, image databases and GIS applications. A small closed-off study room is intended for discussions with customers, mainly picture researchers. Customers who need to browse through large numbers of maps will have to be taken into the stacks under surveillance, although this is in principle strictly prohibited because of the security problems both for the collections and for the visitors themselves. There is also a staff area and issue counter behind a glass screen and a safe vault for loans.
New reading room,
Special Collections, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (149 Kb)
New reading room with issue counter, Special Collections, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (186 Kb). Recently an enclosed space has been build in front of the issue counter, in order to prevent noise.
Stacks
The Library stacks consist of two parallel tunnels in the rock, each containing a 150 m long five-floor building. The Map collection stacks are housed in the eastern wing of the uppermost floor, building 1. The wing floor is 70 x 13 m, but some of it is occupied by ventilation and evacuation, which makes the available area 650 m2, a bit less than the requirements mentioned above (Fig. 3). This seems sufficient however at the moment, compared with the earlier poky situation, but the space for accession is limited.
Plan map collection stacks of the Royal Library Map Room, Stockholm, Sweden (108 Kb)
The design of the stacks was based broadly on a detailed inventory of the existing collections with its great variety of container types and sizes. But the final plan was dependent on the restrictions imposed by the building itself.
The grey-painted map cabinets of 1928 from the old premises were considered to be of a certain value, so most of them (with 1,120 drawers) have been reused in the new stacks. There are also movable tight-pack steel cabinets with 2,200 drawers, 115 x 150 and 95 x 150 cm, 25 mm deep. These sizes are not according to any standard, but were determined by the measurements of the building. Height of cabinets is 160 and 90 cm alternately, the lower being used as working-space. Above the higher cabinets there is shelving for rolled maps, which are thus kept horizontal.
Tight-pack steel cabinets, Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (184 Kb)
Broadsheet cabinets, Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (196 Kb)
Shelves for rolled maps, Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (64 Kb)
There is a large amount of (non-movable) shelving for horizontal large-size volumes, for vertical folio volumes, globes, boxes and cases, and a (quite insufficient) number of ordinary 8° and 4° shelves. The space between the large-size shelves is too narrow for convenient handling of the volumes. That was the price for getting more shelves in.
Shelves for globes,
Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (183 Kb)
Shelves for large-size volumes, Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (188 Kb)
There is also one specially designed cabinet with 150 x 250 cm drawers for the largest city views in the De la Gardie collection. But it will be used for other things too. Modern maps of that size are not uncommon.
One of the rows of shelves had been removed to make room for working-tables undisturbed by the movable cabinets. One more working area will probably be needed, because of the reduction of office space above ground, but then the number of shelves will be inadequate.
Offices
The planning of the offices is still very fluid only 3 months before moving in, mainly depending on the reorganisation, which is not yet settled. The floor space of the western wing is 200 m2 the Map Collection staff has been 6, so one of the large working-tables of the initial design has been removed to make place for 3 more persons from other units because of the general lack of space.
We have been told that we must adapt our procedures -and also the categories of material we collect- to what the building allows. This refers among other things to the existence of some very large maps (i.e. the Blaeu World map 1648, and a 3 x 5 m Rand McNally map of the USA) which are too large to display anywhere in the building. This might seem rather a high price for the pleasure of remaining in a 100 year old building in a park in the heart of Stockholm.
Oblique aerial view of
the back of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden (237 Kb)
Current project: situation of underground stacks with transport tunnel for the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden
Current project: section through building with annexe and stacks of the Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden
Comparison Map Reading Room, Royal Library (Stockholm, Sweden) project plan 1977
and final result 1997
1928 cabinets in their present underground situation, Map Collection, Royal Library, Stockholm, Sweden
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