Hamilton Public Library
Trip Start
Aug 29, 2004
1
3
6
Trip End
Sep 07, 2004
Hamilton, North Island, New Zealand
Friday, September 3, 2004
City Library with a traditional Maori welcome ritual. The staff has been working on being more aware of
Maori culture friendly. The library's theme is a journey to knowledge, with signs in format of airline tags.
It would have been more effective if they had announced the theme at the entrance-"The journey to
knowledge starts here" or "Journey to knowledge@the library." The color scheme on the ground floor is
teal (blue) and orange. It is very striking, but somewhat intimidating to me. Are the Maori and Kiwis more
attuned to bright contrasting colors? However, this was not carried through on the other two floors; I
thought the lighter colors were much more relaxing, but the rest of the group thought it was too oldfashioned
and boring. Branches use the same color scheme. Again we found the familiar grey industriallooking
shelving. I'm told the shelving is manufactured in New Zealand. The library outsources most of
their acquisitions, including selection-which surprised (and dismayed) us even though the vendors were
given well-developed and thought out selection guidelines created by librarians. They use three different
vendors: one for New Zealand materials, one for foreign, one for large-print books. All items come preprocessed.
