Named 2014 Library of the Year

You could call it the Academy Award, Nobel Prize or Stanley Cup of the library world. Whatever you call it, Edmonton Public Library, Alberta, Canada has won it!

Edmonton Public Library (EPL) has been named 2014 Library of the Year by Library Journal magazine and Gale Cengage Learning - the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a library. It is the first time a library outside of the U.S. has received the award. The award celebrates the library that most profoundly demonstrates service to the community; creativity and innovation in developing specific community programs or a dramatic increase in library usage; and leadership in creating programs that can be emulated by other libraries. Enter EPL – known nationally and internationally for service innovation, risk taking and library “firsts."

Interior design at its best

In the library users can find books and all sorts of information along the shelves, but it also aspires to be a second home for the local citizens being a social hotspot and natural meeting place with a light and warm architecture and interior design.

In close co-operation with our US representative, our interior designers have made interior solutions of several branches of EPL, including Highlands Public Library, Meadows Public Library and Clearview Public Library. The interior design meets the libraries’ needs for flexibility and functionality. We have delivered library furniture to the libraries, including the award-winning Jasper Place branch of Edmonton Public Library that has given the libraries an aesthetic and functional lift.  

A modern library

For 101 years, Alberta’s Edmonton Public Library (EPL) has galvanized its ever-growing city. From its beginnings above a meat and liquor store in 1913 to its current configuration as a massive, team-driven enterprise, EPL has served as a pioneering gathering place, connecting people and expanding minds. In the process, it changed the parameters of what it means to be a public library and transformed itself. Read the successful story of a modern public library in the 15 edition of the Library Journal Magazine.

“Being involved in the creation of the library design of more branches of Edmonton Public Library is a great honor to us.
Our library experts create great interior designs as a result of dialogue with the libraries, idea-sharing and the drive to design a library concept that takes its starting point in the needs and interests of the citizens, and which organises offers and activities based on a far wider understanding of information than the classical library concept.
We congratulate EPL with the award and are looking forward to a continuously fruitful co-operation."

Mikael Kjeldsen
Group CEO Lammhults Library Design