Heart of the Drammen Riverside Knowledge Park

In the summer of 2004 a partnership agreement was entered into by the Buskerud College of Higher Education, the Buskerud School of Business Management, the Advisory Council for the Drammen Region, Buskerud County and the Drammen municipal authorities with a view to developing a regional centre of excellence to be known as the Riverside Knowledge Park.

The aims of the project were defined as
follows:
“Drammen shall be a leading centre of
knowledge, offering a stimulating environment
where expertise and original
thinking can flourish among students,
teachers, research workers and innovators.
The Riverside Knowledge Park
shall be the town’s architectonic landmark.”

Today the Riverside Knowledge Park
building houses a variety of institutions
and activities. There is also a café,
a bookshop, a careers service and an
innovation centre.

The Drammen Library

The aim of making the Drammen
Library the heart of the Knowledge
Park has been successfully achieved.
Located on three stories in the centre
of the building, the library offers the
widest possible range of knowledge
and experience, the philosophy being
that visitors should be able to go from
the lively atmosphere of the children’s
department on the first floor to a
world of study and contemplation on
the third floor. The vision is for the
public to experience the library as a
seamless entity with no need for them
to consider what particular type of
library it may be.

Organisation

The Drammen Library is the result of
close cooperation between the municipal
public library, the County Library
and the College of Higher Education’s
special library. The municipality, the
county and the college have all made
significant financial contributions towards
establishing the Drammen Library.
From an organisational point of
view each library still belongs to its
parent organisation but is now physically
integrated into one joint public,
county and special library to form a
new entity – the Drammen Library.

Digital library

The Drammen Library is of particular
interest in relation to the project ‘Norwegian
Digital Library’ (NDB), which
is concerned with “the integration of
services and content from various suppliers
into a joint framework in the
form of common format, protocols
and base services”. This is important
for joint searching in library bases, for
lending and borrowing procedures, for
Internet-based services, for shelf arrangement,
etc. The Drammen Library
makes use of the National Joint Library
Card, as do an increasing number of
other Norwegian libraries.

Learning Resource Centre

The Drammen Library also functions
as a learning resource centre, offering
‘normal’ library services alongside ITservices
and a variety of guidance and
tuition facilities.
Access is available to electronic and
paper-based resources and there are
also flexible workplaces for personal
study and knowledge acquisition. The
library has its own IT-instruction room
with some 70 PCs for use by children,
adults and students. Here the general
public, students, external clients and
staff working elsewhere in the Riverside
Knowledge Park can acquire and improve
their knowledge and information
skills.

Automated library services

In order to offer the public the best
possible service, the library has introduced
a wholly-automated system for
lending out and receiving back library
material. Computerised lending services
on each floor and specially-developed
automated receiving units on
two floors make it possible for members
of the public to help themselves
without having to wait in a queue. The
library also has special search facilities
on all floors where visitors can track
down whatever material they require.
These innovations mean that members
of staff have more time available to
assist the public and to answer the
more challenging enquiries with reliable
and correct information.

Centre of excellence

Based on the facilities now available at
the Riverside Knowledge Park, the
County Library aims to develop its role
as a centre of excellence for the region.
The County Library has conducted a
survey of the expertise of the staff in
the three cooperating libraries and will
draw up a programme of courses and
other initiatives to improve skills where
necessary. This programme can also be
made available to all library personnel
throughout the region.

The County Library will assume the
role of development motivator for the
Drammen Library and as such will be
involved in cooperation with other external
partners, such as professional
and research institutions. The County
Library’s emphasis will be on future
development, the overall aim being for
libraries to be seen as arenas for lifelong
learning.

Experience to date

Since the opening of the Drammen
Library on 26. February 2007 our experiences
have been very positive. Public
library users and students have acquired
access to a wider and more
detailed choice of media now that they
can search in both the college’s and the
public library’s databases. The library
contains both non-fiction and fiction
to a degree which better fulfils users’
needs for practical knowledge and
reading for leisure. Here everything is
under the same roof and in the same
electronic base.

In addition, the fact that the premises
are very inviting means that visitors
stay longer in the library than before.
Families with children, in particular,
spend more time than was the case in
the old public library.
With regard to experience concerning
the college, county and public library
staff in the Drammen Library particular
mention must be made of the
positive synergy effect arising from the
overall competence and skills of the
combined personnel.

The location of the Drammen Library
within the Riverside Knowledge Park
will have added significance with
regard to local response. The building
itself is very impressive, offering a positive,
inviting setting and making the
library more attractive to the public.
Most important, however, is for the
Drammen Library to become a source
of inspiration for seekers of knowledge
among the inhabitants of both the
town and the surrounding region.

Based on initial experiences and with
the aim of making the Drammen Library
the region’s leading player in the
field of library services and the dissemination
of knowledge and information,
the organisation intends to pay
particular attention to the following
areas:

• Seamlessness – to offer the public
every type of library service under
one roof
• Knowledge – to make possible an
improvement in the level of skills
and learning among the population
by the dissemination of knowledge
and information and by ensuring
that library collections and material
are available free of charge to each
and every user
• Learning – to provide the best
possible learning environment for all
library users
• Research – to make scientific databases
and electronic resources
available to research workers in the
region
• Culture – to offer the public interesting
cultural experiences and the
opportunity for contact with literature
and with authors. The library
should be an all-round cultural arena
where both professionals and
amateurs can meet
• Meeting place – to be an open, noncommercial
meeting place for the
local population with particular
focus on the multicultural aspect.

For further information:
www.drammensbiblioteket.no (Norwegian only)

Sølvi Tellefsen
Chief librarian for the
municipal section of
the Drammen Library

Solvi.Tellefsen@drmk.no

Translated by Eric Deverill