ABSTRACT
The central library of Malmö was housed in seven rooms in a hotel building from 1905 until 1946, and after that in a refurbished museum. A contributing factor to the planning of the library was of course that this took place in a very creative period of change in the library world with new library media and the rapid development of information technology. The distinguished Danish architect Henning Larsen won the architectural competition that took place in 1992 to design the library. The children's library occupied half the first floor with an entrance of its own, and on the fourth floor was an auditorium and a room for studying local history. Malmö City Library was the first library in Sweden to discuss for instance getting rid of the big desks for loans and returns near the entrance, where the visitors would queue up, and instead combine these functions with the information services at smaller desks placed among the stacks.
