ABSTRACT
The edifice housing Stockholm School of Economics near the town centre is considered a ‘classic-modern’ masterpiece by the architect Tengbom. The curved lines of its library tower protrude from the strict rectangular forms to make it the building's most prominent feature. From the beginning of his studies, Bengt Stymne was fascinated by the library and the possibilities it opened. You could go to the long rows of small drawers filled with catalogue cards to look through the topic that interested you to get references to suitable works. You then went to a librarian who would fetch the desired books from the stacks and you could sit down at a desk in the reading room to delve into and enjoy what they had to say. After graduation, Stymne received a stipend to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There also, the library has a central position on campus. He soon learned that, even if the physical layout of the libraries had many similarities, there were important differences in the way they were organized. In Ann Arbor, the stacks were open to the students. You could go to a certain shelf of a section and get an overview of all the works related to the topic that interested you. There were small desks placed among the stacks so you could actually skim through the books without moving to another room. This arrangement speeded up the learning process considerably, something that was further reinforced by the fact that the stacks were always open and not closed in the evening and on weekends as they had been in Stockholm.
