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By Gunnel Stjernvall - October 2000
The Renaissance Library Calendar 2001 will be produced for the first time this year. It has been created and designed specifically for information professionals and culture lovers but has a beauty that will appeal to many others as well. This article explains how the idea for the calendar initially came about and details the various contributors involved.
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The Renaissance Library Calendar is unique and beautiful calendar aimed at information users, librarians, academics, book lovers and anyone else who has a love of antiquities and architecture.
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| The Renaissance Library Calendar 2001 Front Cover |
It consists of 12 photographs of beautiful old libraries that range in age from 160 to 500 years old. The libraries shown are a mixture of academic, monastic, public, professional and national libraries and this year come from 11 different European countries. The full list of the featured libraries, in the order they appear in the calendar, is given at the end of this article.
The idea for the calendar came from myself, Gunnel Stjernvall. I have always worked in the field of libraries and information. I currently run my own information consultancy, Information Strategy & Information Management (ISIM), which is based in the south of Sweden. I am and have been involved in various projects to modernise libraries and information services in corporate and public organisations.
In these days of high tech domination of the library and information world, and at the start of a new millennium, it's sometimes useful to get a reminder of how things used to be. So I came up with the idea of the calendar, which takes us back to the days of the first information revolution in which the printing press and libraries played such a big part.
I am also a strong believer in internationalising the outlook of my fellow professionals working in the information industry and saw the calendar as a way of putting that vision into a more tangible form.
The idea for the Renaissance Library Calendar came to me originally as a result of an unsuccessful visit to the library of Cusanus (Cusanusstift) at the St. Nikolaus Hospital, whilst on holiday in Bernkastel-Kues in the Mosel Valley in 1991. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see the library, because it was closed for repairs when I got there. But I did buy a postcard. The idea stayed with me, and so did the postcard. Whilst giving presentations to other information professionals while working in the high tech world of Ericsson Radio Systems in Stockholm I would use a picture of the Cusanus library as a backdrop to part of my presentation. It was clear that members of the audience were impressed too. I knew that there were plenty of other beautiful libraries around the World, which would be of interest to many librarians and information specialists.
It was during 1999 that I conceived the idea of bringing a selection of them together in a published form. So was born the concept of the Renaissance Library Calendar.
Interestingly, although the concept was to remind people of the beauty of libraries built hundreds of years ago, the project has been made much easier through the availability of the Internet. In fact, I can say that I would not have been able to produce or market the calendar without the Internet.
I had a number of ideas for specific libraries to be included in the calendar but decided very early on to seek the help and advice of my professional colleagues. They were kind enough to share their ideas of what they thought were beautiful old libraries.
To accumulate their suggestions I simply contacted them on a couple of listservs and asked members to nominate libraries they had seen, which fitted the specification - beautiful and old.
I wasn't quite sure what sort of response, if any, to expect. But the request clearly struck a chord, because I was swamped with replies and suggestions. This response helped convince me that there would also be a demand for the calendar when it was produced. Many of the people who responded also made it quite clear that they would be very interested in buying such a calendar when it was available.
A period of research was then needed to establish that the nominated libraries did indeed meet the requirements. Again, the Internet made this a much easier process than it would otherwise have been. Many of the libraries had Web sites, where it was possible to check out the relevant details and obtain a sample picture. I used this as a vital tool in the selection process. The goal was to create a product that was 100% photogenic.
The third stage was to contact the nominated libraries to see whether they would agree to appear in the calendar. The use of email made this a much simpler task than it would otherwise have been.
Even though this was an opportunity to get free publicity and to feature as one of the most beautiful old libraries in the world, there was a mixed reception to the idea. Some libraries were very enthusiastic, but others were surprisingly reticent to give their permission.
At last there was a short list to work with, and then came the task of deciding on the final 12. I'm very pleased with the way the calendar looks. Everybody who has had a preview thinks it is very beautiful.
I am very grateful for all the contributions made by people who had nominated libraries for inclusion, and for the positive attitude taken by most of the libraries I contacted. We will be giving a free copy of the calendar to all those who nominated the libraries that were eventually selected for the calendar.
Final decisions have had to be made about the individual photographs to be used for each library based on the quality and whether copyright permission was easily obtainable.
The shape of the calendar was designed to:
Discussions were needed to compare printers and mailing houses, and there were numerous conversations with potential sponsoring organisations. Again, the availability of email
was a great help, and it was really important to be able to include some of the photographs in the email. Eventually it was decided to create a wall calendar, in A4 size, the library pictures will appear landscape.
The Renaissance Library Calendar was designed both as a B2B and a B2C product. It is available for any individual to buy, but it is also available for sponsors to buy in larger quantities, for example as a beautiful gift for their information customers.
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| September - The University Library, Salamanca, Spain |
We have pre-sold several thousand copies of the calendar already, even though the Summer period has only just finished.
Although the first edition features libraries only from Europe, we have so far had the greatest response from the USA. But there has been a great deal of interest from all over the World. In fact, the interest has been so strong that we have already decided to make the calendar a regular annual publication.
We will also be considering a few other themes, and we plan to extend this concept into a range of attractive gift ideas, which will be aimed specifically at the information industry. The helpful suggestions and comments from professional information colleagues have been invaluable, and we are very grateful to the individual libraries which feature in the calendar.
If you wish to learn more about the calendar you can visit the Web site [1].
Here's a list of the libraries that will feature in the calendar, shown in the order in which they will appear:
January
The Abbey Library, St. Gallen, Switzerland
February
Joanina Library, General Library of the University of Coimbra,
Portugal
March
Marsh's Library, Dublin, Ireland
April
Vatican Library, Vatican State
May
The Abbey Library, Waldsassen, Germany
June
Duke Humfrey's Library, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
July
The Marciana National Library, Venice, Italy
August
The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia
September
The University Library, Salamanca, Spain
October
The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Library, Edinburgh,
Scotland
November
Helsinki University Library, Helsinki, Finland
December
The Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, England
1. The Renaissance
Library Calendar 2001 ISIM Web site
URL: <http://www.isim.org/>
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Gunnel Stjernvall
Director
ISIM
Stora Vastergatan 45,
SE-271 35 Ystad, Sweden
Phone: +46 411 121 70
Fax: +46 411 121 10
Gunnel Stjernvall has worked in the information profession for 30 years. She currently owns and runs her own information consultancy, ISIM (Information Strategy and Information Management). She is based in Ystad in the South of Sweden.
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For citation purposes:
Stjernvall, G. "The Creation of the Renaissance Library Calendar", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.Cultivate-int.org/issue2/calendar/>
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