UQ Cybrary receives award for excellence

The University of Queensland’s Ipswich Cybrary will be presented with an award for building design and service delivery tomorrow (Thursday, December 4).

The inaugural Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) National Excellence Award will be presented at 5pm in the Brisbane Room, Brisbane City Hall, King George Square, CBD.

“The award is testimony to the strong client focus that The University of Queensland Cybrary applies to all its services and facilities,” said University Librarian Janine Schmidt.

ALIA president Christine Mackenzie will present the award for the recently opened $7.5 million building at UQ Ipswich.

Mrs Schmidt said students had welcomed the spacious new library with its diverse range of study areas and access to the latest technology.

She said the library was central to the intellectual and social life of UQ Ipswich and along with other service providers had created a hub with a sense of “campus” and “community”.

The building was designed by Hamilton Wilson of Wilson Architects to represent a village market square.

Mr Wilson described the facility as: “three buildings interconnected with a two storey high landscaped space that symbolically stitches the variety of spaces together”.

UQ Faculty of Engineering, Physical Sciences and Architecture Executive Dean Professor Michael Keniger has commended the building for its design quality.

“The imaginative response to the Cybrary’s focus on spaces encourages students to be self-sufficient and creates strong social settings,” Professor Keniger said.

“On entry there is a sense of uplift as the central oasis-like court is discovered.”

Mrs Schmidt said Cybrary visitors had been unanimous in their praise for the building’s creative design principles, flexibility of learning pathways, new models of service delivery and innovative integration of information and communication technologies.

Media: for further information contact Executive Manager of the Social Sciences and Humanities Library Anne Horn (telephone 07 3365 2018) or UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 3367).