Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer

Librar­ian

The most mod­ern library of the world.

“On this beau­ti­ful blue planet we are fac­ing some huge chal­lenges. My ambi­tion is to help make this place a bit more enjoy­able.“
This may not be a state­ment one expects to hear from a library direc­tor when ques­tioned about his moti­va­tion. But then, — Eppo van Nis­pen is not your pro­to­typ­i­cal library direc­tor. To Van Nis­pen a library is so much more than a large col­lec­tion of books. Libraries are not about paper but about read­ing. “You have to ask your­self what the cus­tomer wants. Not the books but our cus­tomers con­sti­tute our col­lec­tion.“
It is this atti­tude, which has resulted in the elec­tion of the lit­tle pub­lic library in the provin­cial town of Delft as the coolest library of the world.

For Van Nis­pen, read­ing and writ­ing is what it is all about. Writ­ers should be able to pub­lish, on paper or on any plat­form they choose. And every­body must be able to read in order to get ahead in the world. Of all the cul­tural insti­tu­tions in the world, the library receives the most vis­i­tors. But infor­ma­tion is no longer the exclu­sive domain of the library. Libraries tended to be quite sta­tic until vision­ary man­agers like Van Nis­pen invented new ways of  han­dling the old insti­tu­tions. He has seen to it that the Delft library now boasts multi-touch screen tables, books are avail­able on iPhone and there is a range of activ­i­ties such as read­ing to babies.His approach to reju­ve­nate libraries is an inspi­ra­tion, not only to libraries in the Nether­lands, but all over the world.

Will this new focus encour­age read­ing through­out the Nether­lands? On June 1, 2010 Van Nis­pen was appointed Direc­tor of the Foun­da­tion Col­lec­tive Pro­pa­ganda for the Dutch Book. That looks very promis­ing to future developments!

Eppo van Nis­pen to Sev­e­naer (1964) started his pro­fes­sional career as a pro­ducer. He has held cre­ative and busi­ness posi­tions with pub­lic and com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing orga­ni­za­tions. For instance, he was the editor-in-chief of Hart van Ned­er­land.
Since 2006 he works for the pub­lic library DOK in Delft that under his lead­er­ship has won national and inter­na­tional prizes for inno­v­a­tive concepts.