Small businesses, start-ups and charities can book in for one-to-one mentoring sessions with Digital Garage technicians who will help improve their website, their social media presence, the way they use Adwords and much, much more.

The two training seminars are:

• Tell your story online – creating a good website, making it mobile-friendly, using insights gained from data to improve your site and using social media to boost your digital presence
• Reach new customers online – understanding how search works, being more findable in both regular (organic) and paid search

It’s all free, but it won’t be there for ever.   The Garage will pop up for a few months in the Library of Birmingham and then pop up in another city, so get your Google goodies while you can.

• Register for Free Training at the Birmingham Garage

Google launched its Digital Garage in our beautiful library today.  It’s aim is to help small businesses in Birmingham grow through their use of the web.

So if you fancy a one-to-one session with a Google “technician”, you can step into a pod and have a chat about your digital issue .

And you can go to a seminar to hear advice from a Google guru on telling your story digitally or reaching more customers online.

And it’s all free.

What’s not to like? At the launch there were jellybeans and lollipops too.

• Book a one-to-one session
• Book a place on a training seminar

To be honest, I had about 188.8 million thoughts that day as hard-hatted men dodged lost-looking librarians while I smelt the paint and newness and industry as I stood and saw my home city in ways I had never done before.

But I have had to contain myself and after careful thought have decided to focus, for now, on just four different aspects of this amazing palace-playground that is waiting for you to step inside:

• The Library of Birmingham: The people’s playground
• The Library of Birmingham: Opening what was closed
• The Library of Birmingham: Outside in
• The Library of Birmingham: A place for a snog

I am a Face of the Library of Birmingham and one of its Ambassadors. 

Some hate it. I love it. Already, it is bringing a presence that is transforming Centenary Square.

But what I really like about the outside of the building, is the way you can “read” from the outside, what is happening within. And conversely, when you are inside the building, you can relate what you are experiencing to what you have seen from the ground.

Take the ironwork around the outside, as an example. I think it works brilliantly from the outside, gleaming in the sun, relating to Birmingham’s industrial heritage and speaking to me of its jewellery-making present and past.

The surprise for me was seeing that motif, that I had assumed was for the benefit of the exterior, working so well from the inside. I think it brings a sense of drama to spaces when  you are inside. It helps you feel contained amongst the expanses of glass and frames the views in interesting ways.

I love the Library of Birmingham from the outside. I am very excited by it from the inside too but most of all I like the interplay between the two.

•  I am a Face of the Library of Birmingham and one of its Ambassadors. This post is the third in a series of four written after going inside the building for the first time in July 2013.

Whoops! Sorry, to have said the first thing that came into my head when I saw these cosy little red booths.  Of course, it’s not a place for a snog.  (Slap hand)

It is place where you can view the exclusive collection of film archive material of the British Film Institute.  You can find these booths on the Discovery Floor.

(And I am minded to say that anyone who is caught using these booths for anything other than their intended purpose will be politely told to move on.)

One of the striking things about the Library of Birmingham is the enormous variety of spaces that there are within the one building.  There are these snug booths, there are wide open communal areas, there are bright yellow steps from where you can listen to stories, there are meeting rooms, private study areas, round tables to talk around and gardens to dream in.

Who knows whether the balance of these different spaces is right, but there seems to be something for most moods, for many activities and every personality type.

And that point, is the most important point of all about the Library of Birmingham.

I took part in a focus workshop with other Faces of the Library where we divided into groups and talked about the library’s values.

In that room of people from all ages, backgrounds and abilities the value that every single group put top of its list was that it was welcoming to ALL. I found that really moving.

And that continues to be the thing that I want more than anything else from this wonderful library of ours  – I want it to be a place where whoever you are, you are welcome.

Ultimately it is people who make others feel welcome, but the building, with its enormous variety of different places to play or read or listen or surf, is doing its best to say: “Welcome” too.

•  I am a Face of the Library of Birmingham and one of its Ambassadors. This post is the last in a series of four written after going inside the building for the first time in July 2013.
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Take the storage areas as an example.  In every library there are archive areas that the public can not enter, but in the Library of Birmingham, every effort is being made to open up the hidden spaces. Archives are being put online. Collections will be displayed in the galleries. In future, we are far more likely to know about the treasures that our library has in store.

The library opens us up to the city too. When we arrive in the extensive foyer, we have a view of Centenary Square at the front, Cambridge Street at the back, and even the sky. With a few exceptions – like the loos – wherever we go in the building,  we get to see Birmingham in new ways.

Even where the library goes underground (that’s where the Music Library and Children’s Library are), we end up at an amphitheatre, a great window in Centenary Square that means anyone passing can look down and see inside the library and anyone inside the library can look up and see the sky.

As for the staff – they won’t be able to pick their noses at they sit at their desks.  Their offices have glass walls so people using the library will be able to see them at work. Quite how they feel about this remains to be seen…

I love it. I love it because it says to me that growing, learning and discovering are not things we do just on our own (there is always an element of that, of course) but what we do together. Simply being in the library engenders in me a sense of pride, hope and belonging.

On Tuesday 3 September 2013, we will be able to proudly announce that the Library of Birmingham is open – and that is a far more radical statement than it seems.

•  I am a Face of the Library of Birmingham and one of its Ambassadors. This post is the second in a series of four written after going inside the building for the first time in July 2013.

But that’s the thing about the Library of Birmingham, which opens on Tuesday 3 September 2013 – it isn’t a library in the sense that we have always known it.

It IS a library.  It still is unique amongst UK libraries for the depth and range of its collections, six of which have been designated “outstanding” by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.  You will still be able to go in to look something up or borrow a book.

BUT, as well as being a place for books, it is also a garden, a recording studio, a theatre, a concert hall, a board room, a coffee shop, a viewing point. (I would have taken photos of all of those things to show you, but the garden’s the only thing that’s ready at the moment.)

Architect Francine Houben calls it the “people’s palace.” I like that description but it doesn’t quite work for me because I don’t know what one does in a palace, except walk quietly down the corridors and be on one’s best behaviour.

I prefer to think of it as the “people’s playground” – a place where you arrive and think : “Oooh, look we could play pirates over there.   Or shall we go down here and pretend to be hobbits? But I want to play on the swings first.  Hey, look!  Let’s make a den over there.”

The Library of Birmingham is opening soon. Palace of playground, get ready for something you have never experienced before.

• I am a Face of the Library of Birmingham and one of its Ambassadors. This post is the first in a series of four that I wrote after going inside the building for the first time in July 2013.