MUNICH.- Ever since antiquity libraries have served as repositories of knowledge and cultural memory and, as such, belong to the oldest of all building types. Already the biblical verses of Salomo have quoted: “Wisdom builds her house” and this sentence can be found in many bookhouses as a guiding motto. Since the Renaissance the most important architects have dedicated themselves to this building task, thus giving library buildings an exceptional position within the history of architecture. In consequence of the changes of forms that information and communication underwent due to digital media, the end of the printed book and the traditional library has often been conjured up. However, in the past two decades more new buildings than ever before have been constructed. Is this a last defiant struggle before libraries vanish in globally accessible virtual data bases? Will libraries become a hybrid mixture of book and data base, a general store of information? Will the co