Taichung’s newest cultural landmark—the Green Museumbrary, the city’s first institution to integrate an art museum and a public library—has officially opened to the public. Within its sculptural, art-like architecture, visitors may wonder: beyond the books displayed on the open shelves in the reading areas, where are the rest of the library’s vast print collections housed? According to the Taichung City Government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, the answer lies on the B1 level in the “Compact Stacks.” More than a storage space, this facility serves as the heart of the Green Museumbrary’s reading services, symbolizing a vital hub where knowledge, art, and culture converge. The architect specially designed a viewing window that allows visitors to glimpse the magnificent scale of this hidden repository.

In preparation for what aspires to be a world-class library for Taichung, the Taichung City Library Main Branch has been systematically building its comprehensive collection. From librarians meticulously classifying each title, to inviting citizens to participate in relay-style shelving activities, and teams working industriously to transport and organize books, every single volume is individually scanned and registered into an automated system before being distributed to reading areas throughout the building. Among these operations, the Compact Stacks on the B1 level function as the central hub for collection management and book transportation.

The Taichung City Library explains that shelves in the reading areas are curated to match the spatial atmosphere, maintaining an appropriate volume of books to create a comfortable and inviting reading environment. The remaining collections are preserved in the Compact Stacks and rotated onto open shelves according to scheduled planning, continually offering readers fresh discoveries. Through the careful coordination of closed-stack storage and open-access spaces, the library ensures that every visit presents readers with the most beautiful reading landscape. With more than one million print and digital resources across the entire library system, this vast sea of knowledge provides steady support for the library’s daily operations.

The library further invites visitors: if you happen to see staff at work in the Compact Stacks during your visit, pause for a moment and look through the glass window to take in the immense ocean of books, and feel the living flow of knowledge in motion. In December, as Christmas approaches, librarians have creatively arranged volumes of the classic Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku Quanshu) in the window-facing shelves into the shape of a Christmas tree, delivering festive greetings while inviting the public to step into the library, borrow a beloved book, and extend the warmth of reading into everyday life.

Beyond the highlights of the book storage facilities, the Green Museumbrary has also curated a series of reading and cultural programs. On December 20, Japan’s first professional “book curator,” Yoshitaka Haba, will present a talk titled “What Does Curation Mean in a Library?”, sharing how he creates inviting reading spaces through spatial design, themes, and storytelling, as well as his experience selecting books for Tadao Ando’s Children’s Book Forest Nakanoshima in Osaka. On December 27, acclaimed science fiction writer Kim Cho-yeop will introduce her new novel The Dispatcher, exploring a future world through the lens of “altered perception,” challenging the boundaries of coexistence between humans and extraterrestrial beings while sharing her creative inspirations and philosophical reflections.

In addition, performances and events including Celebration in Flowing Light by the Taiwan Youth Wind Orchestra and Who Stole My Words? by Punctum Creative will take place on December 20 and December 21 as part of the “Art in the Green Realm” series welcoming 2025. Citizens are warmly invited to visit the Green Museumbrary and join in writing a new chapter in the city’s reading culture. For more information on upcoming events, please visit the Taichung City Library website at https://www.library.taichung.gov.tw/.