While municipal spending on libraries (along with everything else) is down these days, spending on CDs and DVDs is rising. Rem Koolhaas’s new Seattle Public Library “showed that good design and new services could make the library an attraction to rival galleries and cinemas.” The old Whitechapel Library in London was replaced by the Whitechapel Idea Store, which “boasts a crèche, CD and DVD lending and, most essentially, free internet access. Is calling it an ‘Idea Store’ a piece of New Labour marketing or a genuine attempt to demystify the library and make it open to new users?… Librarians now find themselves having to act as guides not just to information itself, but to the myriad ways of accessing it that are available.”