La Biblioteca dell'Universitat Pompeu Fabra di Barcellon

The Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) was established as a state-funded university in 1990 adopting an urban campus model. This article outlines the story of its Library, that represents the core of the University, and occupies a privileged central location in the main campus, in the Ciutadella district of Barcelona. From the outset, the UPF has been conscious that the Library had to play a leading role in carrying out the mission of the University: indeed, in order to adjust itself to this aim and to its users' needs, the UPF library underwent some important reform processes as far as its organization is concerned, becoming one of the most significant and interesting cases among Spanish university libraries (see for instance its organizational structure based on the concept of subject teams and librarians, the convergence experience in services, its moving towards a LRC, etc.). Moreover the UPF Main Library is considered an exemplary cases of architectural rehabilitation: the article describes the challenge of converting a reservoir building dating from the XIXth century (the so called Dipòsit de les Aigües) into the main library of the UPF, and of maintaining an equilibrium between the functional requirements of a modern university library and the architectural and historical features of the building.