Libraries are the new Art Museums Ever since the Guggenheim Effect public institutions have seen the power that big name architecture talent has to raise the profile of their organization. The Guggenheim museum is responsible for two major watersheds in the field of museum design. First in the middle of the last century when they built a daring new design by Frank Lloyd Wright on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and then at the turn of the century when Guggenheim revitalized an entire region of Spain with their new building by American architect Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain. In both cases tourism has soured driven by the huge publicity value the unique buildings have. Economies of entire regions have been lifted by the influx of these architecture tourists.

The same is happening for major new remarkable library facilities.

"Tour buses were stopping here, for heaven's sake," said Shelagh Flaherty, director of the Vancouver, B.C., Central Library, which opened in 1995.