10 questions about library facility design
Friday, October 27, 2006 at 10:09AM 
A school design expert send me these questions last June. I am just now getting around to answering them. I feel very guilty.
Let me preface this by saying that all teacher-librarians should be interested in facility design. And here is why:
I once caught a glimpse of what purgatory must be like for school librarians. While student teaching in the mid-70’s in a small Iowa town, I watched the most hapless librarian I have ever met trying to do her job – which at that time was mostly keeping study hall students quiet and busy.
Her media center was, as are too still many yet today, two classrooms pushed together with perimeter shelving and a high circulation desk at the front of the long room near the door. The floor held just two tables near the circulation desk. The main seating was provided in rows of tall-sided study carrels running in long aisles down the length of the room.
The librarian spent most of the time I observed her running up and down those aisles of carrels trying to detect which students were making the little bird noises they knew drove her crazy. I believe this happened every hour of every school day of all 180 school days of every year. At least it was going on each time I visited the library. (That school building has since burned down. I like to think it was the act of a merciful God.)
A few years later when I was a school library media specialist myself, I overheard my principal say that he thought tall-sided carrels would be just the ticket for helping students work quietly in the new media center we were planning. My ears pricked up quicker than a dog’s. I decided it might not be a bad idea to be a bit more involved in the library design process.
I avoided getting study carrels in that new media center I actively helped design.
1. If you were to make one “grand” prediction about the future of libraries to kick-start our conversation, what does your crystal ball tell you?
All libraries will need to redefine their “value-added” qualities. The reality is that information seekers no longer need to visit a physical library to meet their basic information needs. Growing affluence means that many readers can and will purchase information rather than borrow it. The “Net Gen” prefers the visual and the virtual.
I see three primary things libraries can do:
1. Become the high touch environments in a high tech world. (Think Barnes & Noble)
2. Offer our services in a virtual environment. (think online banking)
3. Become uber information experts. (think a highly competent, highly personalized travel agent)
2. What experience have you had in terms of the planning or renovation of library spaces? What has been the most successful project in terms of what the librarians and the school community needed? What has been the least successful, for whatever reason? What was the biggest take-away you had looking back on these projects?
I’ve had a role in helping design 4 new library media centers and remodel quite a number of others. You can read my “take aways” in a set of handouts I used with a (now somewhat dated) workshop I give on facilities design.
The last media centers I designed were in the early 90s when technology was just making its presence felt in schools. I have always been proud that the libraries I was working on then assumed the library would be the technology hub of the school with lab spaces, wiring closets, and research mini-labs as an integral part of them. At the same time, we designed for flexibility, great aesthetics, comfort, social interactivity and community use.
It’s hard to call a media center “unsuccessful” based on its design alone since I have seen excellent media programs run in very poor facilities. The biggest mistake I’ve seen was in trying to create a good program by simply redesigning space without paying attention to staffing. The firm that hired me was not happy when I suggested this.
I was recently in a school that had an “E-library” that was nothing but at couple computer labs pushed end to end. It was a very cold and sterile place. To be fair, it just opened and it takes a while for most places to start looking homey and lived it, but I am not sure if this area ever will. For now, I am sure the kids will glom on to the area, but once portable information devices take hold, it may well sit empty.
3. Identify and describe one school library that has really managed to ‘get it right’ in terms of design/planning/layout (etc) in your opinion.
I wish I could. I think our St. Peter library was right for 15 years ago. I am impressed by the new Minneapolis Public Library – lots of small, intimate spaces within a grand space. I am anxious to see the new Winona High School library since it was designed with “Barnes & Noble” as a model and the media specialist, Mary Alice Anderson is a forward thinking person.
4. There seems to be a tension today between the way we design, manage, and use libraries in traditional terms and what seems to be a call for change, for innovation, for re-thinking the entire concept of what a library is. What does your experience tell you the right balance between tradition and innovation is when it comes to protecting the core principles of a library?
Most professions, I am sure, go back and forth on this. For me, professionally, my mission has not changed since I started in library work over 25 years ago – “Teaching people to effectively find and use information to meet their needs.” For sure the tools have changed (print to electronic information sources), skill emphasis had shifted from finding to evaluating information, and the teaching role as opposed to the “providing” role of librarians has grown.
I’d also argue that some core values of librarianship are as important if not more important than ever: commitment to intellectual freedom, teaching respect for intellectual property; working toward information access for all citizens; the promotion of information as a basis for good decision-making; that education is really about teaching people to teach themselves.
5. Should the library of the future be a ‘sacred’ space dedicated to honoring the book or a dynamic interactive space dedicated to honoring the student and community?
I would hope the library will be a sacred space dedicated to honoring those who use the library to meet whatever informational, educational, socialization and personal needs they might have. The libraries with the broadest mission will be those that will remain vital. Let’s face it. The Net Generation wants its information and entertainment in digital formats. Ours may well be the last generation to use cellulose-based information storage technology (paper).
6. The other day, I listened to a group of major urban superintendents discuss the growing concern that libraries (no matter how well designed) in their district rarely have more than a handful of kids in them. What are your recommendations to school designers to inspire more interest in library spaces by students and young people?
I’d again look at places where kids DO want to be and see what might be learned from those spaces. To me, the coffee shop should guide us tell us kids want a social learning space. Online preferences tells me we need to give kids a lot of access to digital resources. Gyms and theaters indicate that libraries should be performance spaces where kids can share information, not just absorb it. And finally, looking at social networking sites and You Tube, we need to make libraries knowledge production areas.
Quite frankly, I would also ask the superintendents to look carefully at their library staffing if their libraries are not being used. Are there kid-friendly, kid-knowledgeable professionals running their libraries who have figured out how to develop broad ownership their programs. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the physical space itself has little to do with why kids might be staying away.
7. One major US university has radically re-approached university design by essentially removing all books from what had been their undergraduate library and in its placed created a state-of-the-art information center. In addition, with the advent of the Sony Reader and additional efforts by Google and others to make every book of the planet searchable on-line, do you see a day when most school libraries will begin moving away from storing huge numbers of books and dedicated spaces to stacks/bookcases in order to become more ‘virtual’ information centers?
A lot of this will depend not on technology, but on how well Google does in the courts with its “scan now, ask permission later” approach to copyright. If intellectual property laws don’t change and ownership of the 70% of books that are not now in print but are not yet in the public domain remains in question, I see a lot of information remaining accessible only in print form. I guess what I am saying is yes, libraries will become virtual information centers, but probably not as quickly as one might think. And I always say, design for the technologies that are available NOW, not those just over the horizon. The horizon might be further away than you anticipate.
8. From reading your Blue Skunk blog, I’ve come to sense 2 significant elements weaving their way through all of your writing: a) Technology is a powerful agent for change but ultimately human interaction is far more powerful/dynamic; and b) Books matter and will always matter, and spaces for research, quiet reflection, and simple reading will always matter. If I am roughly correct in noticing these biases of yours, what do they tell you about the way that we must re-think designing future library spaces?
Yes, I suppose these are my biases. People can and will always be the most powerful factor in any equation – for change or for reactivity. I am reminded of a prediction from the mid '80s by a Department of Education staffer (if I remember) who said that in the future poor kids will have technology and rich kids will have human teachers. Look today to see what socio-economic groups are being placed in front of computerized reading programs and what groups are getting small classes sizes and highly qualified reading teachers?
I hope books in whatever format they exist will always matter. There is some talk about a post-literate society in which most people will only need to read enough to interpret simple signs and instructions and the reading longer works will be seen as a personal hobby much as enjoying opera is today. Or worse, a skill only employed by the "ruling" classes. But for the next 10 years or so, yes, books, literacy, and library spaces are important. And I am hoping that quiet reflection will remain a need of humans for a very long time.
9. First, play devil’s advocate: Make an argument that schools should get rid of dedicated library spaces and integrating their book collections into existing school spaces. Once done, make an argument for why schools should forever protect the book-oriented library no matter how far along we come in terms of technology.
In a rather cynical fashion, I believe I made the case for no physical library in my “Letter from the Flat World Library Corporation.” There the argument is made not to integrate books into existing spaces but to eliminate them altogether.
The opposite case can be made from an economic standpoint that libraries are (and always have been) essentially a means to distribute information in a cost effective manner. Quite simply, it is cheaper to buy one book and share than it is to buy a copy for everyone. I worked this one over in a column called “Common Sense Economy.”
At this point, I think we can still make a case for a “book oriented” library for developing good reading skills based on the arguments of Stephen Krashen and others who maintain that voluntary free reading is the best way for kids to improve their reading skills. And kids will only read voluntarily if they have access to a wide range of materials that are at an appropriate reading level that are on topics of interest to them. In other words, good library book collections.
10. Give 1 piece of advice to a young school designer looking ahead at a career in terms of planning libraries.
Be very broad-minded about the function(s) of the school’s library and get planners thinking less about designing an effective library, but an effective school with a library program that supports its goals.
Any library planning advice you'd like to share?
Reader Comments (4)
Since you asked for library planning advice, here is my "facilities version" of the professional stick:
• Whack! would be unable to whine, “no one ever asked me for my advice,” but would be proactive, not reactive, and become involved early in the process.
• Whack! would have a good idea of what he/she wants and needs in a new facility before the design process begins.
• Whack! would realize that designing a facility is complex and requires more than posting a “how do you do it” query to a listserv.
• Whack! would spend much time outside the contract day reading about facility design, visiting other libraries (and bookstores and other places where kids hang out), and talking with other librarians who have facility design experience.
• Whack! would refuse to become involved with designing a facility because he/she will be retired before the facility is completed.
• Whack! would actually welcome the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of students and teachers rather than grousing about all the extra work involved in designing a facility.
• Whack! would be able to work and communicate skillfully with all stakeholders—students, teachers, administrators, parents, school board members, custodians—and the architectural team.
• Whack! would not fail to involve kids in the planning process.
• Whack! would be adventurous, question any and all assumptions and traditions, and strive for a facility that is relevant for today’s generation of students.
• Whack! would recognize that the facility must be based on the library’s mission, goals, and program requirements.
• Whack! would understand that a school library is first and foremost a place of learning, not a warehouse or monument.
• Whack! would understand that a school library must be designed with as much flexibility as possible.
• Whack! would reject the outdated concept of the library as a hushed, quiet space, where all students study individually and silently, sitting up straight on uncomfortable, wooden chairs.
• Whack! would assume nothing.
• Whack! would NOT refuse to become involved with designing a facility because he/she will be retired before the facility is completed.
A couple of years later when I made the same suggestion to a group of K-12 educators I received the same reaction. But I still stand my my suggestion. I think you can keep the physical place the similar to what we all think of as a library, but we need to invest in the capacity building activities that will make sure the library can function in the future.