Table of contents
Abstract
This paper identifies approaches, challenges, and best practices related to planning and designing today’s academic library learning spaces. As part of the Project Information Literacy (PIL) Practitioner Series, qualitative data is presented from 49 interviews conducted with a sample of academic librarians, architects, and library consultants. These participants were at the forefront of the same 22 recent library learning space projects on college and university campuses in the US and Canada between 2011 and 2016. Most library projects had allocated space for supporting at least one of these four types of academic learning activities: collaborative, individual study, tutoring by campus learning partners, or occasional classes taught by campus instructors. Successful collaboration between the architect and the librarian was fostered by their shared commitment to meeting users’ needs, though few stakeholders systematically collected input from users beyond standard usage statistics and gate counts. Most interviewees reported facing some common challenges during their project planning and implementations. One challenge was translating design goals into tangible designs while trying to resolve issues of noise mitigation, shared space allocations, and providing enough electrical power for IT devices. Another challenge was ensuring effective communication practices with planning teams as well as campus-wide constituents throughout projects. Additional challenges included building consensus, compensating for project interruption and inadequate knowledge about both architecture and library IT issues, and having too few a priori evaluation metrics for linking learning outcomes to goals of the library space projects. Taken together, the success of library learning space projects depends upon shared knowledge and understanding of the sweeping learning, pedagogical, and research changes facing the academy. Librarians and architects need to work together to apply that knowledge and understanding to the unique environment and learning and teaching needs of their specific institution.
Preferred citation format: Alison J. Head (December 6, 2016), Planning and designing academic library learning spaces: Expert perspectives of architects, librarians, and library consultants, Project Information Literacy Research Institute, https://projectinfolit.org/publications/library-space-study/
The Library Learning Space Report has a Creative Commons (CC) license of “CC BY-NCSA 4.0.” This license allows others to share, copy, adapt, and build upon the survey data noncommercially, as long as the source — Project Information Literacy — is credited and users license their new creations under the identical terms.
Media coverage
“Best (and worst) practice for designing learning spaces,” Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Education, December 6, 2016.
Related research from PIL
“Standing out or blending In: Academic libraries in the crowded informal learning space ecosystem,” Erica Lynn DeFrain, Jennifer Thoegersen, and Miyoung Hong, College & Research Libraries, January 2022, Vol. 83, no. 1, https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25264/33134
“Interiors, affect, and use: How does an academic library’s learning commons support students’ needs?” Erica DeFrain and Miyoung Hong, Evidence based library and information practice, June 15, 2020, Vol. 15, no. 2, https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/eblip/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/29677/22219