Buildings

Office Space

I’m not going to sit here and lie to all you loyal readers and say I haven’t had “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta” by the Geto Boys playing in my head after I nail yet another info lit session, coming up with the perfect keywords and a search strategy chock full of Boolean operators, fields, and parentheses to do a live demonstration in Scopus, without Scopus freezing or needing to reload the screen once. Nor am I going to lie to you and say I haven’t daydreamed about taking our Kyocera TASKalfa combination photocopier and colour printer out to the fields on campus and hitting it repeatedly with a baseball bat because yet again, my carefully plotted out handouts on APA citations (7th edition) keep having their margins cut off.

But I think of Office Space, the 1999 cult classic by King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, when I think about my new working space; I hesitate to call it an office. I shouldn’t complain; many of you may actually be jealous of my new cubicle—I get lots of natural light as I gaze across twelve feet of unkempt jungle towards the limestone walls of our library’s storage facility, I can keep up with all of the latest library gossip as I can hear every conversation(s) happening in real time, I get lots of exercise by having to move to temporary meeting spaces to take any and all online meetings, and best of all, my coworkers can gaze in the wonder, splendor, and glory of my important library work since my monitors are visible to everyone all the time.

No, loyal readers, I’m not going to lie and say that it hasn’t entailed a shift in my mindset and getting used to how things will be in my new office space for the foreseeable future, as my science library goes through a two-year long renovation. I will say it’s not lost on me that after two (or three, or four?) years, I will be moving back to a shiny, new office space in the redeveloped science library. However, before that day dawns, I’ll be spending my working hours in an open office-style working space, with bookshelves making our cubicles three feet longer.

I joke, but it really isn’t that bad. It’s just a change in working space that will take time to adjust to, and there’s been changes that make working just a tiny bit more challenging. To be completely honest, the biggest change is how it is much more challenging to participate in online meetings and have private or sensitive conversations.

Open Offices and Flexible, Hybrid Work

In Steven J. Bell’s opinion article—which I personally think is indefensible and starts with a false premise: that somehow we must accommodate open offices rather than agree they’re terrible and moving away from them as much as humanly possible—he argues in defense of open offices, asking the reader to accept that open offices aren’t going anywhere. Rather than debate the merits of open offices (which I will note largely comes from administrators), he asks, “we should focus on how to make open office environments productive and satisfying for all library workers.” Um, hard no, Steven.

I will also note Steven comes from a library where flexible work arrangements are available. How about those who have little to no flexibility and work in an open office? He doesn’t address this directly while he spills a lot of ink claiming fewer and fewer library staff are working in-person due to hybrid work. I have to think, maybe library staff won’t want to come to an open office to work; classic chicken-and-egg situation there, Steven. Maybe to Steven, there won’t be library staff anymore, anywhere. I don’t think he actually thinks this, although his article is situated firmly in the context of saving the library’s money (“Building private offices is expensive for new projects, as well as far more expensive to remove for future projects”).

Meredith Farkas wrote an insightful response to Steven, noting his article isn’t supported by the literature (contradicting what he writes), writing “the scholarly consensus on open offices is uniformly negative and the move to open offices comes with many detrimental impacts on employee well-being, organizational health, and work output.” Meredith deftly addresses accessibility issues that are much more challenging in an open office environment, compared to a private office. Contrary to what Steven claims, Meredith makes a strong case that equal working spaces does not make equity for all, even if everyone, including administrators, work in an open office. Working from home or private offices can help alleviate different accommodations.

Online Meetings and Working From Home

As I said, one of the challenges of working in an open office is attending online meetings. It’s more challenging, for sure, compared to a private office. There are bookable spaces close to me that I can take my laptop to attend. I recently was leading an online library workshop. Compared to having my two-monitor setup at my desk, screensharing off a laptop is more difficult, but not impossible. Working from home alleviates some of this, which I do occasionally when I have a glut of online meetings or instruction.

The 2024 ACRL Top Trends speak to the growing trend of hybrid work environments. Like Meredith, the authors cite scholarship that confirms the benefits of remote work: “remote work offers benefits like greater productivity and reduced stress while onsite work fosters better onboarding, engagement, and team building.” However, the authors continue to say that “[t]his new hybrid environment may also require redesigning staff spaces and setting new priorities for onsite work.” When I look at the article they cite for “redesigning staff spaces” (Fayard, Weeks, & Khan, 2021), again the authors clamour for social spaces at work, a place for “unstructured collaboration” and “impromptu conversations.” Not again!

What seems like a cliché and tired stereotype at this point, Steven notes during his library’s redesign, “the designers touted the potential benefits of open office environments, such as increased collaboration, serendipitous idea generation, or simply more opportunities for staff engagement.” I’m still waiting for all this collaboration and idea generation to happen, something that flies in the face of the scholarship that Meredith cites^[1]. I’ll have to get back to you when I’m collaborating and generating ideas at a higher level in my open office.

[1] “It is a common misconception that moving to open offices will lead to increased communication and collaboration, based on the assumption that if people are in closer proximity, peers and organizational leaders will be more accessible. Not only has that not been borne out by research, but the exact opposite has been found” (Farkas, 2023).

Scrambled Thoughts Amidst Another US Mass Shooting

Content warning: mass shooting, death

Bear with me; this might be all over the place.

Despite its name, East Los Angeles College (ELAC) is a community college located in Monterey Park, a city in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley. But yes, ELAC was once part of unincorporated East Los Angeles before being annexed in the early 1970s. East LA is well known as a largely Hispanic community, over 95% according to the 2020 Census, while Monterey Park has a majority Asian American population at 65%. As a Japanese Mexican American, I feel right at home here. I was hired as a librarian at ELAC in 2016 and have grown to love these communities. The ‘community’ part in community college is crucial. Our students are majority locals and understanding the community and my students’ local context largely informs my work as a librarian. For example, I’ve been advocating for using OER to appeal to local college contexts and diverse ways of knowing the world rather than assume one textbook can work across all geographic locations. I love to incorporate the community in my library instruction, whether it’s teaching information literacy with an example information need like, “Where can I find the best xiao long bao near ELAC?” to searching databases on environmental racism in Southeast Los Angeles, as we also have a campus in the city of South Gate.

On January 21, 2023, Monterey Park experienced a mass shooting that took the lives of eleven people and injured nine others at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio late at night on the eve of the Lunar New Year. It is also the worst mass shooting to occur in Los Angeles County. The Monterey Park and AAPI communities are devastated, in what should be a joyous time in ringing in the new year. My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy, their friends and family, and those impacted in the community. Never forget: My Nhan. Lilian Li. Xiujuan Yu. Muoi Ung. Hong Jian. Yu Kao. Chia Yau. Valentino Alvero. Wen Yu. Ming Ma. Diana Tom. The Half Moon Bay shootings occurred less than 48 hours later, claiming the lives of seven: Yetao Bing, Qizhong Cheng, Zhishen Liu, Jingzhi Lu, Marciano Martinez Jimenez, Jose Romero Perez, and Aixiang Zhang. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 40 mass shootings in the US in 2023 alone, and we’re only in January.

This isn’t the post I intended to write this week, but I felt the need to say something. The prevalence of mass shootings in the United States is absolutely unacceptable. And as a library worker, I hate that one of my biggest fears and, in my opinion, a bona fide workplace hazard is the possibility of a mass shooting. Statistically speaking, the possibility of an active shooter remains quite low, but tell that to my anxiety. In a recent meeting regarding the design of a new library space, the library team was presented with an open concept library floor plan, which most of us immediately flagged as a safety issue (and is also terrible for acoustics). The design team responded by enthusiastically declaring this to be something that most libraries want these days. Major facepalm. How is that an acceptable response? I’m a big fan of aesthetics in libraries, and admittedly a lot of libraries are cold, unwelcoming, and sometimes just outright ugly; however, I’m tired of decisions related to safety being made by those who won’t physically be in these spaces, whether it’s the builders or the administrators. I’ve done my fair share of researching protective design concepts for active shooter scenarios, and I’m just saying–I’m not asking for Kevlar wall panels or intrusive surveillance of students. However, I do want to be able to lock any door from the inside. To have a phone in each instructional classroom. To receive timely crime alerts and annual security reports. And to just overall have a better strategy than to watch the “Run, hide, fight” video…that maybe isn’t even great advice, as some experts recommend dropping the “hide” part to simply, “Run, fight.”

I went to a candlelight vigil on my campus on Wednesday. I appreciated all of the speakers who shared something with our community. There was an immense feeling of love and a desire to keep each other safe. And I really do hope we can keep each other safe and that we have more conversations on how to accomplish this in our respective communities.

Thinking About Space, Still

About a year ago I was knee-deep in scheduling focus group sessions with students at one of the colleges at my university, along with my fellow team members as part of our Data Doubles research. The focus groups were terrific — I always appreciate the chance to talk with students and hear their perspectives, in this case on data privacy and learning analytics. Recently I’ve found myself thinking about one student in particular. We’d shifted the focus groups from in person to online, and with campus access still restricted at our university last Spring, most of the students were zooming in from off-campus, some from laptops, others from phones. As we progressed through the questions and discussion in one focus group, I noticed that one of the students had moved from sitting at a table to walking outside. And a few minutes later, that student climbed onto a bus, swiped their MetroCard, and sat down with their phone and laptop, all the while continuing to participate in the focus group during their bus commute.

I’m sharing this anecdote in part because it’s still, even nearly a year later, amazing to me that the student could so seamlessly move into a commute while thoughtfully considering and responding in our discussion. But now that we’re back on campus more fully, I’m also thinking more about space, and how the library’s spaces can meet needs for students that may have changed since the pandemic began.

ACRLoggers have written a lot about space over the years, both before and since the pandemic, and I confess that I am almost always thinking about space when I’m in the library where I work. Like so many academic libraries at institutions with high enrollments and space constraints (sometimes but not always in urban areas), pre-pandemic we were regularly one of the most crowded spots on campus; at our busiest students sat on the floors when all chairs were occupied. Pre-pandemic we were also a nearly completely in-person college, with I believe less than 10% of courses offered fully online. This semester we’re closer to 50% in-person, 50% online, and while it has been truly lovely to see more students in the library space this year, our onsite use is not nearly what it was before March 2020. And in many ways that’s fine — every student who wants a seat can get one, and it’s much quieter in the library, too, which I know many students really appreciate.

Perhaps the biggest shift we’ve seen (and I’m sure we’re not alone in this) is the drastic reduction in demand for our physical computer labs in the library. I’ve heard from the director of academic technology that she’s seeing something similar in the other computer labs on campus, too. While a huge change (and, honestly, a relief from the long lines we used to have), it’s not entirely surprising to see this shift: lab use is down, but we have many, many more students bringing their own laptops to work in the library. Printing is also down, and it’s clear that our terrific tech team’s efforts to implement printing from students’ own devices, beginning before the pandemic, are meeting the needs of students who do still want to print their course materials.

The return to our physical space has also meant a return to students sharing feedback with us. It’s been gratifying to read students’ comments, which have been overwhelmingly appreciative sprinkled with occasional grumbling about the noise of students taking their online courses in the library (and we’re likely going to restart lending headphones). We’re also back to our pre-pandemic practices of walking through the library to take a headcount a few times each day, and continuing to observe how students are using the space. It’s clear to us that students who are taking both in person and online classes aren’t necessarily coming to campus as often as they did before the pandemic, how can we shift services and spaces to better meet their needs? And the library is still in need of a renovation. I’m looking forward to revisiting our renovation proposal — especially for one underused area that might be reimagined for more student seating — and thinking about ways that we might make our space more accommodating and flexible for multiple different kinds of use by students.

Impending Building Renovations

So last year when I started writing for the ACRL Blog, my first post was about the tightrope I was walking trying to balance programming during a pandemic. Things started to look up during fall semester, mostly because my college was able to lift some COVID restrictions. However, with the Omicron surge in our area, the campus administration has made the decision to re-implement some policies and procedures. We’re back to rotating work from home, and I expect to hear more about classes shifting from face-to-face and back to online. So, we’re back on the tightrope. But here’s the thing: We also have an upcoming building renovation.

Facepalm | rue89.nouvelobs.com/2016/10/17/proces-dune-ado-co… | Flickr — Facepalm, by Luigi Rosa

This has been in the works since long before the pandemic, and our library needs it. However, this has thrown a significant wrench into planning, well, anything. The timing for National Library Week (which we always try to celebrate) makes it even tougher. My team is looking to move out of our building around the same time, then we have a semester break, and then I’m off to the Texas Library Association’s conference! April is going to be crazy!

Staring all this down at the beginning of the semester plus the back-and-forth of COVID-19 is a lot. So far, my coping strategy has been taking things one week at a time. I have most my contracts in for guest speakers, and I’m working on planning two more events for National Library Week. This week’s goal is to arrange a speaker from the Library of Congress (fingers crossed!), and next week’s is to start the process of getting a virtual author panel together.

Breaking events down into smaller, manageable tasks isn’t a new idea to me, but I really like planning months ahead! Resisting the urge to set everything in stone hasn’t been easy. I sincerely don’t know where I will be in a few months’ time, though, both physically and mentally. Will we still be dealing with variant surges? Will I be on another campus? Will everything be pushed back as it has in the past? On-campus, off-campus? As a female role-model from my childhood would say: ACK!

Wherein the author dates herself with a Cathy reference. Cathy is copyright Cathy Guisewite. https://www.cathyguisewite.com/

I don’t have the answers for any of that. I’m learning to be better about not knowing. As anyone in librarianship probably understands, not knowing something is anxiety-making for me, but I can’t research my way out of the uncertainty.

At least I know I’m not alone. I hope everyone else is handling the balancing act we’ve found ourselves in as we start a new semester. We can do this!

Open Libraries, Closed Spaces

Though we’re a month into this unprecedented continuing pandemic semester at the college and university where I work, I’m still finding myself getting used to these remote working conditions. I work at a commuter college in New York City; at our university campuses have been mostly closed since last March, and we’re offering classes overwhelmingly online this semester. At my college there are a few health sciences courses that require specialized equipment that are being held on campus, adhering to social distancing and health reporting requirements from the state, but other than that our campus is inaccessible to our 16,000 students, including the physical library.

Among all of my other thoughts and feelings, I’ve been mulling over how very strange it is that I’ve spent over a decade researching how and where students study in (and beyond) our libraries, and now there are no students studying in our library. I’ve been in the library sporadically to check on the facilities, and while it’s odd to be in the completely empty space, I’m grateful for my office there as an occasional complement to my workspace setup at home. I also appreciate that my 2BR apartment has enough space for my spouse, kid, and I to each work mostly privately if need be (though I wouldn’t say no to an extra room if one were to spontaneously appear). Walking or biking to work is an option for me, so I’m lucky to be able to avoid public transportation, too.

My colleagues and I are hearing from students on chat reference and via email and social media, many with the kinds of questions we’ve come to expect: Can I return my book? (if you can, please hold onto it until campus reopens) Am I being fined for returning books late? (no, we’re waiving fines while campus libraries are closed) Can I access databases and ebooks from home? (yes, here’s how to login). And while we have had a few students seeking access to our physical space for studying and computer use, those requests have been much less numerous than I would expect given what my research partner and I have learned about the challenges our commuter students face in doing coursework at home. The general caution among many NYC residents after the enormous toll that Covid19 took on the city last spring is probably a factor, as is the college’s location in downtown Brooklyn; while we’re very convenient to public transit, not everyone is comfortable returning to the subways and buses yet.

I suspect that the pre-pandemic challenges that our students shared around finding a suitable location to read and study for their classes, and to research and write papers and assignments, have grown enormously for them in the past six months. They may have inadequate computer or internet access at home, and shared technology may be even more stretched as siblings, parents, roommates, and others need access for their school or work (though I should note that the university has provided laptops and hotspots to many students). More people in the same amount of space for more time means more activity and noise (in our neighbors’ apartments, too), making it even harder for students to find a distraction-free space for studying. And the virus is still with us — students and their loved ones may be sick. I look at the empty carrels in the library and think about the appreciation so many students expressed for them, how the enclosed desk afforded them the privacy and interruption-free space they needed to focus on their academic work.

How can we support students’ need for study spaces while campuses are closed? Here in NYC there are still limited indoor spaces open, so many of the third places students may otherwise have had access to are still unavailable. There are outdoor locations with wifi, plazas and parks, and I’m sure some students are studying there. Are there digital ways we can support students, virtual study groups, perhaps, or would that just lead to more Zoom overwhelm?

It’s hard to figure out how to fill some of those academic needs that our physical library space satisfied for our students. While the college has faced budget cuts this year, we’ve been able to keep some of our part-time library assistants this semester working remotely. Many are students or former students, and I’m hoping to find time this semester to plan a few informal meetings with them, if they’re amenable, and to listen and learn from them about what their academic experience has been like, and how the library might support them in digital spaces while we wait until it’s safe to return to our physical spaces.