space use

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.

Reflecting on library space through the lens of the pandemic

Before the pandemic turned our world upside down, I was working on some space-related projects at my library. A recent update to a small lounge area had a notable payoff. Collaboration with my colleague in the Learning Center was making slow but steady progress toward a renovation to expand and enhance our spaces and services in a Learning Commons model. The need for and value of this work were clear. The progress and outcomes were gratifying.

I’ve written a few times about some of this work and the opportunities and challenges of my lovely but tiny library space. The public health crisis has cast our space and these efforts to improve it, like pretty much everything, in new light. Obviously, slashed higher ed budgets and broader economic challenges suggest that there will be increased competition for limited resources to fund any space project, particularly a large and pricey one like our Learning Commons proposal. But the pandemic will affect higher education’s short-, medium- and long-term future in many arenas, not just fiscal; the impact on demand for and nature of library space is difficult to anticipate, reducing our ability to plan and advocate strategically.

In the short-term, space has featured prominently in the many meetings about the fall semester at my commuter campus and across my institution. Currently, my institution is planning for a mix of in-person, hybrid, and remote courses. At the core of our many space-related conversations has been the recognition that access to physical space matters even in this very virtual incarnation of higher ed, particularly for our most vulnerable students. On a practical level, we need to offer on-campus space (and resources) to students who don’t have access to reliable technology at home or whose home environments aren’t productive or safe. We also need to offer on-campus space for students to participate in Zoom classes sandwiched between in-person classes. Like many folks, we’re working out how to safely open and manage access to our space.

Then, there are the more theoretical conversations about the sense of identity and community that physical (library) space fosters. We’ve cast our proposed Learning Commons, for example, as a welcoming learner-centered space where students can focus, study, collaborate, and access academic assistance. In our advocacy, we’ve cited the impact of the library’s and learning center’s physical constraints on students; they have had to vie for limited space or even leave campus, thereby missing out on opportunities to engage with services, programs, faculty and staff, and peers. We’ve argued that these missed opportunities reduce their ability to make connections on campus and build community. Library space helps our students dig in, connect, and belong. How can we attempt to recover or replace what we’re losing during this time? While perhaps not our most pressing concern given all the demands of planning for fall classes, it’s still an important one–for this coming semester and beyond.

The medium- and long-term vision for our space projects, then, feels murky. Surely, expanding the physical library with more square footage would mean that we could accommodate more library users while complying with physical distancing guidelines. But it’s more than that. In our newly upended world, the assets and liabilities of all public space are thrown into sharp relief. The pandemic calls on us to reconsider how spaces are designed and how they’re used. How do we plan for library space projects in this time of uncertainty not just in higher ed but in our world? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Telling the stories of our spaces

Space is a challenge in my library. With limited square footage, we sometimes don’t have enough seating for the number of students seeking to use our space. We can’t accommodate all the furniture types and configurations we need for students’ assorted library space uses. We’re further challenged by the competition of different space uses (read: noise levels) in such close proximity. It’s not a surprise, then, that space improvement is a topic that’s on my mind quite often. We’re working to address these issues and needs with both small enhancements and larger-scale improvements, thinking about adjustments to our existing footprint while also advocating for an expansion.

Collecting and using data effectively is vital to our ability to identify, plan, and implement improvements. Relying on our assumptions about how students use and feel about space and services won’t cut it. So we’ve been using a variety of methods, both formal and informal, to inform our understanding of students and space–and how it could better meet their needs. Quantitative data like gate counts and service transactions document foot traffic and usage patterns. Occupancy rates show how many (or how few, as the case may be) seats we have in the library in relation to how many students we have. Enrollment trends and projections for our campus provide important context. Qualitative data–gathered through informal focus group meetings with student government and clubs and through questions posted on whiteboards in the library inviting students’ comments on space use and needs–contribute important, albeit selected, student perspectives to our understanding. And there are surely more data pieces we could gather and fit together in this puzzle. All this data can help us understand our current physical constraints and usage patterns and plan improved spaces.

Of course, space is tight on our campus for many departments and needs, not just the library. And competition for money is stiff. Funding for these improvements hinges, at least significantly if not entirely, on sharing the data in a meaningful and compelling way and effectively demonstrating our students’ needs. I’ve been searching around a bit for some inspiration or insight into how I might best tell the story of our students and space and stumbled across this from Jonathan Harris at just the right moment: “I think people have begun to forget how powerful human stories are, exchanging their sense of empathy for a fetishistic fascination with data, networks, patterns, and total information… Really, the data is just part of the story. The human stuff is the main stuff, and the data should enrich it.” Right when I was drowning in all the data visualization best practices and software recommendations–helpful in their own right to be sure–this timely reminder re-focused my view on the students at the center of our space story.

What has helped you tell the story of your students and spaces? How have you made your story and advocacy most compelling? Your planning most effective? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

My Space, Your Space, Our Space, New Space?

For this week’s post, I had the unique opportunity to review a recently published white paper by Brian Mathews, associate dean at Virginia Tech Libraries and Jenizza Badua, interior design student at Virginia Tech entitled, Curating the Campus, Curating Change. This fascinating conceptual piece is based on a mixture of ideas, conversations, and some actual realities relating to physical learning spaces across college campuses.

Mathews’ responsibilities for facilities, space planning, and management, combined with a background in user experience, naturally inform his research in this area. While writing his book Encoding Space (also recently published), Mathews explores “the philosophy and texture of physical spaces and what they enable and inspire people to do”. Curating the Campus developed out of this research by taking those same concepts beyond the library.

“So when you apply things like design thinking and look at the campus as a system, you start to notice areas that could be improved. We have been so focused on improving our libraries, but these skills and insights we’ve been developing could apply elsewhere.”

The paper challenges readers to build their own new ideas on classroom buildings, research buildings, labs, studios, exhibits & displays, atriums & lobbies, living learning community, and incubators from the 8 vignettes offered. Below are some of the questions the piece brought to my mind that I posed to Mathews.

ACRLog: I recognized examples of these ideas occurring in reimagined spaces within the library, can you talk more about how you see this model differently?

Mathews: I think the Hunt Library Teaching and Visualization Lab at North Carolina State (NC State) gets to the point. They have established their expertise in this area. But, should they not just be contained within Hunt or Hill Libraries, they could extend service delivery — sort of in a franchise model. For example, maybe the focus is more on data visualization for the social sciences. Working with that College they develop a space and some adaptive service models. Then staff together go in with a designer and informaticist to support teaching and research for this discipline. I think a “phase one” would be looking at current spaces around campus to see how they could be improved. And the next level is service design and partnerships. When I visit buildings around campus I enter thinking “how could the library enhance what’s happening here.” That doesn’t mean setting up a reference desk. In the paper I tried to outline a few of the possibilities.

ACRLog: Where else can we see this is currently happening in academic institutions?

Mathews: Each campus has its own politics and geography. What works at one university might not work in another. So the point of the paper was to express a general ethos with the hope of sparking conversations. I tried to imagine the next five to ten years in the profession and it seems we will reach a point where we burst from beyond our buildings and start applying these ideas and principles in other locations. I think the Active Learning Center at Purdue provides somewhat of an example: a shared building between libraries and registrar. At Virginia Tech we are working on this concept within a new classroom building. I’m also a co-chair of a campus-wide task force looking at renovating lobby areas of academic buildings and developing a better mix of quiet and collaborative areas. But the paper isn’t really about spaces, it’s about partnerships. I used the word mash-ups—and that’s the creative challenge. It’s not just taking the library and putting it in Building X, but rather, working with Student Affairs and the Business School to develop an entirely new service or environment within a location that isn’t the library.

ACRLog: I’m intrigued by the significant role of partnership that comes up here, and you mention in the beginning of the piece the term interaction science. How do you see interaction science in this context? How is it changing the librarian profession?

Mathews: Interaction science to me is about how people work together. How they collaborate. How they cooperate. How they communicate. How they frame and explore problems. How they overcome differences. How they produce. Really — big picture — how they interact with each other and their environment. In the different stages of group work, it’s how they form and perform. In my library we study this. We want to learn from these interactions so we can improve our spaces and services. It’s the difference between offering a few tables and chairs and building a curated learning environment. The former is what I tend to see around campus buildings, whereas the latter is what librarians have been building. I think we can export our knowledge, particularly group commons areas, to other locations.

ACRLog: In addition to new opportunities, what problems are solved by decentralizing the programs, librarians, and spaces across campus buildings?

Mathews: Most of us don’t have a lot of free space in our buildings, [but] we would be able to offer emerging services elsewhere. I think we would be better able to integrate across campus rather than with a library-centered service perspective. I think it would open new partnerships and strengthen existing ones. I think it could provide better access to tools, resources, and expertise. I think it could help expand people’s thinking about what a libraries does or has to offer.

ACRLog: Yes, the idea (perceived or real) that our libraries are no longer filled with books, has in some cases, put pressure on libraries to re-imagine their own spaces for other campus purposes. Do you see this an opportunity for, or in opposition against what is proposed here? Or how does the role of the library building change in this new arena?

Mathews: I explore this a bit in my book. The problem I see is that many libraries are trying to do too many things. We want to accommodate digital humanities centers, visualization studios, maker spaces, quiet areas and collaborative areas, and collections, and on and on. There is a lot of pressure on our buildings. I love libraries being filled with books. I think the diffused approach helps us to push out services so that we can maintain collections or repurpose our space accordingly. But it starts by establishing expertise in this area. That’s what I really admire about NC State — their laser focus on learning environments. They have built a solid reputation and could probably advise and partner other units on their campus.I view libraries as prototyping environments. We can test emerging service designs and technologies, improve upon them, and then spin them out elsewhere on campus. I think that is an exciting possibility for our spaces. Our expertise is shaping environments, services, and resources for communities so we can serve as a testing ground for new ideas until they can move on.

Wrapping up our interview by phone, Mathews and I talked further about issues around partnership, like the geopolitics of space and the important role a supportive University administration plays. The fun things about a piece like this is the way it generates new ideas and connections. It’s a conversation-starter. And it seems that reality underlies the whole premise of these spaces – to foster imagination and partnerships that are not just intentional and deliberate, but also spontaneous. You don’t know what you don’t know, which is my favorite opportunistic problem!

References:

Mathews, B., & Badua, J. (October, 2016). Curating the campus, curating change: A collection of eight vignettes. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/73191

Mathews, B., & Soistmann, L. A. (2016). Encoding space: Shaping learning environments that unlock human potential.

Serendipity’s Not Just for the Stacks

The past week or so has been filled with the rush and excitement of the beginning of the academic year, new and returning faculty and students arriving on campus, a huge change from the quiet days of summer. I’ve just finished up a couple of commitments at my college and university that seem quite different at first glance, but have similarities that I find especially interesting at the beginning of a new semester.

One is a large collegewide grant that focuses on General Education at the college of technology where I work. A core activity of the grant is an annual professional development seminar that draws in full-time and adjunct faculty from across the campus to read, work, and learn together, and ultimately redesign the courses they teach. In the four years of the grant thus far we’ve seen participation from faculty members in nearly every department: from English to Nursing, Hospitality Management to Architectural Technology, and Biology to Computer Systems Technology, just to name a few.

The other commitment is a course that I co-taught last semester at my university’s graduate school in a certificate program in technology and pedagogy. I taught the class with fellow CUNY faculty member Michael Mandiberg, who has a background in art, design, and media culture; my background is anthropology and LIS, and we complemented each other well in teaching the course. Our students were also drawn from a range of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Most were near the end of their coursework and preparing for their exams and dissertation proposals.

The biggest raves from faculty participants in the grant project at my college were about the opportunity to work with colleagues in other departments. Again and again, faculty have told us that they appreciate having the time and space for interdisciplinary conversations about teaching and learning. And it was fascinating to me to see the same enthusiasm in the graduate students I taught as well, their desire for conversations outside of their disciplinary silos happening before they’d even finished their degrees.

In libraries we often talk about offering opportunities for serendipity in the stacks, recognizing that sometimes browsing can suggest productive tangents or reveal connections that aren’t obvious. Reflecting on the end of my work on the grant and the course I’ve been thinking about serendipity of people, too: human resources, not just information sources. Laura wrote about this a couple of years back when she described a colleague who moved from a crowded building to a new lab, which, while spacious, was no longer in the thick of things, and how much she missed running into colleagues.

Small college libraries like the one where I work are all about students from different majors working and interacting: the library is an inherently interdisciplinary space. Can we encourage the serendipity of interdisciplinary conversations for faculty, too? A dedicated faculty area of the library is one option, though that may be a challenge for smaller libraries where space is at a premium. At my library we’re also thinking about forming a faculty advisory group to encourage regular discussion between librarians and faculty at the college, which may also provide opportunities for interdisciplinary conversations. Partnering with other offices on campus like the Center for Teaching and Learning or the Writing Center to offer workshops or brown bag discussions is another possibility.

Have you found success in fostering interdisciplinary opportunities for faculty in your library? Let us know in the comments!