Assessing Library Spaces

This week I attended the Southeastern Library Assessment Conference and saw a variety of presentations focused on assessing student learning, library spaces, and service design.

Since the Oxford College Library just underwent a major renovation, I was most interested in hearing how other libraries approached space assessment. Librarians are really interested in the ways our communities are using our spaces: which furniture is preferred? what lends itself to group study? is there any group that we’ve overlooked or whose needs aren’t quite met with what we’ve provided?

Honora Eskridge and Bertha Chang, librarians from North Carolina State University Libraries, gave a presentation titled “Before and After: Planning and Assessment of New Library Spaces and Services.” They highlighted ways that they studied library space use before and after the opening of the Hunt Library at NCSU. Using a mix of observational studies, interviews, and surveys, they were able to establish trends regarding use of library spaces. In this process they also discovered “hidden populations”–patrons who identify with a larger group but have unique needs that don’t follow the typical needs of that group. One example of a hidden population given was non-thesis graduate students–they didn’t have the same research needs as grad students completing theses, but they also didn’t have offices and did have a need for quiet individual study spaces.

Eskridge and Chang’s approach to space assessment gave me a lot of ideas for setting up studies of our own spaces. We want to know how our spaces suit you, what works, what doesn’t, and what we might not have even considered yet.