OLA Annual Conference 2017

We strive to create many different types of spaces in our libraries, for a variety of uses. We generally excel at labeling spaces in ways that make sense to library staff - by collection, patron type, functional use and other such staff-side designations.

What we don’t typically do well is describe library spaces to users in the terms that matter most to them. “Will I be comfortable reading quietly at a time where I’m feeling a lot of personal stress?” “Can I hangout with classmates and do homework?” “Will people seem irritated with me if I talk on my phone and use a computer at the same time?”

Join two community college librarians to learn how defining spaces can reduce time spent policing behavior and monitoring noise, while increasing community dialogue engagement. In this session we’ll outline a process for identifying your community’s space needs and developing guiding principles or values for space usage. We will also describe the development process to “zone” four campus libraries and implement a communication campaign to describe library spaces to the community. Evaluation and feedback from library staff and students, along with lessons learned, will be shared.