For a Flexible Future

Tappé Associates helps a specialized campus library use space better

By Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 5/15/2007

Are you going left or right? That's the first decision patrons face with the current configuration of the Management and Economics Library (MEL) at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. “It's almost anti-inviting,” Hal Kirkwood, associate director and coordinator of instruction, told those gathered for the LJ Design Institute. Not only does it separate students, the library fails to take advantage of what should be a lovely view of the campus.

Currently, MEL occupies the second and third floors of a three-story building, but it will give up most of the third floor to the School of Management's undergraduate career counseling services. “We see this as creating a great connection with the career services department,” Kirkwood noted, “and better integrating us into the school's culture and functions.”

The ballpark budget for the entire building project is about $8 million, with the goal to begin next spring and finish in a year.

Under the current plan, the library will occupy the building's first and second floors, with the latter the most significant. “We're in a position as a business library to move more toward electronic access than other libraries on campus,” Kirkwood explained. “How can we make our floor so that it can serve two or three different needs?”

Those needs, he noted, involve increasingly “common” themes in today's academic libraries: more seating, the need for “interactive” space, “teaming” space, and “breakout” rooms.

Architects Jeffrey Hoover of Tappé Associates and Elisabeth Martin of MDA designgroup said the key challenge was to create such “spatial differentiation” but to do so flexibly. “Needs change over time,” Hoover noted, “So how do we do this without building walls?”

A threshold issue is acoustics. Much of the challenge in maintaining separate but flexible space comes down to containing sound, Hoover noted. How can you have a space where some students can study individually, others in groups, while another group hosts a class or presentation?

The answer: good planning and good sound insulation. Movable screens, a retractable vinyl curtain, or partitions on tracks could do the job, especially in separating quiet study from any group or classroom work.

Front-mounted “task lighting” was suggested by the architects as a way to avoid the homogenous, overarching fluorescent light that makes it hard to read or view presentations. The library's windows, which offer great natural light during daytime, are an asset to be maximized by any design.

Given trends toward electronic resources and collaborative learning, generations-old library fixtures—immovable book stacks, rows of seldom-used print journals, and fixed computer banks—have become obstacles at many libraries.

Plans call for much of MEL's current collections to move to storage, including the “historic” economics collection, journals that are full text online, and a “significant” portion of the print circulating collection, to be retrieved upon request. Most students will probably use laptops, Kirkwood noted, although the library will continue to offer aisles of desktops.

“The solution to the teaming part is to look at furnishings,” Martin said. She took aim at the traditional, rectangular library study table. “The rectangle doesn't support collaboration.”

One problem, and a sure sign your library is up for a redesign, is when students move furniture that isn't meant to be moved, observed Anne Seymour of the University of Pennsylvania's Health Sciences Library.

Martin recommended furniture that functions as a “well-designed kit of parts”—units that can be broken down, shifted, and moved as needed. That involves tables that break into smaller tables as well as acoustic barriers and lights. “You're looking for boutique aesthetics with prison-grade durability,” she cautioned.

Of course, flexible arrangements still depend on the availability of electric power. If a student or group of students will settle into a space, power outlets are needed for their devices, including laptops.

One solution, Martin said, could be to raise the floor and create a network of outlets underneath that could be adjusted by staff as needed. That would mitigate the need for those seeking a power source to gather around the walls of the room. All too common at libraries, the group agreed, is the sight of a pack of laptops charging by a wall outlet. An idea for a coffee kiosk also came up, but Kirkwood wasn't ready to talk specifics.

The librarians in the session were engaged by the ideas and challenges, and Kirkwood, who said he didn't expect to leave with the perfect solution, certainly was served some food for thought. “It was useful to see the different situations that other libraries were in and to talk out our situation with an objective group,” he told LJ afterward. “The consultants definitely brought an experienced perspective that was valuable.”