Oxford University: How do you design the library of the future?
medium.com
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I sometimes wonder whether I should continue my education somewhere like Oxford, just so I can experience the focused concentration of a library again.
My sentiments exactly. I chose my undergrad college (not at Oxford) for the sole reason that it made particular mention that its library was open 24/7 on its website. I figured it was as good a reason as any, and it turned out great.
I've also had experience with another university in the states that has an open stacks policy–anyone can just walk in and use a desk or read a book, no registration, card swipes or anything required. Absolutely liberating. Instantly made the university so much more welcoming (contrast this to the university I'm currently at where you have to jump through hoops to get a visitor access to the library, and if they're there without someone to sponsor them, god help them).
Humans are so much more than symbol processing algos. Physical environment and context matter to the creativity which is our primary species differentiator.
Libraries can be viewed as always-evolving local caches. Digital images reduce the latency of discovery, but like travel to a distant land, nothing can substitute for tactile experience and three-dimensional motor memory as anchors of emotional experiences and learning.
Even then, it's easy to sneak through if you act like you belong there. Librarians tend not to be the type that try hard to keep people out of a library. If it's actual campus security, that's a different situation.
Yes, libraries often—and increasingly—have great study spaces. They are becoming places for scholars to congregate. They can have staff that are increasingly available to do interesting research and offer interesting information. Special collections libraries also have far fewer problems than normal academic libraries, which is why they tend to be highlighted, as they are here, when talking about how the academic library is not dying: people will always want spaces to store historical treasures, and with exhibition spaces, to display them. This is a matter of both sentimentality and preservation. Yet while these directions offer hope that the academic library might evolve into something new, they do not mean that most of the institution is not dying.
The academic library of the past was immense, because it had to be. Suitable resources to support wide-ranging research take up vast amounts of space, and when those resources were combined into a few locations, wide, diverse groups of scholars would need to congregate there. The result was that, by necessity, academic libraries tended to be giant, central points at universities.
At Caltech, my university now, our obelisk of a main library towers ten stories over our minuscule campus. It is still far too small to have ever held a decent collection. At UCSD, my alma mater, the library is a vast building that the entire campus spreads out around, built upon a giant plinth and so central and iconic that much of the university's image is defined around its appearance. At one point, there were at least nine other libraries there, many of them also quite large and central to smaller regions of the campus. Most have quietly closed.
Academic libraries throughout the world were much the same, or, alternatively, were large networks of small libraries that worked together to supply the immense space and resources required for research and learning. In either case, they invariably took a huge amount of space on campuses, and became central figures in academic life.
And that: the academic library as a vast physical repository of knowledge and vital location of support for research, is dying. To say that the academic library is not dying because some consequences of its construction are thriving is to ignore that the central idea of the academic library is.
There is little need now for the vast collections, for the rows of printed and bound periodicals, for the shelves that stretch to the end of one's vision. Yes, libraries can show statistics that their study spaces are more popular than ever. What about their hearts, though? I would guess that stacks now are visited by fewer people than ever, except perhaps the few people who enjoy studying in even emptier, quieter places than dedicated study spaces.
This is largely a consequence of the internet. It applies to special collections too: digitization is becoming ever better, and talking about how some documents with color were once digitized in black and white is ultimately short-sighted. Even for the physical items in normal collections, changes in logistics mean that having numerous universities with repeated, self-serve collections doesn't make nearly as much sense. You see this with things like the UC system's consolidated library facilities: ultra-high density closed stacks designed more like a shipping warehouse than a library, shipping out books to scholars across the state who request them. These, rather than shiny new buildings in the center of campus, are probably the unattractive but efficient future of library stacks.
Yes, much has been said of libraries as study spaces and places to congregate, but think of it this way: if academic libraries had never existed, and you were designing a space for scholars to congregate and for the public to see some exhibitions, as this article is essentially arguing that academic libraries are becoming, would you make it around 300,000 square feet, as the library at UCSD is? Would you, as at Oxford, build over 120 of them?
We are repurposing these buildings, taking what were originally their secondary purposes and making them the primary ones. And as the primary purpose does die, it causes unpleasant but inevitable changes. At universities throughout the world, there are vast amounts of stack space that will eventually need to be repurposed to something else, and only a small portion will end up being adapted to the purposes of the "new" academic library. Staff to support large physical collections will no longer be needed or sustainable. Universities with library networks will see many libraries die out: the other side of the happy story being told in this article about the new stack space at the Weston is that it is being created as a consolidation of other libraries, not as a space for new acquisitions. Libraries as machines that were once vast and localized are being turned into something more global and more efficient, but also far less attractive to us and far smaller as a whole.
I am quite encouraged by moves to redefine the academic library as a gathering place for scholars, a physical beacon of research and academia in a digital age. I think it's a good concept with great potential, and something that we need. As a central social location, it may be wonderful in fostering scholarly communication, camaraderie and community.
Yet the academic library of old is dying, not evolving. The death needs to be acknowledged, not hidden. It is perhaps better to think of the current situation, as the death and rebirth of the academic library.
Yes. At least, in a university that was structured similarly to Oxford.
I think an important point is that Oxford and Cambridge are collegiate universities: undergraduates spend a lot of time in their college, which provides accommodation, catering and libraries; if academic libraries had never existed and I were deciding how many study/congregation spaces to create, I would definitely have one in each college, and in each department.
Oxford has 38 Colleges and 6 Permanent Private Halls, which this accounts for a significant proportion of the libraries. As most colleges and departments have some kind of hall/cafeteria, the number of places in the university serving food may also seem excessive to you.
On another note. I went into my new local library for the first time this week. I don't have an office space at home at the moment and will need a space to concentrate for 5 -8 hour spells once or twice a wee soon. The library has a cafe, toilets and free wi-fi. Perfect.
Libraries and the new Starbucks(!)
- Private study rooms, and a conference room anybody can book for free.
- A dedicated auditorium for lectures, events etc.
- Children sections are on the first floor, behind a separate wall, keeping the adult areas quiet.
- Teen section is its own section, behind closed doors. It looks almost like a reference section at a more traditional library, except it's just for teens to hang out in. It too has it's own dedicated section.
- A cafeteria-like snack, study area. More tables and desks for study. Only you're allowed to eat and drink in this area.
- The rest of the library looks like a college study area, desks with power, comfortable lounge chairs by bright open windows
- Periodicals and magazines are next to an open air, casual reclining spot.
- Well staffed info desks are impossible to miss. They even have teens volunteer to staff special teen desks.
- They have a bank of computers for people who need to use one.
- They host numerous events through the week, from minecraft clubs to retrogaming clubs, reading groups, guest lecturers, authors, puppet shows, story time, gardening seed exchanges, lego builds
- High speed free wi-fi
- robust support for e-book readers, tablets, streaming music, emagazines, all from the county website.
I'd like to compare it to something else, but I can't really think of anything that's quite like it, and it's amazing. It's a place people actually want to come and it's usually packed. Even in the middle of a work day, when I've gone there when working from home, it's generally full of people and far more pleasant than any coffee shop I've spent time in.
I think the reason they're successful is that rather than just being a warehouse full of organized books, like the libraries I grew up with, the local library system has dedicated itself to being a more general community communication and information resource. They provide space, light, internet (all for free), and let the activities and groups use them for any worthwhile learning activity.
What it's not
- a community center, people don't rent it out for birthdays or parties
- a school, they don't provide a school-like resource, it's more like a college study area, the county offers other robust continuing education resources for people who want to take classes (I've taken some and they're well run, rewarding and absurdly cheap)
- a hang-out, you see plenty of groups of kids, but they're there to share learning experiences, not to hang around killing time