eBook Chapter 6: The Future of the Physical Library

SECTION 6: THE FUTURE OF THE PHYSICAL LIBRARY

THE PHYSICAL LIBRARY – STILL RELEVANT?

As we develop new libraries and re-design existing spaces, one of the questions we must face is whether or not we truly need all of the square footage once devoted to storing shelves of print library materials. Many libraries have begun allocating significant percentages of their collection development budgets to electronic media, including eBooks and databases. Because students, staff, and parents are becoming more comfortable with electronic information, many school libraries are working toward building their digital collections, while at the same time, weeding down their print volumes. One then wonders – do we really need all of this space?

At Cedar Ridge High School (opened in August of 2010), we faced the immediacy of this challenge as we worked on our collection to begin the 2010-2011 school year. We were given a healthy opening day collection budget, but we were severely limited in the amount of square footage and shelving space in our library. This was somewhat offset by the architect’s inclusion of “satellite media areas” (more on those later), but we still had to be creative in how we spent those taxpayer dollars to ensure we had a terrific opening day collection that served all of our community’s needs within a limited physical space.

Our main library is 3000+- square feet. This seems pretty roomy until one learns that our building is designed for 2300 students. With a little over one square foot per student, things can get a bit claustrophobic! Once we include the furniture and shelving, the actual free space left over consists mostly of walkways and aisles. The architects included “satellite media areas” in each of the four academic wings of our building, which were initially great ideas, until it came time to put library resources in those areas. Since these media areas are open to the hallways with no fourth wall, we certainly could not have included print media, since we were not provided staff to supervise those areas. At 300 square feet each, our main library basically lost 1200 valuable square feet to these virtually unusable lobbies.

With a library space that is so tiny, how can we possibly store the materials we need and provide effective learning spaces for our students, staff, and community? We have a few solutions that we have employed, and these, along with a couple of architectural design advantages, have helped us deliver an excellent library media program despite our square footage limitations. While we believe the architects made a poor decision in adding four virtually unusable spaces in our building, they did an excellent job in designing auxiliary areas of the main library. We have two computer labs that are attached to the library. Our library also contains a large storage room, two small offices, a processing room, a conference room, and a professional library, housed in another small room. These spaces, along with a creative arrangement of shelving, allow us to host up to 4 classes at once or up to 150 students during free time, such as before school, during lunches, and after school.

While we started the 2010-2011 school year with only 9th and 10th graders, we grew into these spaces quickly and will go beyond during the next two school years. In conclusion, the physical library is still relevant, but as we move into more digital collections, storage and shelving spaces becomes less necessary than collaborative, technology lab, and general learning spaces. Libraries should not shrink as physical collections shrink; they should grow as opportunities for collaboration and cooperative learning grow.

Len Bryan

Co-Librarian

Cedar Ridge High School, Round Rock, Texas

len_bryan@roundrockisd.org

http://schools.roundrockisd.org/cedarridge/crhs_library.aspx

PLANNING SCHOOL LIBRARIES, OVERCOMING DECISION FATIGUE

School libraries are an extremely complex space. Hundreds of decisions have to be made early in the planning process concerning infrastructure, curriculum and technology integration, content development, layout and design, furnishing, and aesthetics. At some point, you have a mental energy slump, stop being a creative participant, and revert back to what is familiar. What is familiar happens to be the library people have known for 50 years: the beautiful, quiet library focused on a print culture.

We start the planning process rested, excited, and ready to tackle hundreds of multiple choice questions from a team of architects, administrators, project managers, IT directors, electricians, and interior designers. Questions come at you from all the latest social media so you keep your iPhone and laptop charged and your door always open. But at some point you hit the Bermuda Triangle; mentally you try to disappear while a new paranormal storm rages. That voice in your head starts screaming, “How should I know!?! If I knew the future I would be on a speaking tour.” You now have decision fatigue.

Work through the fatigue and chart a new course for your school library. Planning a truly new library requires a number of skills including patience, the ability to communicate with people possessing different background knowledge, and a willingness to gather new ideas from multiple resources. Be a librarian who practices what you teach.

You need to collaborate with the team. You do not have to think of everything. The above mentioned team each needs to bring their expertise to the table. You are an expert in things like content development, research skills, teaching, and library management. You want to work in a safe environment that encourages students, teachers and yourself to grow. Learn to clearly articulate these components.

Listen to additional ideas your school administrators have for the library. How do their ideas overlap with your thoughts? Understand their concerns and plan on incorporating their ideas into the library as well. Inclusion is a two way street: you need to be an active team member and engaged throughout the planning process.

Don’t allow the space to have zones that are limited to just one function. You want a flexible space that can grow with your student’s learning needs. Large open spaces can change quickly; once a wall goes up it is a major issue to take it down later.

Diagram the key activities occurring daily in the library; list resources and their formats so you have that information readily available. You want to be able to merchandise your resources so ask the designer to incorporate ideas into their work. Also, talk with a designer about the tone of the library, social interaction areas versus quiet spaces. Can they suggest unique ways to communicate information visually? Talk about symbolic elements that can be focal points for students.

Schedule meetings with architects, project managers, IT directors and electrical engineers to talk about the library infrastructure when you are at your highest level of energy, you need to be sharp in these meetings. You want access to power and WiFi everywhere. Are Cloud resources being considered? How does that impact services and software? Will nature be a bigger component than simply a view from the library windows? Wood, carpet, paint and ceiling tiles “off gas” and mold loves paper and fabric; who is responsible for the library being “green” and healthy?

Make decisions based on learning goals; don’t become complacent when the decisions start to be overwhelming. Collaborate with a team of experts and create a new space for a new generation of learners.

Margaret Sullivan

Library Sales and Marketing Manager

Smith System, Plano TX

MargaretS@smithsystem.com

www.smithsystem.com

REFERENCE

Tierney, John. "Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?" The New York Times 17 Aug. 2011. Print.

THE LIBRARY'S LAST STAND

It seems that lately, in education, we like to have a formula that we can use as a measuring stick for everything. We ask all students to conform to a specific set of tested skills that we measure to determine if they are “worthy” as students. We have the expectation that they should all attend college in order to be “successful." Many parents are so concerned about their children getting into the “right” college that they essentially map out their child’s education path before the first day of kindergarten.

Schools too-often dictate what children should read and the order in which they should read them. The curriculum status quo postures that all students will read the same book in the same grade, and the standardized test will verify whether or not the student has mastered the relevant themes. Forget about choice; instead, read the book the curriculum committee has determined to be the best choice, and forget about interest level because the only thing that matters when reading is whether or not the book is at the proper reading level. Forget about creativity, artistic ability, or social skills – they aren't easily measured, so they must not be an important part of a student's development.

So thank goodness for libraries, the last place kids can go to be creative and have choice! Librarians provide reading choices and recommendations based on the interests of individuals. They provide opportunities to be creative with technology and probe at ideas. In libraries, intellectual freedom is alive and well, and that makes them essential to a thriving democratic society.

In recent years we have suffered shock and awe at the number of school library closings, and we have become frustrated with the school administrators, school boards and even most legislators who don't “get” the importance of libraries. Many of them hold a vision of who we were, not who we are. Under the spectre of increasing budget cuts, they don’t see that almost half of the student population visits the library daily – many by their own choice, and some to investigate a topic that their classroom teacher has assigned. They don’t see that students love to collaborate on assignments and are comfortable sharing thoughts and ideas, unafraid of failure. They don’t see how excited kids are to bring home a special book that caught their eye and that they can’t wait to read for pleasure. They don’t see how kids wander in the weedy glut of online information and that they need to develop skills in order to become information literate, lifelong learners. Yes, libraries and librarians have a price, but it is an investment, not an expense.

If we are to continue to be the most innovative country in the world, we must continue to have strong school library programs that foster creative learning environments and provide the widest variety of resources to our children. School libraries are the last stand for intellectual freedom!

Karen Villegas

Media Specialist

Grosse Pointe North High School, Grosse Pointe, Michigan

http://tinyurl.com/3rubk4s

SCHOOL LIBRARIES AS A LAST HOPE FOR PRESERVING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Sometimes, I believe school libraries represent the last gasp of real democracy. We celebrate the potential in all children, but in their attempts to force every last student towards some arbitrarily mediocre competency, American public schools have become productivity-centric, with unending simulations of activity masking real lassitude and intellectual torpor. How has this happened? We know that too many Americans are incurious, many of today’s college graduates never reading another book after graduation. Fewer people than ever are reading the newspaper, sometimes preferring to cultivate their own narrow channels of predigested pabulum rather than work through issues independently. And, perhaps for the first time since universal education was undertaken, we are in an almost unprecedented era of rampant ahistoricity and geographical ignorance, where a failure of basic knowledge is too often dismissed as appropriate given the always-available information retrieval mechanisms.

Public schools make obvious the factory metaphor with their emphasis on work, be it class- or home- . In this environment, well staffed and stocked libraries are invaluable in combating the anti-intellectualism and industrialization. In the specialized and institutional confines of 21st century schools, the librarian is, in contrast, the rare generalist in the building with some knowledge of the entire curricula, technology, media, and the information ecosystem shifting by the moment. It is the library that can preserve a life of the mind in a way both independent from place and time, introduce students to a variety of traditions beyond themselves, show them mechanisms to reach beyond their community to connect with those whose passions they share.

There is some anxiety as public education increasingly privatized that anyone with even modest means will send their children to private schools to avoid the scripted drill-and-kill course of study, so easy to teacher-proof, the sort of approach dominating too many schools forced to focus on improving standardized test scores. Meanwhile, young people in more affluent settings still retain the enrichment opportunities stripped from many cash-strapped systems funding remediation. It seems logical that, in lockstep march towards baseline efficiency, many schools would like to excise libraries because they are fundamentally dangerous, dangerous because they offer the potential for subversive thought, for exploring multiple points of views, for exposing propaganda and totalitarianism. The attitude of a building’s administrations towards library materials can be largely indicative of their stance on student rights in a variety of other arenas, including intellectual stimulation and artistic expression. The administrator who sanctions the removal of a professional librarian from his building is committing an act of cultural cowardice.

There is particular rhetoric of education, one that we all aware is illusory and far from beneficial to our students. School librarians, more than anyone in the building, are aware of the shallowness of arbitrary curricula and standardized methods. If they are good, our schools will seek to cultivate master teachers, instead of insisting that the alchemy that is effective teaching is something formulaic and quantifiable. But perhaps, for the most beneficial academic ecosystem, there must also be something different in the mix, the master learners that are librarians, the ones who can see the shortcomings and pratfalls of the current regime. But it is important that the library must continue to be the only place in the school where it is safe to say the emperor has no clothes. Otherwise, we can abandon our belief that we are anything more than a sheeplike proletariat, systematically subjugated by an inferior educational process draining resources from the most talented, mechanizing instruction, and removing the last vestiges of societal respect for the educational profession.

Wendy Stephens

School Librarian

Buckhorn High School, New Market, Alabama

wendysteadmanstephens@gmail.com

http://wendysteadmanstephens.com

http://twitter.com/wsstephens

INSPIRING PHYSICAL LIBRARY SPACES FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Our six-year-old library facility is beautiful. Visitors have likened it to a law or college library. Mahogany colored shelves, heavy matching tables and chairs, and carpet that refuses to show much dirt, Neat book shelves with many new books. Lots of windows. A nice computer lab. We decorate with posters, flowers, and current books. We have a nice following of student users. But the space is not what I envision for a future facility...because some students still shy away from our library.

A high school library facility should generate excitement about learning and inspire creativity. It should be a place students want to be. In preparing for future high school library facility design, I don’t want to think of a warehouse, law library, or college library. Not that those are bad places. But do they beckon “come hither” to today’s young adults?

Today’s net generation cannot relate to status quo school library design, or rigidly defined uses of library space. They need a space that will be used flexibly by all stakeholders in the learning community. I really like the idea of learning commons as posited by David Loertscher and others. Brilliant I say. Kudos to those schools who have already adopted this philosophy.

It should be a hub. Some classrooms should open into it for easy access. I would suggest new schools put the learning commons on the first floor. It will be a place that not only has quiet study or reading areas, but also lively “happening” areas.

Visitors will see teacher groups and student groups working together, creating projects. Indeed, as educators, we are evaluated by the evidence of student work, by their interactions, by their efforts in creating projects. I love this quote by technology consultant Joan Frye Williams: "Stop being the grocery store, and start being the kitchen."

The place will be wired and students will be able to use their smart phones, tablet PCs, netbooks, etc. Obviously more than adequate bandwidth needs to support this technology. There will not be a digital divide because students will be able to check out technology tools. There will be a room for technological creative works: it will have interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, and digital video cameras. Post production of projects will be done with the latest software.

There will be places for viewing digital student projects as well as showcasing physical projects.

Coffee and conversation will abound in this learning commons. Who says you can’t eat or drink while you read or surf the web? Light snacks & beverages can be sold at a coffee/juice bar. So the design needs to include a coffee bar/kitchen area. Can’t you imagine it also having a small media viewing room with theater seating and a large flat panel TV for watching CNN, the Weather or History Channel?

Definitely, architects and planners should involve the stakeholders in new design or even remodeling or transforming a high school library into a learning commons. What it will look like will vary from campus to campus. It should have fun upholstered restaurant style booths, some soft seating, art work on the walls (some painted by students), fun paint colors, colorful rugs, some outdoor spaces (a deck perhaps with a few wind chimes, perhaps).

But it will beckon to the user, “Come in, enjoy your learning experience, and stay awhile.”

Angela Washington-Blair, Ph.D.

Media Specialist

Emmett J. Conrad High School, Dallas, Texas

awashingtonblair@dallasisd.org

Reference:

Fitzpatrick, Sean. 2010. “Top Technology Trends at ALA 10 Part One: Current Technlogy.” American Libraries Inside Scoop Blog. June 28. Retrieved September 21, 2011, from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/inside-scoop/top-technology-trends-ala10-part-one-current-technology .

TINKERING AROUND THE LIBRARY

I love to read. There are numerous “favorite” spots around my home and patio to read. And, I believe your library should possess the same favorite spots for students. Everyone should read and learn to read well.

All that love of reading aside, people think I am a good cook because I cook, not because I read cookbooks. My gardens invite gawkers not because I study plant anthologies but because I use a garage full of tools to create something beautiful. My nephew Eion can discuss the pros and cons of red worms and leeches not because he reads earth science books. It is because he can fish from sun rise to sun set, bait his hook like a pro and casts a fly rod like he is on television. And for a first grader he reads well; he has a preference for books on fishing with color pictures.

People learn by tinkering, exploring topics of interest, they build knowledge effortlessly when they are engaged. Student centered learning is not exactly breaking news yet schools overlook this obvious victory in their mad dash to finish with high test scores.

It is exciting to experience schools that are built around the model of student centered or project based learning. A good example is Larry Rosenstock’s High Tech High in San Diego. It is an integrated school of doers and explorers who are successfully tinkering their way through an educational system focused on cross curriculum, hands-on learning.

Unfortunately, one of the strangest things I have seen going into project based schools is that no one is quite sure what to do with the library. Some schools decide they simply don’t need one. Eerily, other spaces remain empty waiting for a brave new concept. Some are traditional: an inflexible space with rows of bookshelves mixed with computers plus a lovely, custom-built circulation desk. In some the librarian is mobile; the library is a stationary warehouse to load resources to ship into the student’s world, implying the library is not part of that world. In some the library has no central location: it is satellite stations spread out around campus, again assuming the performing arts students won’t need science resources to complete their dance project, etc. Interesting concepts, yet none are a functional WOW, although several were an aesthetic wow.

So I ask myself, why isn’t the library the largest tinkering space in the school? Why in a project based environment isn’t the hub of activity located in the library? It could so easily be a large open space with mobile resources forming constellations around working students. Tables where 3D models are built can cluster with tables supporting wireless laptops. Print resources on wheels can parallel park next to those tables. And the whole project could have been diagramed and dissected into peer accountability with a mobile whiteboard and chairs pulled into an open space cleared of resources a week earlier.

As the scope of resources evolves blending print and primary material with digital information and demonstrating knowledge ranges from oral presentation set to original music to artwork to interactive term papers the library could be a hands-on studio of activity. Students could manipulate the space around their projects, have easy access to resource tools over long blocks of time, and have enough flexibility to display or demonstrate their project both in progress or finished.