The Library Morphs

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The Learning Commons

The Library Morphs

4/1/2008

By John K. Waters

Branin says that the results of a study by Yale University (CT) Librarian Emeritus and library design consultant Scott Bennett, published in the report Libraries Designed for Learning, had a great influence on the Ohio State library renovation plan. In fact, the university hired the author as a consultant on the project. "For more than a century, planning for library space was driven by the need to put shelves under books, and to provide space for services," Bennett says. "One of those things is probably history, as we move more and more information resources into ubiquitous virtual space. And I believe the other is going to become history as we get around to moving many library resources into that virtual space. So what do we do with this big, important, expensive building right in the middle of campus? In effect, my answer is to turn it over to the students for the purposes of learning."

Bennett observes that although classrooms are where teaching happens, private spaces that students control are where learning happens. Bennett is among researchers who are mapping the "learning geography" of a campus, searching for these spaces. He says that his own surveys show that some of the most productive learning spaces on campus are among the most disregarded: empty classrooms or "accidents of architecture" filled with cast-off furniture and yet crowded with students. Computer labs, he says, don't rate high on these surveys.

"When people describe what they are going to do with a learning commons," Bennett observes, "they often talk about integrating the services delivered by librarians and information technologists. Sometimes, they even bring in student tutoring services. The result can be a useful space that integrates these services, but it's still a space in which the service providers call the shots. We're very slow to break away from that model and admit that what these spaces should be about is the students taking responsibility for their own educations."

Bennett was also an adviser on the design of the Robert and Sally Vogel Library at Iowa's Wartburg College (a small, private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). The Vogel Library was opened in 1999 as what Ferol Menzel, Wartburg's VP for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, calls a "learners' library"-a place where students could feel comfortable; have plenty of space to work, both in groups and individually; and have access to the computers, technology, and online resources they need. To carve out this version of a learning commons, the college moved most of the books in its collection to the first floor, to compact, movable shelves. The second floor (the main floor) and the third floor are now nearly book-free zones.