Designing Libraries for the 21st Century

The Second Annual Designing Libraries for the 21st Century Conference was held Oct. 6-8 at North Carolina State University. There were several themed presentations, including: Creating Spaces for Learning, Realizing the Vision, Designing Spaces for Students, Design Teams and Customers, Importance of Interiors, Lessons Learned, Designing Technology Spaces in the Library, and Designing Spaces for Faculty and Research.

The presentations can easily be found on the NCSU Libraries Website.

Brewster Kahle’s TED Talk: Let’s One Up the Greeks

Brewster Kahle is founder and director of the Internet Archive, a free service which steadfastly archives World Wide Web documents. Kahle is building a truly huge digital library — every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history … It’s all free to the public — unless someone else gets to it first.

Save the Date: Next Library Future Series on Nov. 21

1 Coffee Pot, Many Disciplines: Session Recap

In March 2013, Bonnie Cain-Wood attended a session on how work spaces impact collaboration. Her notes, take aways and follow-up questions are below.

Session Brief: The Allen Curve, a theory developed by MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Tom Allen in the 1970s, asserts that the physical distance between individuals directly affects their levels of collaboration. This belief has begun to revolutionize space planning around the world—especially the institution where the theory was developed. Whether it is open office space, specially designed labs connecting typically bifurcated groups, or the consolidation and co-location of related but fragmented activities and programs, MIT is taking a revolutionary approach to driving innovation and entrepreneurship through the creation of work spaces that promote and enhance collaboration.

Take Aways:

·         Making a place look "status" hinders innovation. (Think corporate conference rooms)

·         Old model: break up space, send people to work, bring them together to share. Works well for efficiency, but not for innovation. 

·         The coffee pot is a real and symbolic center that brings people together.

·         Communal Offices-sharing offices, when someone is out, someone else uses the office.

Library Applications:

·         Co-working: Could we have flexible working space that employees could move in and out of so you work with different people and in a different place? Can we do a pop-up co-work space to experiment with this concept? As we begin to embed librarians, would co-working space within the Library be a more efficient use of space?

·         Enablers: do we have something, someone, someplace that encourages interdepartment collaboration? What can we do to create this?

·         If the coffee pot is a real and symbolic center that brings people together, what is our "coffee pot"?

         

      To explore this topic more, visit:
http://twitter.com/#MITspace

If you would like to share your notes on conference sessions relevant to the Library Future Series contact lib-pub@okstate.edu.

 

Environmental Scan Presentation

Library employees may find the slides used for the Environmental Scan work group presentation on May 7 at U:LibraryFutures\ or the Library's intranet. 

Comments and questions on these notes can be added to the comments section below.

The work group also recommends the following links: 
Research Games (Texas A&M): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-hmcx99Kks 
University of Arizona Video Contest: http://www.library.arizona.edu/video-contest 
My Hunt Library Photos (NCSU): http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/myhuntlibrary

Follow Up Notes-Spires of Excellence

Library employees may find the notes from the follow up session for the Spires of Excellence work group presentation on April 10 at U:LibraryFutures\ or the Library's intranet.

Comments and questions on these notes can be added to the comments section below.

Spires of Excellence Presentation

Library employees may find the slides used for the Spires of Excellence work group presentation on April 8 at U:LibraryFutures\ or the Library's intranet. 

Comments and questions on these notes can be added to the comments section below.