Recently I was lucky enough to attend a day at Cardiff University’s Trevithick Library on Creating New Learning Spaces, organised by UC&R Wales (a group of CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals).

The main point of the day for most of the 50-odd participants, I guess, was to see Trevithick’s transformation into a “21st century library”. But first we had an excellent two-hander presentation about the project from Ruth Thornton (Librarian) and Amanda Heal of the Design Research Unit Wales at Cardiff School of Architecture, both of whom had collaborated on the Project Group.

• Trevithick Library serves the Schools of Engineering, Physics, Astronomy and Computer Science, with about 3,000 students 
• Drivers for the redesign included: a 2004 review of space within the University; a realisation that the library was not fit for technical and pedogogical advancements, for example the need for group working; pressure from students who wanted somewhere more comfortable to study; the need for a more environmentally sustainable building.
• The opportunity came with a successful bid to the Wolfson Foundation, augmented by contributions from a number of sponsors and benefactors.

Ruth referred to the “nine commandments” identified by Andrew McDonald for the design of library spaces, included in Michael Dewe’s 2006 book Planning public library buildings (you can see the list on p.219 of the book, which I was pleased to find available via Google Books – follow the link here).

Ruth pointed out that e-resources, whilst they don’t themselves take up physical space, do stimulate demand for study space and they also require space for support services to students and staff.

Amanda gave us a wealth of information about the redesign process from the architect’s viewpoint, including environmental considerations. I was struck by how much of the project time was devoted to planning (out of the eighteen month period January 2007 – January 09, the building work only took up the last 6 months). Particular attention was paid to lighting – and this is where the ‘blue skies’ of the title come in, because Amanda pointed out how they had tried to ensure that users of the library could always “see the sky” from whereever they were working. Another priority for the architects was ‘identity and place’ which sounds rather abstract but which translated into some of the most pleasing features of the building: views in from the outside; clean lines and colourse denoting different areas.

The project group sounds like a model of good practice in the way it brought together all the relevant stakeholders including students – although Ruth admitted it was not always easy getting them involved. In new learning space projects, the students – and the staff who work most closely with them - can often be excluded from the decision-making process and left in the dark about what is going on. Cardiff actually formed a specific subgroup to focus on the student experience, and put a lot of effort into a communications campaign comprising staff-student panels, newsletters, emails, web pages and (most successfully of all) plasma screens located next to the campus restaurant, telling the story of the project.

Furniture got particular attention because students had raised it as their biggest concern. Interestingly, Ruth recommended looking at design-led companies rather than the “office supplier” type companies which many libraries have traditionally dealt with. Her hot tip for getting furnishings right? ‘Go and sit on some chairs!’

One of the big successes of the project was the amount of commercial sponsorship they attracted (over £50k). Companies were able to sponsor a group study room giving them the chance to have their corporate branding placed on a glass wall (not as intrusive as it sounds, the images were actually very attractive and could be changed in the future). Their corporate colours are echoed in the room’s decor, the company has access to the room for graduate recruitment, and by sponsoring a plasma screen they can have corporate images displayed when the room is not in use.

I was surprised that they didn’t cite other buildings as their inspiration, but this underlies the fact that they started very much from what their users needed and wanted, and worked within the constraints of the space that already existed. Ruth did, however, mention University of Portsmouth as having provided a useful source of ideas for the group rooms and lighting.

The new building still has about the same number of visitors as before, but they are staying longer and borrowing more material. The Library has gone over to RFID (basically, tagging of stock to enable self-issue) and, as in a growing number of libraries, this means that the entrance area does not need to be dominated by an issue desk. It also frees the staff up to do more interesting jobs.

For those contemplating a new library, we were reminded that Aberystwyth University maintains a useful database of library design resources at http://www.designinglibraries.org.uk/.

Later in the day we got to have a good look round the new space. You can see some photos in my Picasa web album. I was left very impressed by what can be achieved within the constraints of an existing building.

The other presentations during the day included an excellent talk on the use of a technology-rich learning space for Inquiry Based Learning at the Information Commons, Sheffield University, by Phil Levy. As I am going to another meeting on this topic shortly I’ll blog about this later. For now here is a link to the CILASS website  for some basic information.

Lastly, Ian Pearshouse of Nottingham University talked about evaluation of learning spaces. It’s the norm for Estates departments to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of any new build, but it seems these don’t look at the impact on teaching and learning. Reports of new builds tend to focus on “justification” and so it’s  difficult to find out if new spaces have failed to meet aspirations.  Furthermore, evaluation reports are often judged to be sensitive and therefore go unpublished. JISC wanted to try and find out what makes for a good evaluation of a new build from a teaching and learning perspective, and so have funded a study which will be reporting soon. I’ll try and blog about it again when it comes out, but for now I’ll just note that this sounds like an important step in trying to improve our understanding of how good learning and teaching can be supported in the future. With the enormous cost of new buildings, we need as much evidence as possible to aid decision making.

Ian predicts that the National Student Survey will in future ask about the quality of space relating to teaching and learning. If he is right, the resulting data should make for some interesting reading!