When designing a school library space and deciding how to arrange resources, it is important to consider multiple components of adolescent development, including social, emotional, and behavioral aspects. Acknowledging these developmental facets and their importance can provide additional justification for some of the more controversial aspects of…

Transforming space to facilitate and compliment learning has become an integral component in the redesign and renovation of academic libraries. This article offers a framework of discussion based on the redesign and renovation of the existing curriculum materials center at East Carolina University Joyner Library. The curriculum materials center,…

Even though students are not using the print collection, they still choose to go to the library for academic pursuits. The continuing preferences of students for library space can be examined in the light of a hierarchy of needs made up of layers of access and linkages, of uses and activities, of sociability, and of comfort and image. A space…

Renovating, expanding or building new libraries today is a challenge on several levels. Libraries in general are faced with image issues, such as the assumption that a library building exists only to house print material followed by the equally erroneous assumption that everything is now available online, thus rendering a physical building…

Fire, water, mold, construction problems, power-outages--mishaps like these can not only bring library services to a grinding halt, but can also destroy collections and even endanger employees. Preparing for the unexpected is the foundation of a library's best response. Expert Kahn comes to the rescue with this timely update of the best…

This article describes interviews with 40 elementary school librarians conducted by pre-service and in-service teachers. The purpose of the interviews was for education students to understand the responsibilities of the librarian, how the librarian might support them as teachers, and the future of the position in today's schools. Results suggest…

Things are changing. For starters, ebooks, apps, and the web are now a part of students' daily lives. So how do school librarians determine the best way to turn their library space into a learning center that is right for today's rapidly changing digital world? In this article, the author suggests five design considerations that school librarians…

Since its inception, Metropolitan State University has demonstrated a strong commitment to community partnerships and the integration of community engagement into student learning and scholarship while meeting community-defined needs. This article presents examples of reciprocal partnerships in the context of a shared community-university library…

Two floors of the W. K. Hancock Library at the Australian National University (ANU) were refurbished in 2011 as part of a cooperative project between the library and the College of Science. The refurbishment, costing $5 million, was part of a much larger exercise involving the construction of four new science buildings around the Hancock Library.…

Today's undergraduates are clearly comfortable as consumers of technology and new media--purchasing ring tones for their cell phones and tunes for their iPods, text-messaging from handheld devices, scanning and tinkering with photos, keeping up with their Facebook friends and watching viral YouTube videos, sometimes all simultaneously. We share…

The difference between the University of Texas at San Antonio's Applied Engineering and Technology Library and other science-focused libraries is not that its on-site collection is also available electronically. It is that its on-site collection is only available electronically. The idea of libraries with no bound books has been a recurring theme…

Can it be only two years, as Alan Jay Lerner once wrote, "since the whole [economic] rigmarole began"? Yet libraries have weathered to varying degrees the unreliability of funding, especially with regard to programming, materials, and hours. Money earmarked years ago is seeing construction through to conclusion; state support has helped out in…

Much has been written about library commons in recent years. For the most part, that literature has dealt with designing information and learning commons that support student learning by giving them the tools and resources they need for their academic work. However, few authors have discussed how a library commons might facilitate collaboration…

This article describes a library renovation project in a community college that involved using existing space and reorganizing it to support the way students learn both individually and collaboratively. The article also looks at the importance of the academic library as place.

Society's view of the library has changed with each passing generation. What was once a quiet building full of books intended for the studious researcher is now becoming a place that combines print and technology, to encourage both the interactive and visual learners. Today's kids have access to both hardbound books as well as online resources,…