Space Plans

Curious as to what other CLIC schools have either a up to date space plan or a active space committee/working group. At Hamline, we are guided by a few things, such as a Library Program Planning Statement (LPPS), and an active space working group. I would say that our LPPS is not unlike where Lewis is headed with some of his suggestions. We, as I am sure everyone has, started to downsize print collections, and started to think about re-purposing space. With this, we have also worked with other tenants in our building: Writing Center, Academic Advising, and our Center for Teaching and Learning. This has helped us think about what kind of spaces we would like in our part of the building, or helped those departments rethink and design their own respective spaces. As we move forward with ideas on spaces, we are naturally thinking about our building partners. I think this partnership has helped us in getting ahead of administration claiming of the space. To this, we have also benefited with us being on various relevant university wide groups. We have also rekindled a relationship with our student congress, which has allowed us to acquire new furniture that the students have liked.  Like most libraries, I would imagine a lot of us are forced into incremental change, i.e., one year we can get the tables, maybe we can get the chairs next year. When it comes to project planning, we now naturally come up with 3-4 plans with various prices, so as to "dream big" but also be practical at the same time. 

For my personal interest, I am also looking at how students use informal learning spaces around campus and seeing if we can incorporate ideas generated from this. 


-Kristofer