Places and spaces

On Friday, three of us went to have a tour of the refurbished LRC of our nearest FE college. Considering my post on reflection, I figured I had better start reflecting! The college is a similar size with similar courses and part of the same university network as us.

Points of interest for me included:

• Study/meeting 'pods' to accommodate about 15, equipped with comfy seats (no tables) and plasma screen
• Two silent study rooms (room for about four in each)
• Loads of tables and seating of different types
• HE room with HE book stock, computers and desks; could be booked for classes (athough not permanently timetabled) but used as an overspill area otherwise
• Signs on tables with QR codes to sites of interest- the links of which are changed regularly
• Very small area with actual books, although tall and very full bookcases
• Small staff desks (rather public) with no sort of workroom

I asked my colleagues which one feature or idea struck them most and my line manager had picked up on the general attitude towards social spaces and food. Drinks and cold food are allowed and the variety of seated areas meant it was an obvious place to sit and have a snack. The smaller LRC (they have two) had computers on one side of the room and a comfy breakout area on the other. There was a suggestion that giving students this freedom means they are less likely to rebel - which I think is probably true. We currently allow bottled drinks only, although this is a rule that is constantly ignored and we have discussed taking a more relaxed attitude in September.

My other colleague liked the HE room in which specific HE stock was kept. Our HE books are currently filed amongst other stock, but marked with stickers and only HE students can borrow these titles. Whilst some FE students get disgruntled at not being able to borrow everything, up to now I've been against the idea of having a separate section. Most HE stock should be of a level higher than FE students will want to use, but HE students can still benefit from some of the other stock we have. The complaints we do get are helpful to see where there is overlap, and where necessary additional copies can be bought. Books aside though, the room was a great resource and I'd love us to have something similar, especially if we could have control over the booking (and use it for library training sessions!). A request for a separate study space often comes up in the HE library survey, and whilst they currently have a very small 'HE area', it's not really suitably sized or designed.

The thing I liked most was the open-access PCs. There were about 30 on a mezzanine level, available on a first-come, first-served basis with no bookings allowed. A couple of library staff were based on a desk nearby, but weren't involved in any computer allocation. Whilst this doesn't seem like anything special, it isn't something we manage easily. Our (generous allocation of) computers are constantly booked out by teachers for class use. This causes problems in that a) students act like they would in their classroom and don't recognise that the library is a different environment and b) we turn away students coming independently to study. I feel this latter point is a real problem, especially when a booked class doesn't turn up, half turns up or turns up and obviously have no interest in doing any work. I also feel that when we have multiple classes in we are basically disguising the problem that we don't have enough computers in classrooms.

All in all it was a really interesting visit although I'd like to have gone when it was busier (I think we possibly got a false impression of noise- it was really quiet!).