Chuukaku.com

I've been on a lot of library visits since I've started the MA, and have managed to fall behind a little on my updates, although I've still continued my recording habits everywhere - I'm sure there's an ethnographic study on 'the blogger in the wild' waiting to happen here, writing notes and getting left behind on tours while photographing furiously. One interesting trip was to a couple of public libraries in Sheffield, but I'm skipping forward for now to the two academic libraries we visited, Sheffield Hallam University's Adsetts Centre, and the Brotherton and the Edward Boyle Libraries at Leeds University.

The Brotherton Library is a beautiful old building, and one I had the opportunity to wander round at the RLUK Conference. I haven't included any images of the Brotherton library, partly as they didn't turn out very well, and there's plenty of images available on the Internet which give a much better impression of this beautiful building. However, it's also partly because I wanted to focus on the other two libraries.

The Adsetts Centre - pictured to the top right - was one of the first of a new line of learning centres, built in 1996. The Edward Boyle - pictured to the left - was built in 1975. The two share a common feature - the library atrium. I'm familiar with this architectural feature from Essex and from the Sheffield Information Commons with its good sides - letting natural light penetrate the darkest library depths - and its bad sides - mainly students dropping things down. Unlike both of these libraries, however, the Adsetts Centre and the Edward Boyle also have open floors, and, as visible in both photographs, it means that it is near impossible to zone different types of study area for groups and individuals.

I've been reading Lorcan Dempsey's Recombinant Library paper for my collection management essay, and it emphasised something I'm quite interested in - the recent emphasis on library social space as a consequence of the increase in electronic resources, the need to balance the social and individual study aspects of the library. Such considerations are obviously affecting both these libraries. The Adsetts, while revolutionary in its day for its technological resources, has recently had to build an extension to allow social study spaces without drowning the library in noise, and the Edward Boyle has had to grab social space where it can, and where the noise is least likely to filter through to quiet areas.

Whenever we build a new library, it is always a gamble, and perhaps the library world just has to face up to the fact that the kinds of space required aren't predictable. The Adsetts was revolutionary in its time, built to overcome the difficulties of space introduced by technologies, but it has still required reworking. The Edward Boyle is now in line for a complete rebuild. Both these visits made me wonder what the space I'd be working in by the end of my career would look like. It's possible that I'll be in a current building like Sheffield's Information Commons or Leicester's rebuilt David Wilson Library desperately trying to reconfigure it to fit new styles of working! I know that new buildings are designed to be as reconfigurable as possible, but these visits made me wonder if that's really a pipe dream.

Labels: academic libraries, library visits