College and Research Libraries 50th Anniversary Feature- Current Issues in Building Planning David Kaser t is likely that, as the result of events that occurred a quarter century ago, the amount of new or additional academic library space to be constructed during the next several years will be substantial. The pas- sage of the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 made federal grants generally available for the first time for college and university library construction. Until that program wound down more than a dec- ade later the nation experienced its most extensive boom ever in library construc- tion on college and university campuses. Jerrold Orne has documented the phe- nomenal magnitude of that great surge in library construction. 1 During the peak five years 1967-1971 alone, 462 academic li- brary building projects were initiated in North America, at a total cost of a billion dollars, providing more than 34 million square feet of new and/or renovated li- brary floor space! The boom continued, but at a somewhat slower rate, until by 1976 the total number of projects had grown to 647. 2 That eventful period of li- brary construction now has direct impact upon our new building planning today. Because academic library buildings are normally planned for twenty years' growth, all of those structures built in the 1960s and 1970s either have or will reach capacity in the next few years. Although some alternative techniques and technolo- gies are available to serve partially in lieu of · expansion, the vast majority of these aging libraries-certainly more than 90 percent of them-will have to be enlarged or replaced within the decade. This paper will discuss some of the principal issues that will have to be faced by academic li- brary building planners in the present pe- riod. COMMUNITY ANALYSIS Surveys and Futures It has long been recognized that before an effective library building can be planned, a thorough survey of the com- munity must be made to determine just what purposes the building will be ex- pected to fill. In a manner that is almost imperceptible to the institution, experi- enced consultants can sometimes gather adequate data for these surveys as part of their preliminary study and early site vis- its. Their imperceptibility, however, does not make them any less important. They remain a critical first step in the building planning process. If anything, these surveys have become even more important today than they were in the past, because they must now include a more daunting ''futures analy- sis" than would have been previously re- quired. Not long ago "the next decade" of David Kaser was editorofC&RL from 1963 to 1969 and served as ACRL President in 196811969. Now Distin- guished Professor of Library & Information Science at Indiana University, he has participated m the planning of some 150 academic library buildings throughout North America, as well as in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. 297 298 College & Research Libraries library service could reasonably have been expected to be much like the previous dec- ade, so that planners could simply extrap- olate straight-line growth characteristics from one period to another. Library life, however, is no longer so simple. Things are changing very rapidly, and the rate of change seems destined to accelerate in the years immediately ahead. Before planning a library building to- day, an entire college or university com- munity must first collectively consult its crystal ball and arrive at some consensus regarding the future of information han- dling and use. In the author's experience it is less difficult to arrive at such consen- sus today than it was five years ago. Today virtually everyone is at least prepared to admit that changes are indeed taking place; understandably, differences re- main as regards the likely pace of that change. A wise academic community will anticipate the need for its library to main- tain both traditional and nonconventional services over the next twenty years, with declining emphasis on the former and in- creasing emphasis on the latter as evolv- ing circumstances warrant. Such a strat- egy should be geared to shielding library users from potential future shock, or trauma from too rapid change. Corporate Characteristics This scenario of the future must be ap- plied to relevant corporate characteristics of the institution. What changes does it imply for its academic program? Although there appear to be many more steady-state academic programs in the nation, some changes are still occurring. Fewer new un- dergraduate major and minor fields are being added to the curricula, but some col- leges are still establishing or expanding graduate business programs. Few new area studies programs are being pro- posed, but new interdisciplinary study centers are being initiated, as in artificial intelligence or cognitive science. New ex- tension offerings continue to be initiated at sites remote from main campuses. All of these developments should be considered before an appropriate new or enlarged li- brary building can be conceptualized. Are teaching methods or pedadogical styles likely to change on the campus? Do May 1989 faculty members anticipate that they will increasingly use videotapes in their courses in anthropology, archaeology, music, art, or history for viewing either in class or outside of class? Will telecon- ferencing come into greater use for in- structional purposes, or will dosed-circuit television delivery of courses over dis- tances be increased, or will E-Mail become · a principal medium of classroom com- munication for such things as distributing assigned readings? Will honors programs receive greater emphasis, and if so will their theses be optional or required? The answers to these questions will affect the kind of library to be constructed. They should be considered before building planning per se begins. "An institution's perception of the nature of information use in the years ahead will impact heavily upon the number and kind of study stations to be accommodated within a new or enlarged library building.'' Obviously, an institution's perception of the nature of information use in the years ahead will impact heavily upon the number and kind of study stations to be accommodated within a new or enlarged library building. An institution's confi- dence in interlibrary cooperative network- ing and in the telecommunication of bib- liographic and full-text .copy will influence the amount of shelf space that will be allo- cated for conventional materials. These two factors will be discussed in greater de- tail later in this paper. Preliminary Decisions Still other library and institutional deci- sions have to be made before a rational building-planning exercise can begin. Within the library, for example, the orga- nizational structure should be reviewed. Perhaps the college library has operated with five department heads reporting di- rectly to the librarian. Maybe it should or- ganize these departments into two divi- sions, with an assistant librarian for each. This should be decided beforehand so that appropriate office space can be planned for the altered staff structure. Should new departments be established, or should several old departments be merged or re- organized? Are there outlying collections that should now be incorporated or changed from libraries to information cen- ters with minimal on-site holdings? Sometimes universitywide decisions need to be made before sound library planning can occur. If media services, for example, have not been part of the library, or indeed if they have never been orga- nized at all, the institution ought to con- sider centralizing them in the library. If the college archives have been inade- quately developed outside the library, or are nonexistent, the institution might use this occasion to decide their future and transfer them if appropriate. Such deci- sions can be fraught with emotional, polit- ical, or personal overtones that the college may be reluctant to face. However, the al- ternative of building a new library without space for media services or archives only to decide later that they should have been transferred would indicate poor planning. Whether it wants to or not, this is usually a good time for the college to bite the bullet on such issues. EXPAND OR BUILD DE NOVO Cost Considerations It is decreasingly necessary to build aca- demic libraries de novo, but sometimes it is still the wise thing to do. The principal rea- son not to build a completely new building is, of course, cost. Depending upon local factors, the cost of new library construc- tion can range from $80 to $130 per square foot. Other costs, such as fees, site devel- opment, furniture, and equipment, can easily bring the budget for a building proj- ect to more than $160 per square foot. This enormous price tag for new construction makes it incumbent upon everyone in- volved in a building decision to exhaust all alternatives before opting for it. Academic decision makers frequently overlook the fact that simply adding to an old building never represents the com- plete cost of the project. At the barest min- imum, those locations where the addition connects to the old structure need also to Current Issues in Building Planning 299 be renovated, and renovation is not cheap. It is almost always desirable, more- over, to consider renovating the entire ex- isting structure rather than just its points of connection to ensure that the total en- larged building, old space and new space, presents a reasonably uniform level of quality. If the lighting, air treatment, fur- nishings, and general ambience of the old space remain too inferior to those of the new, patrons will simply eschew the old and overcrowd the new. Furthermore, it is frequently necessary not only to renovate but also to rerationalize the old space and the new into a functional whole so as to as- sure that the total building will function as a single entity. That also carries a pricetag. It quickly becomes clear that a com- pletely new building may not be much more expensive than an effectively en- larged one; indeed it may even be cheaper. If, for example, 40,000 square feet of new library space, costing $130 per square foot, is to be added to an existing 30,000-square-foot library that will have to be renovated and adapted at a cost of $70 per square foot, the total project cost will be $7.3 million. On the other hand, a com- pletely new library of 68,000 square feet (slightly smaller because no space is lost to articulation) will cost only $8.84 million, but this option will also leave the institu- tion with a vacated 30,000-square-foot old library that can be diverted to some alter- nate campus purpose. If that alternate use is of high priority on the institution's schedule of approved capital projects, the combined cost of the completely new li- brary and the diverted old one might actu- ally be less than the cost of adding to the old library and constructing a completely new building to meet the second need. Given such a scenario, donor preferences and site considerations may actually be- come determining factors. Site Considerations Whether or not they become determi- nant, site considerations will often im- pinge upon the decision to add or build anew. Many campuses are becoming in- creasingly compacted, so that adequate space for an addition is frequently un- available adjacent to the existing library building. In some cases adequate ground 300 College & Research Libraries area may exist, but parceled on two or three (or even four) sides of the existing building as at Delaware, a condition very likely to increase the per-square-foot cost of adding. In other cases the adjacent site may impose a contorted shape upon an addition as at Vassar, resulting not only in higher construction cost but also in per- manent operating inefficiencies. As in new library buildings, the most efficient shape for library operations in an addition is almost always a simple rectangle. The rectangular addition moreover functions best when it is cobbled snugly against an original rectangle as at Brigham Young rather than set apart from it and accessible only through an umbilicus as at East Caro- lina knd Kentucky. ''The most efficient shape for library operations in an addition is almost al- ways a simple rectangle." An addition may prove to be undesir- able because the site of the original library is no longer appropriate. The direction of campus growth since original construc- tion may have been away from the library, leaving it too isolated from classrooms and dormitories, as at Scranton. Or the domi- nant student population at the institution may have shifted from residential to com- muter, calling for a new peripheral library site nearer to parking areas. Different from library functional requirements, which are almost solely the librarian's to decide, site considerations tend to become everyone's business, including trustees, alumni, students, certainly donors and ar- chitects, and sometimes even the local press. Technical Considerations Some library buildings are simply easier to enlarge than others. No single element i~ a library building is peskier to contend with than a multitier structural stack. The use of structural stacks was well-nigh uni- versal in American academic libraries from the 1880s until World War II. Very few new ones have been constructed in May 1989 North America since midcentury, how- ever, and many have been replaced. Nonetheless several hundred are still in use, mostly in prewar structures that were enlarged rather than replaced during the building boom of the 1960s and 1970s. The large university libraries with substantial investments in the status quo found them especially difficult to replace, as at Har- vard, Michigan, Illinois, and Berkeley. However, many smaller institutions still have them as well, such as Wake Forest, Franklin and Marshall, Bucknell, and Vanderbilt. Multitier structural stacks are barriers to effective, welcoming, open-shelf library service and, except for closed storage, should be replaced at almost any cost. They were invented in the 1850s by the celebrated French architect Henri La- Brouste solely as a method for storing compactly a maximum number of books in a minimum amount of space, a purpose they served admirably for a hundred years. First introduced on this continent at Harvard in 1877, they were soon adopted by most academic and many public li- braries. They were never intended, how- ever, to serve as publicly accessible spaces, and they remain totally devoid of any humane qualities that would make readers comfortable in their midst. Multitier structural stacks are totally in- flexible and cannot be moved. Their instal- lation required the erection of an immove- able grid of vertical steel stack posts every 36 inches in one direction-the length of book shelves-and every 54 inches in the other direction-the on-center dimension between ranges. These posts do more, however, than simply support the shelves. They extend the full distance from the floor to the ceiling and serve as the structural members that support simi- lar configurations of posts and shelves on the tiers above. Thus if a single stack post were to be removed, everything above it all the way to the roof of the building would collapse. Their vertical dimension is equally con- straining. Since stack attendants of aver- age stature could reach books about 70 to 80 inches above the floor, these stacks came universally to adopt a tier-to-tier di- mension of 7 feet 6 inches. When lights and ducts were hung below these low ceil- ings, their in-the-clear heights dropped to 6 feet 6 inches or lower and became haz- ards for taller people. Floor levels else- where in the building moreover had to meet the levels of every other stack tier, imposing 15-foot floor-to-floor dimen- sions throughout. At first this was a felici- tous relationship, because high ceilings were needed in old-fashioned reading rooms for large windows that could admit plenty of daylight and exhaust heat buildup. Given modern artificial lighting and air treatment, however, they are ex- cessive. Thus matching an addition to those floor levels can result in the con- struction of as much as 20 percent of su- perfluous cubage. This not only drives up the initial capital cost of the addition but also requires the continuing expense in perpetuity of heating and cooling the ex- cess enclosed space. Academic libraries, especially in baccalaureate-level institutions, that are still operating multitier structural stacks in an open-shelf mode should look at any proposal to add to their present buildings with a severely jaundiced eye. Since mid- century almost all new library construc- tion has been modular in concept, em- ploying few if any load-bearing walls, so that only columns and floor slabs are fixed permanently in place. Such structures are easier, cheaper, and more adaptable to changing needs than were the fixed- function structures that preceded them. PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS Spatial Rules of Thumb Fortunately there are plenty of rules of thumb to aid planners in calculating the spatial requirements of library buildings, but they must all be approached with cau- tion. Some of them are downright wrong, and all of them will benefit from interpre- tation and understanding. The most com- plete aggregation of rules appears in the second edition of Keyes Metcalf, where, however, they are not always well in- dexed, and in the third edition of Godfrey Thompson, where metric dimensions are given. Both of these sources tend to em- phasize traditional library activities. 3' 4 Current Issues in Building Planning 301 A recent volume by Richard Boss pro- poses some useful spatial formulas for meeting the needs of more recent informa- tion technologies in libraries. 5 To benefit fully from its advice, an institution must decide just what kind of use it will likely make of library technology before apply- ing any formula. Boss correctly observes, for example, that the traditional allocation of 25 square feet of floor space per reader station will be inadequate in libraries where public-access electronic equipment is widely provided. He proposes that 35 square feet is more appropriate. This does not necessarily mean that a 1,000-seat li- brary must now allocate 35,000 square feet to seating instead of 25,000. After all, some of those 1,000 seats, perhaps 25 or 50 or even 75 percent depending upon local circumstances, will continue to serve solely as reader stations in the traditional sense and will therefore continue to re- quire only the time-honored allocation of 25 square feet each. ACRL's "Standards for College Li- braries" cites some spatial formulations that can be misleading to the unwary. 6 In the first place, the percent of FTE enroll- ment that will be studying at any given time in a college library, today or in the fu- ture, is unlikely to attain the 25 percent called for in the 1986 revision of the ''Stan- dards." When students can, without leav- ing their personal computers, search data- bases, read abstracts, check library holdings, determine current circulation status, ask reference questions, or request by E-Mail the hand or FAX delivery of de- sired library materials to their dorm rooms, the amount of physical library traf- fic will certainly decline somewhat if not precipitously. In some institutions this de- cline in in-building library use is already apparent. It is therefore not surprising that many new library building planners are already calculating seating for only 20 percent of FTE enrollment instead of 25 percent. The number of volumes per square foot of floor space suggested by the "Stan- dards" for planning purposes can also be misleading. Except in cases of less-than- full-height shelving, or very large vol- umes (art books or bound periodicals per- 302 College & Research Libraries haps), and/ or very wide stack aisles (some reference collections, for example), con- siderably more than ten volumes can be shelved in a square foot of floor space. More realistic expectations, based upon experience and experimentation, can be derived from the aforementioned works by Metcalf and Thompson. In most cases, at least fifteen volumes can be comfortably shelved in a square foot of conventional floor space. 11ln most cases, at least fifteen vol- umes can be comfortably shelved in a square foot of conventional floor space.'' Finally, it should be pointed out that in the ''Standards'' their net assignable space allowance for library functions other than those for books and readers is sub- stantially too low. The experience of any large sample of recently built college li- braries will demonstrate that about 25 per- cent (rather than the 12.5 percent called for in the "Standards") of book and reader space is necessary to accommodate other requisite library activities (technical services, administration, bibliographical laboratory, public catalog, receiving/ship- ping and storage, staff room, etc). Build- ing planners should be alert to this prob- lem. There are some library activities for which there do not exist well-formulated . spatial standards or guidelines. Greater attention is needed to the proper spatial allowances for college archives and media services in four-year college and univer- sity libraries. It remains reasonable in most situations to expect that the net-to- gross ratio of academic library floor space will continue to approximate three to one. It would probably be unwise, however, to attempt to impose that figure as a rigid standard because this relationship is sometimes affected by factors that are dif- ficult if not impossible to control. Other Program Guidelines It has become fashionable in recent May 1989 years to leave library lighting require- ments for architects and lighting consul- tants to determine, but in retrospect this decision appears unwise. Architects like to consider lighting as part of the interior ambience, in the manner of colors, fabrics, and finishes, and therefore as an appro- priate part of their domain to propose, if not dispose. In most kinds of buildings this may be a reasonable attitude, but it does not fit libraries in quite the same way. Public service areas in academic libraries, which after all utilize more than four-fifths of libraries' assignable space, have only one single purpose, and that is to sustain intensive reading and study. Given this singleness of function, it must be argued, they should therefore be uniformly lighted at a relatively high level of inten- sity. ''Few people are able to read inten- sively for a sustained period of time without at least fifty foot-candles of light on their reading surface, regard- less of the quality of that light.'' Some have said that the quality of library light is more important than its quantity. Quality of light is indeed important, but a relatively ample quantity of illumination must also be present if the purpose of this large portion of the building is to be served. In the writer's experience few people are able to read intensively for a sustained period of time without at least fifty foot-candles of light on their reading surface, regardless of the quality of that light. The patron should be able to read anywhere in the public service area of the library. This calls for uniform light distri- bution. That, as well as the amount of light, should be regarded as a functional requirement of the building, to be defined in the building program document rather than being driven, as has been allowed to happen in some recent library buildings, by esthetic considerations. Acoustical considerations should also be a matter of program requirement in li- brary building planning. Although ap- plied acoustics is still a very inexact sci- ence when it comes to library use, attention paid to it can make a space much more effective for library purposes than would occur otherwise. Since librarians tend to know little about acoustics, they are often reluctant to address the subject. They do know from ample and sad experi- ence, however, that such things as atria, mezzanines, open wells, and stairways do transmit obtrusive sounds vertically, and they should therefore not be loathe to pro- scribe them in drafting their building pro- grams. Although it is much clearer today than it was five years ago how and where in li- braries electronic, telecommunication, and computer activities will take place, these are rapidly changing fields, and it is not possible to anticipate fully just how they will be used a decade hence. This means that libraries constructed now should be as flexible as reasonably possi- ble to assure that they can be economically adapted as needed later on. This need for "smart buildings" is not limited to li- braries but exists in many other indus- tries, so architects are often able to apply recent experiences to our needs. Building program documents should therefore call for this kind of input from architects. BUILDING PROGRAM DOCUMENTS The importance of library building pro- grams remains as great today as it ever was. It is nowhere truer than in library building planning that "you get what you ask for; not what you want!" Because there is already an ample literature on the preparation of building programs, how- ever, little more need be said about it here .7 It will be useful nonetheless to em- phasize several characteristics of desirable program documents that have gained spe- cial significance for the current building environment. ''Zero-Based'' Programs When preparing building programs for additions to existing structures, inexperi- enced planners are understandably in- clined to describe only what is perceived as needed in the additions. This is seldom the best approach to take. It is almost al- Current Issues in Building Planning 303 ways better to prepare what might be thought of as a ''zero-based'' program de- scribing an ideal total configuration of spaces for the entire expanded building, with no references at all to the old portion and the new portion. It should be the ar- chitect's responsibility to retrofit as many of those programmed needs into existing spaces as possible consonant with human economy and the most efficient operation of the enlarged structure. This process en- sures that a complete rethinking be given to the total interactivity of all of the func- tions throughout the expanded building. Simplicity Concurrent with our recent emphasis on the user-friendliness of our library sys- tems, we seem to have lost sight of the need for user-friendliness of our build- ings. If, as was hypothesized earlier in this article, fewer people come to library build- ings in the future, then greater attention will have to be given to making buildings easier for infrequent visitors to use. There is a profound but inexorable logic to every public function that should be immedi- ately apparent to every person entering the building. Too often locations of library services and functions within a building are determined not by where those ser- vices and functions "want to be" but rather by where space for them is avail- able. To permit this is to allow form to drive function rather than the reverse. A good program document should de- scribe cogently and fully what relation- ships exist among library functions, how strong those relationships are, and what proximities and adjacencies should be dic- tated by them. Patron needs, moreover, should take precedence over staff needs in determining those proximities and adja- cencies. Simplicity of use by patrons, es- pecially inexperienced patrons, must be the principal criterion by which the quality of any academic library building can be properly judged. The library building program should be thought of as a single-purpose document, and that one purpose should be to com- municate textually to the architect all of the librarj's functional requirements. It can properly be viewed as a codicil to the 304 College & Research Libraries architect's contract detailing everything that the architect must incorporate into his or her drawings and specifications to en- able a contractor to build the building. The building program should not attempt to be a public relations document, or a litany of past frustrations, or a peroration on the inadequacies of the present building. It certainly should not attempt to usurp the architect's prerogative to mass or design the building or to determine its esthetic qualities or to influence its appearance. It should address only the functional re- quirements of the building. CONCLUSIONS Many academic library buildings appear May 1989 destined to be enlarged or perhaps re- placed in the next five to ten years. It can be reasonably expected that, nationwide, less new floor space will be required by this generation of buildings than was re- quired by the last generation. If present trends continue, this may be the last occa- sion some institutions will have to expand their library facilities. Except where multi- tier structural stacks are involved, addi- tions should be easier to make than they were the last time. Simplicity of library building use by patrons should be today' s driving design consideration, even to the extent where possible of simplifying the existing structure as part of the enlarge- ment process. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Jerrold Orne, "The Renaissance of Academic Library Building 1967-1971," Library Journal 96 :3947-67 (Dec . 1, 1971). 2. Jerrold Orne and Jean 0. Gosling, "Academic Library Building in 1976," Library Journal 101:2435-39 (Dec. 1, 1976). 3. Keyes D. Metcalf, Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings, 2d ed. by Phillip D. Leighton and David C. Weber . (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1986), p.552-66, and passim. 4. Godfrey Thompson, Planning and Design of Library Buildings, 3d ed. (London: Butterworth, 1989). 5. Richard W . Boss, Information Technologies and Space Planning for Libraries and Information Centers. (Boston: Hall, 1987). 6. College & Research Libraries News 47:189-200 (Mar. 1986). 7. In addition to previously cited works, see for example J. Jordan, "What Should the Building Pro- gram Include?" News Notes of California Libraries 65:464-76 (Spring 1970); Ellsworth Mason, "Writ- ing a Building Program," Library Journal91:5838-44 (Dec. 1966); Leland M . Park, "The Whys and Hows of Writing a Building Program," Library Scene 5:2-5 (Sept. 1976); and Ernest J. Reece, "Li- brary Building Programs: How to Draft Them," College & Research Libraries 13:198-211 (July 1952).