College and Research Libraries Research Notes Estimating Space Needs for Media Services John Kaser and David Kaser This paper explores possibilities for remedying the perceived lack of methods for predicting the amount of floor area likely to be required for media services in four-year college and university libraries. Spatial allocations made to such activities were found to vary widely among thirty recently constructed aca- demic libraries. However when the thirty were categorized into one of three groups based upon the specific activities that each was intended to accommo- date, some homogeneity began to emerge in the spaces assigned. This result suggests that where such categorization is possible, rough preliminary esti- mates of the amount of floor area needed for media can be projected as a ratio of the space needed for other library purposes. ibrary space planners have a large tool kit of functional cri- teria and spatial require- ments, developed over many decades, for determining the necessary size of a building. Yet these existing space criteria and formulations are neither uni- formly available nor equally acceptable for all aspects of all library buildings. In academic libraries, two activities most deficient in space formulas, both in terms of their applicability and in terms of the professional and scholarly atten- tion their formulas have received, are archives and media services. This paper attempts to develop a basis for estimat- ing preliminarily how much floor area is likely to be needed for a media services area in a library building designed to meet the needs of what might be called a "normal" four-year college or university. BACKGROUND Before architects can design any kind of academic library construction or reno- vation, of course, very detailed calcula- tions must be made of the spatial requirements of each specific library function to be contained within the structure. The sum of these individual spaces then represents the total number of net assignable square feet (nasf) of floor area that must be provided in the completed project. 1 Determining such amounts is understandably an exacting and rigorous task requiring much time and careful analysis of the local need and environment. John Kaser is a doctoral candidate and David Kaser is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana l.Jniversity, Bloomington, Indiana 47405. Estimating Space Needs for Media Services 353 Often, however, for purposes of pre- liminary or long-term projection library, administrators and space planners do not need such exact calculations but rather what might be called informed esti- mates of the amount of space likely to be needed over time. In such cases, say, for long-range capital budgeting or fund- raising purposes, or for reserving a building site, approximate figures that are within certain acceptable tolerances, perhaps 3% to 5%, can sometimes meet the need satisfactorily. There are a number of time-honored rules-of-thumb and simple formulas for roughing up preliminary estimates of the amount of space likely to be required for most of the traditional, conventional activities in libraries. Some of these formulas have been developed by state . higher education authorities, the State Education Department of New York, for example, whereas others have been developed by such regional agencies as the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.2 Indeed, a basic set of formulas for the quick assessment of li- brary spatial adequacy was incor- porated into the 1975 rendition of the "Standards for College Libraries," promulgated by the Association of Col- lege and Research Libraries, and was then continued with some modification into the 1986 revision of that document.3 These quick-calculation formulas have been built upon certain predictable space requirements [usually the floor area required by a book on a shelf or a reader in a chair], extrapolated to other conventional but less predictable spaces on the basis of normal, or expected, ra- tios of the latter to the former. Analyses of a large number of academic library buildings over time had indicated by about 1970 that a fairly predictable, or "normal," ratio existed between the sum of the spaces needed for books and read- ers on the one hand and the sum of the spaces needed for other traditional li- brary activities on the other. The ratio proved to be 4:1. That 4:1 ratio was, therefore, postulated in the 1973 New York State Report cited earlier and then carried forward into the 1975 ACRL "Standards," as an easy and largely satisfactory method of quickly perceiv- ing the adequacy of the amount of net assignable floor space in a traditional academic library building. Both the aforementioned New York State study, however, and the ACRL "Standards" that came after it, specifi- cally excluded media services from the aggregation of conventional library ac- tivities that were to constitute the second part of their stated ratio. At that time there was no professional consensus that media services even belonged in librar- ies, to say nothing about the range of services and materials they might pur- vey or the amount of space they were likely to require. Even as late as 1965, when many of today' s buildings were constructed, Keyes D. Metcalf's basic book on academic library buildings tolerated media services in the library building only grudgingly, suggesting that "if funds for extra spaces are availa- ble, ... [media services might] be offered space on a temporary basis."4 Given such profession-wide doubt regarding media services at the time, it was certainly not yet possible to agree upon a method for predicting an amount of space necessary to accommodate them. As a result, the 1975 "Standards" simply stated that "the space required for a college library's nonbook services and materials" was to be calculated separately, although by un- specified techniques, and added to the figure produced by the aforementioned 4:1 extrapolation. RESEARCH METHOD The present study set out to learn if circumstances have changed sufficiently in the 1990s to permit constructing a method for estimating preliminarily the amount of media space needed. Has a reasonably recognizable quantitative re- lationship, to be expressed as a ratio, yet come to exist between the amount of floor area needed for media services and the amount needed for other assignable functions in four-year college and uni- versity library buildings? For this study, the possibility of constructing a random sampling for all existing academic li- 354 College & Research Libraries brary buildings in search of such a ratio was rejected because many of today' s buildings were erected before media services gained their present level of ac- ceptance. Although their acceptance and configuration in academic libraries had been growing for many decades, it was not until the appearance of the 1975 ACRL "Standards" that their essential role was unequivocally written into a consensual document adopted by a ma- jority of the practicing academic library community sitting in conference.5 On the assumption that the full impact of the 1975 "Standards" on new aca- demic library building planning ought to have made itself felt within eight years, we decided to examine the build- ings built during the period from 1984 through 1988. Since the December issues of Library Journal attempt to list all li- brary construction completed during the previous twelve months, we reviewed those issues in 1984 through 1988 for the identities of all four-year colleges and universities in the United States that had built new or had enlarged existing central library buildings. Special or departmental libraries, being largely irrelevant to the study at hand, were not included. Eighty-six institutions were identified as meeting these requirements. Letters were sent to the directors of all of these libraries inquiring if building program documents had been written for their new libraries and, if so, whether or not copies of them could be obtained by the authors. Fifty-two responded, 10 of whom reported that they had not pre- pared building program documents. The remaining 42 respondents supplied copies of their building programs. FINDINGS When the 42 building programs were examined, we found that 4 of them (or slightly under 10%) did not call for the inclusion of any media services in the building at all, although those institu- tions may, of course, have maintained media services outside their library buildings per se. Four additional docu- ments were solely descriptive and did not quantify the requisite square foot- July1992 ages of floor area for any of their functional areas. Four more lacked some other item of information essential to this investiga- tion. When these 12 documents were ex- cluded from the group, it left 30 building projects for which complete usable infor- mation was available. These documents constituted the working database for the present investigation. Table 1 shows the total net assignable square feet of floor area designated in each of these 30 building programs. For buildings that wer~ enlarged, these numbers include the spaces in both the original structure and the new addition. All are arranged in descending order by . their sizes, excluding media. The amount of additional floor area occupied by media is also shown, and the percentage the latter comprises of the former is then calculated. Preparing this table required some rationalizing of the figures given in the program documents. Several librar- ies, for example, included their micro- form operations in the media services units, but most did not. In order, there- fore, to gain comparability of the figures across all the institutions, we followed the majority and subtracted their allo- cated areas from the media spaces given. The same was true of some computer labs. On the other hand, since most of the buildings that contained curriculum laboratories located them in their media services units but some did not, the ma- jority was again followed. Space was added to the media totals to accommo- date those that had been left outside. As table 1 shows, the amount of net assignable square feet allocated to media displayed no apparent relationship to the overall size of the building. There was, however, wide disparity in the per- centages of space that needed to be added for media, ranging from a low of 1.4% to a high of 24.6%, with a mean of 8.0% and a standard deviation of 5.63%. Moreover, a tendency was noted for smaller buildings to require larger percentages. Further examination of the texts of the 30 building program documents revealed that, as expected, both the amounts of space needed and their relative percen- tages were driven by the specific media Estimating Space Needs for Media Services 355 TABLEt LIBRARY FLOOR AREA FOR MEDIA AND WITHOUT MEDIA Library Area without Media A 271,190 nasf B 235,581 c 188,314 D 125,404 E 118,110 F 116,000 G 103,940 H 101,287 84,276 J 76,695 K 67,916 L 60,127 M 56,200 N 54,375 0 52,781 p 51,284 Q 50,750 R 49,500 s 46,600 T 46,580 u 39,075 v 37,747 w 36,650 X 35,886 y 28,513 z 28,100 A a 27,435 Bb 25,306 Cc 21,774 Dd 14 756 Mean percentage added for media = 8.0%. Standard deviation = 5.63%. Range= 2.37% to 13.63%. activities to be accommodated within them. Accordingly, an effort was made to construct a taxonomy of the 30 media service units according to the profile of services they were individually ex- pected to perform. It was found that they Area for Media Add for Media 4,260 nasf 1.6% 17,700 7.5 7,730 4.1 4,900 3.9 7,955 6.7 6,296 5.4 2,060 2.0 1,450 1.4 3,360 4.0 2,800 3.7 16,696 24.6 3,690 6.1 7,400 13.2 3,000 5.5 7,780 14.7 1,453 2.8 6,550 12.9 1,980 4.0 1,400 3.0 4,040 8.7 5,635 14.4 2,435 6.5 2,300 6.3 2,485 6.9 5,225 18.3 3,905 13.9 880 3.2 1,810 7.2 2,391 11.0 2,244 15.2 all fell rather markedly into 1 of 3 quite distinct groupings: a first that concen- trated largely on passive delivery of media documents; a second that em- braced also some generation of materials in support of instruction; and a third that 356 College & Research Libraries July 1992 TABLE2 PERCENT OF SPACE ADDED FOR MEDIA, BY SERVICE CATEGORY Category I Libraries included A, H, P, S, W, X Percentages of total cases 20% (N = 6) Means 3.67% Ranges 5.5% (1.4%- 6.9%) Standard deviations 2.37% ± 1 SD from means 1.30%-6.04% engaged as well in full production of media in various formats. For purposes of this study, these 3 service categories are defined and described here as follows: • Category !-Basic Service. The media service units in this group limited their activities to the provision of one or more of the following: individual and/ or group viewing (still, motion picture, and/ or video); individual or group listening (spoken and/ or music recordings in any or all formats, lan- guage laboratories, etc.); special re- sources for the handicapped; as well as facilities for administering, storing, and servicing the requisite hardware and software. • Category II-Advanced Service. Media service units in this group provided some or all of the services included in category I above, plus one or more of the following: graphics laboratory, cur- riculum laboratory, and mediated classroom(s). • Category III-Full Service. Units in this group provided some or all of the services rendered in both categories I and II above, and, in addition, one or more of the following: audio and/ or video production, dosed-circuit tele- vision, and/ or radio transmission. The 30 building program documents were then sorted into their relevant cate- gories, where their distribution was found to be skewed toward category III. This distribution is shown in table 2. Six institutions (A, H, P, S, W, and X) were comprised within category I, in which the percentages of their floor areas to be Category II Category III B, C, D,F, G,J,M,O, E,I,K,L,N, T, U, V, Aa, Cc, Dd Q,R, Y,Z, Bb 46.7% (N = 14) 33.3% (N = 10) 8.11% 10.32% 13.2% 20.6% (2.0% - 15.2%) (4.0% -24.6%) 4.75% 6.92% 3.36% - 12.86% 3.40%-17.24% added for media ranged from 1.4% to 6.9%, with a mean of 3.67% (SD 2.37%). Category II contained 14 institutions (B, C, D, F, G, J, M, 0, T, U, V, Aa, Cc, and Dd); percentages assigned by them to media ranged from 2% to 15.2%, with a mean of 8.11% (SD 4.75%). Category III included 10 libraries (E, I, K, L, N, Q R, Y, Z, and Bb); their media percentages ranged 2't 28 16 12 8 Lt I :>- 0: 0 u L&J t- a:: u )- Q: 0 u UJ ~ a: u > 0::: 0 ~ ILl t- a:: u FIGURE 1 Percents for Media Showing Overlap by Category Estimating Space Needs for Media Services 357 from 4% to 24.6% of the other library space, with a mean of 10.32% (SD 6.92%). CONCLUSIONS Several extraneous but useful obser- vations can be drawn from this exercise. Perhaps the most obvious and most ex- pected one is that the higher the service category selected for implementation, the larger the floor area required for media. Perhaps the most significant one, however, is that a substantial majority of these newer 1980s buildings studied- more than 90% of the programs received- provided space for media activities of some kind, doubtless indicating a much more accepting attitude toward media today than when Metcalf wrote a quarter century ago. Nonetheless, wide varia- tion was encountered in the extent and configuration of media services man- dated in the descriptive portions of the program documents. The libraries in all 3 categories ranged over the entire spec- trum of sizes (A to X in category I, B to Dd in category II, and E to Bb in category III). As expected, the 3 categories over- lapped in terms of the percentages of space that had to be added to accommo- date media activities. Nonetheless, as is shown in table 2, there were substantive advances at each step upward from cate- gory to category. This is shown most clearly in the mean percentages at the three levels, being 3.67%, 8.11 %, and 10.32% respectively. Some new questions are raised by this study. The wide ranges displayed by these percentages indicate that greater consensus is still needed among librari- ans as to the appropriate range and con- figuration of media services appropriate to academic libraries, but it suggests neither what those services should be nor how they should be determined. These latter matters await exploration. Also the observed tendency of smaller buildings to require higher percentages of space for media activities than large ones suggests that, in some cases, a pre- determined or set amount of space may be allocated to media rather than a per- centage of the total building space. Al- though outside the scope of the present investigation, this observation invites fu- ture study, and if it proves to be uniformly true in all cases, the question should be asked, ''Why is this occurring?" A substantial majority of these newer 1980s buildings studied provided space for media activities of some kind. However, the ranges of percentages being used for media still vary so widely as to diminish confidence in the possi- bility of using the numbers so generated for extrapolating their spatial require- ments. Nonetheless where there is a need for "quick-and-dirty" projections only, and where the general categorical profile of media accommodations desired is fairly distinct, some may be comfortable adding 3% to 4% to the rest of the build- ing's net assignable square footage to accommodate basic media service activi- ties, 8 to 8.5% for advanced-level activities, and 10% to 10.5% for full-service media activities. It does appear, however, that professional consensus on these matters continues to rise and that the accuracy of this method of estimating space for media in four-year college and university librar- ies is likely to sharpen in the years ahead. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. This term, or net assignable area, is used here to mean "the sum of all areas on all floors of a building, assignable to, or useful for, library functions or purposes." For discussion of its ramifications, see "The Measurement and Comparison of Physical Facilities for Libraries," ALA, LAD, 1969, mimeo, p.11. 2. New York State Education Department, "Report of the Advisory Committee on Plan- ning for the Academic Libraries of New York State," (Albany, N.Y.: State Education Department, 1973); Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Higher Edu- 358 College & Research Libraries July 1992 cation Facilities Planning and Management Manuals, v. 4 (Boulder, Colo.: Western Inter- . state Commission for Higher Education, 1971). 3. Association of College and Research Libraries, "Standards for College Libraries," College & Research Libraries News 36:277-79 (Oct. 1975); revised in College & Research Libraries News 48:189-200 (Mar. 1986). 4. Keyes D. Metcalf, Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p.268. Although media were not widely accepted in academic libraries at the time, there was already useful discussion of the relative merits of putting them there. See, for example, C. Walter Stone, "Planning for Media within University Library Buildings," Library Trends 18:235-45 (Oct. 1969). 5. The 1975 Standard 2 reads as follows: "The library's collections shall comprise all corpuses of recorded information owned by the college for educational, inspirational, and recreational purposes, including multi-dimensional, aural, pictorial, and print materials."