Editorial

96

I am sometimes surprised by how much 
physical space still matters in today’s 
academic library.

When asked what it is like to be a li-
brary director, the first thought that often 
enters my mind is how much time and 
effort I devote to library facilities – their 
design or re-design, collection storage 
options, public and staff work spaces, 
and, of course, the daily needs of build-
ing maintenance and custodial services.

One of my colleagues, who became 
the project manager for the decade-long 
and beautifully executed renovation of 
the central library at the Ohio State Uni-
versity, often brings up the tag line from 
Star Trek, “Space, the final frontier,” as an 
ironic reference to our preoccupation in 
the work-a-day world with physical space 
management when we are supposed to be 
in the “digital or virtual age” of libraries.  

When my work takes me, as it fre-
quently does, to facility space planning 
and design issues, I try to draw on the 
research literature of our profession to 
help me make the most informed, and I 
hope “right,” decisions. There are good 
books and articles from which to draw 
advice, best practices, and conceptual 
frameworks. Leighton and Weber’s classic 
handbook Planning Academic and Research 
Library Buildings, now in its third edition 
and more than ten years old, is still good 
for nuts and bolts basics, such as alloca-
tion formulas for how much shelving 
you need for a certain number of print 
volumes. In 2003 Scott Bennett issued his 
provocative and influential study Librar-
ies Designed for Learning. This was just in 
time to help me formulate the conceptual 
themes and vision for a major building 
redesign. I see it as a perfect example of 
how research and publication can influ-
ence on-the-ground library practice. 

In the last issue of College & Research 
Libraries ( January 2010), we brought 

Space, the Final Frontier
you Gerke and Maness’s 
article “The Physical and 
the Virtual: the Relation-
ship between Library as 
Place and Electronic Collec-
tions.” I was heartened by 
the authors’ conclusion that “investing 
in aesthetically pleasing facilities with 
ample study space and customized 
services could yield as much return in 
satisfied patrons as investing in elec-
tronic materials.” Now in this current 
issue you are about to read, we have 
an interesting article by Jankowska and 
Marcum entitled “Sustainability Chal-
lenge for Academic Libraries: Planning 
for the Future of College and Research 
Libraries.” The “greening” of our librar-
ies is an important contemporary topic, 
and I am glad we are able to bring the 
research of Jankowska and Marcum to 
your attention.  

Considering the amount of time aca-
demic librarians spend on space issues, 
we do not receive many manuscripts for 
consideration on this important topic.  
Please help us by sharing more of your 
good experience, research, and writing on 
this topic so that we can make the “right” 
decisions when it comes time to tackle 
changes in our library space. As you may 
know from your own hard experience, it 
can be a tough topic, full of politics and 
emotion. Try changing a library facility 
through re-design or re-organization, 
try new storage options for print collec-
tions, or try questioning existing service 
configurations and you are likely to en-
counter some resistance, to put it mildly. 
Be prepared with facts and figures and 
relevant research from the professional 
literature to argue and win your case for 
a better, forward looking library design.

Joseph Branin
Editor, College & Research Libraries