Five Disciplines for Library Planning

Libraries run on space (print and digital).

Research professionals need to be knowledgeable about reshaping strategies to support collection growth and development. 

1 - Reinvent Catalog of the Content Your Library Owns

The first step in design is knowing what the library contains.

For example, research collections are not an undifferentiated mass of boxes, books, archive notes, scans, emails, notes, images, videos, and resource files. Each content category has its own spatial, technical, and service requirements. Each has potential engage a reader.

Think about how heavy a bound volume is and how it is moved differently from manuscript in a box. Indeed, the digital image collection behaves differently from an email archive, and a rare book requires different environmental standards. How do you display digital collections? Do you provide interactivity?  

Note, film and photographs require cold access conditions than a current-use monograph needs.

Classification is therefore not merely bibliographic. It is architectural; reshaped for the next generation users.

2 - Right-Size the Physical and Digital Repository

The second discipline is right-sizing. In the digital world we call it scaling, but its really another way of looking at right-sizing for the future.

Our research of library repositories and architecture is that open and closed stacks require updated management and strategy plans.

The library is not a warehouse. It is a service platform. Its physical and digital services must be sized according to how the collection is used, how it is accessed, and how the institution intends to support research over time.

3 - Test the Assumptions Through Pilot Project

Future collection modeling is a hypothesis until it is tested. The storage requirements are tested to understand the options. User access is tested to understand how to streamline services.

The third discipline is the pilot project. For example, one government library pilot project determined logistics before capital was committed. It tested whether the proposed storage configuration fit-in with the actual collection. We proved the requirements and funding was provided.

We test whether researchers or library staff can retrieve materials efficiently and safely. We test whether user access patterns supported the proposed service model.

We test whether the digital access points were integrated so the researcher could see digital scans, emails, notes, resource files, images, and videos as part of the discovery layer.