C&RL News July/August 2015 366 At Hunter College, we in the libraries were presented with a unique opportunity. The college administration has recently funded a multimillion dollar renovation to the aging main library. Originally designed to accommodate roughly 10,000 students, Hunter College Libraries currently serves close to 24,000. In the beginning, a presidential task force was convened and decided t h e r e n o v a - tions should be designed to bring the li- brary “into the 21st century.” Established as the first phase of a holistic r e n o v a t i o n plan, the en- tire third floor was to be gut- ted and rede- signed with users and public services in mind. The task force outlined steps and renova- tions needed to transform Hunter College’s main library into a modern space and ser- vice provider for all users: students, faculty, staff, and other Hunter College community members. While there were several targets identified by the task force, we saw three as the most relevant to the floor renovations: • facilitating access to and use of materials, • providing a comfortable and safe place for students and faculty to work and interact, and • supporting individual group learning and study The previous floor design contained two public service points: circulation and refer- ence, with a third, print and technology re- serves, being located on the floor below. All three desks were orient- ed in a way t h a t d i d n ’ t facilitate the flow of traf- fic or the ac- tions and pro- cesses users went through while in the library. More electronic re- serve items, i n c r e a s e d demand for loaning laptops, and the start of iPad lend- ing meant the textbook/print reserves staff Jonathan O. Cain is government information librarian at the University of Oregon, email: jocain@uoregon.edu, and Gardner Treneman, is reference librarian at J. Sargent Reynolds Community College, email: gtreneman@ reynolds.edu. Cain and Treneman both worked at Hunter College during the renovation project reported in this article. © 2015 Jonathan O. Cain and Gardner Treneman Jonathan O. Cain and Gardner Treneman New spaces for the space-strapped student Building a 21st-century library The Welcome Desk was designed to help patrons with simple, nonresearch-based questions like title lookups and directions. July/August 2015 367 C&RL News were being overwhelmed on the reserves desk. The presidential task force still liked the idea of the circulation and reference desks being on the entry level to the library, but saw room for improvement. They suggested moving the print reserves to the circulation desk and making the old reserves desk the technology lending desk (laptops, tablets, headphones). The new circulation desk could then be staffed by students trained in both reserves and circulation. The president’s committee found that refer- ence services were underused because they were hard to find. Often a librarian got a ques- tion that he or she was certain IT or the Writing Center could help with, but sending patrons to these other l o c a t i o n s o n c a m - pus wasn’t working. To remedy this the commit- tee took a cue from an Apple store’s “genius bar” model. Now patrons can get help with any type of prob- lem—from light to complex research questions to class registration issues. The new reference desk was moved to a more prominent loca- tion and redesigned to include not only a reference librarian, but both a representative of the Reading and Writing Center as well as a representative from campus Information Technology. The initial design of the genius bar con- cept intended to streamline service to most efficiently allocate the resources (expert consultations) most efficiently. This revolved around the concept of four stations: the con- cierge station, the reference librarian station, the Reading and Writing Center tutor station, and the campus IT station. A patron would move to the first station, originally designed to be attended by a “research assistant” (student employee), engage in a brief interview with the assistant, and from there be directed to the appropriate station. The president’s committee felt this would lead to smarter staffing plans and better outreach opportunities. In addition, an entirely new service desk, the welcome desk, was created to accommo- date expected need of the new space. This desk was designed to relieve the reference desk of the tedious informational/directional questions that seemed t o m a k e up a large chunk of the interactions, a n d o v e r - w h e l m e d l i b r a r i a n s during busy times. A l o n g w i t h t h e changes that were made to the ser- vice desks, there were substantial changes to user spaces. The reference/writing center/technology ser- vice desk was situated within a new research commons, a space designed to facilitate group collaboration and foster mixed modal methods of discovery and research. It was outfitted with dry-erase surfaces and desktop computers, all within close proximity to expert services. For- mer lab space was now turned into a hallway of bar seating with computers and a series of semi-private rooms designed for collabora- tion, equipped with lighted whiteboards, large screen iMacs, and cozy lounge-esque chairs. Probably most striking, the renovations cre- ated an expansive reading room comprised of Comfortable and movable furniture was important in the floor’s redesign. C&RL News July/August 2015 368 modern mixed furniture, including huge read- ing tables, lighted whiteboards, smaller low lying tables, couches, and numerous power outlets. The final space created in the renova- tion was what was being called the “Diner”—a space outside of the library with comfortable booths (like you’d find in a diner); dry-erase tabletops; Mac minis connected to large, wall- mounted monitors; as well as smaller tables and chairs. This space is unique in that it allows stu- dents to use library resources while eating. As Hunter College Libraries were designed to be a food free space, it was important for the reno- vated space to allow students to eat at what has served as a central hub of ac- tivity on c a m p u s , while still p r o t e c t - ing library materials a n d r e - sources. In addition to these re- designed s p a c e s t h e r e were tech- nological u p d a t e s to address the final task force target, “access to and use of materials,” which included touch screen lookup stations at the welcome desk, self checkout kiosks, more printers, and a supplies vending machine. All of these enhancements were undertaken with the expectation of improving services for the user community at Hunter College, and drawn from the presidential task force’s objec- tives to ensure that Hunter College Libraries became a 21st-century library that was able to meet the needs of the Hunter community of scholars. In addition, this was only the first phase of renovations implemented, so it became important to have some sense of the success (or failure) in reaching the stated objec- tives of the first stage of renovations. How did we respond? With this idea in mind, we decided to try an assessment plan that would be relatively all-en- compassing with minimal impact on the lives of users. We also wanted a strong representative data sample. We decided to forgo surveys (both paper and digital) because of the typically low response rate and self-selecting populations. (However, we did intend to conduct a survey that addresses the working experiences of service providers in the renovated spaces.) W e d e c i d e d direct ob- servations would be the most ef fective w a y t o gauge the usage of spaces and services. Consider- i n g t h a t H u n t e r C o l l e g e is a large commuter school lo- cated in the heart of New York City, we felt it was im- portant to record data from every hour that the library was open and providing some type of service. Because of the nature of the community, we posited that there could be a drastic differ- ence in the profile of our users, and as a result, their respective responses to the renovations based upon the hours the used library. To confront this issue we decided to have data collection occur every hour on the hour. In addition, we organized the observations to be done three times during the semester, for two weeks at a time. We decided these two week periods would be: Space to spread out and work individually or with a group was an important need. July/August 2015 369 C&RL News • the beginning of the semester, when students are coming in, new classes are start- ing, and people are trying to locate books and class-related materials. Also this is the first time users are seeing the new space; • midterms, to discover the space needs during the busy middle of the semester and exams; and • finals period, to look at the what services and spaces are most requested during the stressful finals period. Since we wanted hourly samples, we asked the library student assistants to do the walk- throughs. This was useful because in addition to allowing us to gather the data we needed, the student staff members could better familiar- ize themselves with the new spaces. Library Student Assistants (LSAs) were given iPads that were preloaded with a map of the floor with routes and observation points clearly illustrated. This map was paired with a Qualtrics survey, which asked the LSAs to make clear observations on specific metrics each time they made the circuit. How did users respond to change? How did we respond to the change? We learned that paying attention to your population sometimes outweighed the expe- rience of the literature. Students in a super dense, hyper-urban, public, commuter campus had a completely different set of challenges, priorities, and needs than the wider college library community or even perceived peer libraries. We found that our users made the space their own, redefining the purposes for the technologies and furniture based on their need for solitary workspaces over communal space which dominated the campus. We found interactive technologies like whiteboards were ignored in favor of solitary input devices like work stations and reading tables. We found that, as anticipated, the changes had a profound effect upon the user popula- tion. We were able to see that users took to the space immediately, but not necessarily as the project planners intended. For instance, the small collaboration spaces (with the cozy, lounge-esque chairs) turned into quiet spaces for either individuals or the small group, studying together rather than collaborating. In several instances, users actually took the cozy chairs to another part of the floor. The research commons, now having librarian and IT help, has become more of a computer lab. As a positive, the welcome desk did exactly what was needed, it took away the mundane directional questions, and combining the cir- culation and reserves desks created a much smoother process for checking things out, as well as easing staffing problems. Overall we’d like to say the users felt positive towards the changes, even if it was just because of new carpets, chairs, and lighting. Anecdotally we get positive statements from students regarding the new space. While our data doesn’t show the level of collabora- tion the task force was expecting, we are still working on service models that could boost those numbers, like being able to reserve the collaborative spaces or providing external monitors in other locations. Conclusion Working on this project led to several unex- pected outcomes. We were initially presented with the question of how users liked our new space. However, over the course of the exten- sive experiment, we decided to estimate the impact of the new space on meeting our goals. While we saw some things go somewhat awry in our predictions for how users would make use of the new spaces, we did discover that the changes made did help Hunter College Libraries transform to a more contemporary and agile space. Our assessment program also encouraged library workers confront the space in ways that were atypical to our daily experience and provided a better understand- ing of how our services could be focused to the space we had now, and not the space we imagined it would be. The Hunter College Libraries now have a second round of renovations starting, where they will actually be losing space. The under- standing gained from these observations will allow us to better question what to do in this new situation.