Posts tagged with Study Spaces

Forty-six years after graduating, an appreciation for library spaces inspires Steve Clark to create new library spaces for students today.

In Fall 2022, the Library Environments department began a pilot of two designated “zoned” spaces in response to user feedback asking for more information about what to expect from a study space. We conducted focus groups and integrated participatory design to learn about how users are perceiving and experiencing these labeled spaces.

As students, we all know the struggle of trying to find the perfect study space on campus. The Library Environments UX Research Team and the Library Information Technology Design and Discovery (D&D) Team worked together to improve the user experience of the Library’s study spaces booking website.

The interruption to library services caused by COVID-19 meant we needed to quickly develop new data collection strategies to give us information to manage our modified services for the 2020-2021 academic year. It also gave us an opportunity to conduct a deep reflection and assessment of how our regular collection had been going, and to be ready to make changes as we reinstituted more regular services. In two posts, we describe the evolution of our data collection efforts.

The interruption to library services caused by COVID-19 meant we needed to quickly develop new data collection strategies to give us information to manage our modified services for the 2020-2021 academic year. It also gave us an opportunity to conduct a deep reflection and assessment of how our regular collection had been going, and to be ready to make changes as we reinstituted more regular services. In two posts, we describe the evolution of our data collection efforts.

This summer we joined the Library Environments department for an internship focused on exploring the meaning of library as a place in different countries and cultures, in order to help the U-M Library make its spaces more welcoming and inclusive for our international students. The objective of this project was to learn how scholars in other countries engage with library spaces: the kinds of spaces available, and norms for their use. In this blog post we reflect on our experiences in the internship.