Constructing Library Buildings That Work

Fred Schlipf

• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780838947586
• eBook ISBN:
  9780838947616
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

When it's time to start planning for a renovation or construction project, you don't need a book that covers everything from A to Z. Instead you need a concentrated set of tools and techniques that will guide you and your team to find the best solutions for your specific project. That's exactly what library building expert Schlipf provides in his new book, which will be a key resource for library directors, administrators, board members, trustees, and planning professionals. Pinpointing the elements that make library buildings functional, in this book readers will find

• a streamlined organization of the text that enables quick consultation and facilitates collaboration;
• concise coverage of the essentials of the library construction process, including who does what, how things work, and how to stay out of trouble along the way;
• advice on important planning and workflow considerations such as site selection, schematic design, funding, design development, the bidding process, construction, and post-construction occupancy;
• discussion of the characteristics of successful library buildings—buildings that are easy to maintain, welcoming to people with disabilities, have less trouble-prone restrooms, and provide security for users, staff, and collections; and
• an overview of bad ideas in library architecture, with pointed guidance on how to steer clear of them from the very beginning of your project. 

PART I

BASICS OF THE LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

1

Basic Building Configuration

THIS BOOK IS full of scattered comments about good and bad building configurations. Here are some central points.

• • Rectangular library buildings are cheaper to construct and easier to use than buildings with odd shapes. Library contents fit better into rectangular spaces, and buildings with flat walls are easier to expand.
  • ◦ Avoid diagonal, curved, or serpentine walls.
• • Square spaces are easier to use than long and narrow spaces.
• • Courtyards cause trouble. They get in the way of internal circulation and often lead to beads-on-a-string room arrangements. Courtyards originally made sense due to the lack of good artificial lighting, but that’s no longer an issue.
• • Spaces inside less-than-magnificent courtyards are hard to use, and they often sit gloomy and neglected and locked up and basically just in the way.
• • Library buildings that are pyramids (or even worse, upside-down pyramids) are hard to use under the best of circumstances—and they may be impossible to expand.
• • Things work best when the entrances to library buildings (and departments inside those buildings) are on the wide side of the building (or department) and when service desks face the entrances.
• • Library entrances that face south (or at worst east) spare users and staff from wintry winds.
• • Buildings with central halls and one-story wings sticking out in various directions are extremely difficult to expand.
• • The first floors of libraries should be at grade level, with no stairs or ramps leading up to them.
• • Interior partitions should be easy to relocate.
• • Some historic buildings end up connected to new additions by soaring glass spaces—especially when the new architect wouldn’t be caught dead imitating the original building.
  • ◦ If your building program doesn’t call for something that belongs in a soaring glass space, you really don’t want one.
• • Be extremely wary of architects who begin with an exterior they like and then just sort of cram stuff into it.

2

Programming

THE FIRST STEP in any successful library building project is programming.

• • A building program is a detailed statement of the space needs for a proposed new or remodeled building.
  • ◦ For each space in the planned library, the building program includes:
  • ◦ The physical characteristics of the space
  • ◦ An enumeration of the contents of the space
  • ◦ An estimate of the total size of the space in square feet, based on the specific contents, and
  • ◦ The physical relationship of the space to other spaces in the library.
  • ◦ The entire focus of a building program should be on what you need to run your library, not on what someone who is not a librarian thinks you need for a cute building.
  • ◦ Avoid like the plague the temptation to start by drawing plans rather than by listing your library’s needs, for you will inevitably end up including things in the plans that you don’t need and omitting things you do need.
• • Who should write a building program?
  • ◦ Writing a building program is a job for experienced librarians with extensive management experience, not for architects, designers, or other people who have neither worked in libraries on a daily basis nor had to cope personally with library space problems.
  • ◦ Programming is not a job for administrators who are not librarians—it is not for school administrators, city administrative staff, or university administrators.
  • ◦ A building programmer should have a master’s degree in librarianship from an academic program accredited by the American Library Association, plus a minimum of ten years’ experience directing libraries.
  • ◦ There may be someone on the staff of your library with the kind of background you need, but more often you will need to find someone who works independently.
  • ◦ Many building programmers list themselves as “library building consultants.”
• • One of the major advantages of having an experienced librarian write your building program is that you gain an important second opinion.
  • ◦ By including architects, engineers, and librarians in your planning process, you have a far greater chance of creating a building that meets everyone’s needs.
  • ◦ Once architects are on the job, the best planning meetings involve owners, architects, and programmers in the same room. Decisions take many times longer when all groups are not present at the same time.
  • ◦ Beware of architects who frequently say, “We won’t need your programmer here for the coming meetings.” Decide for yourself. If your architects are proposing ideas you find dubious as a librarian, it’s time to include your programmer in the meeting.
  • ◦ Stopping a bad construction idea up front is probably 100,000 times cheaper than fixing it later. (This is an imaginary number, but no matter what the number is, it’s so huge that lots of seriously bad ideas are never corrected once the library is built.)
• • How do you hire a building programmer?
  • ◦ Most programmers work independently, and there are no national associations of programmers.
  • ◦ Word of mouth can be a great way to find programmers. Take advantage of the great social networks that connect libraries and librarians.
  • ◦ Other good sources of names are state libraries or state library associations.
• • Beware of starting off by saying how much money you will be able to spend on your project.
  • ◦ Many first suggestions for project expenditures are very much off-the-cuff, and some are painfully unrealistic.
  • ◦ Most construction projects involve negotiations between libraries and the larger organizations of which they are a part, like cities or universities. The two organizations involved arrive at a reasonable square footage, review the likely resulting cost together, and then (and only then) decide what’s financially feasible. This discussion comes during the design process, not during the programming process, which first determines how much space will be needed for the building.
• • An experienced building programmer will begin with hundreds of questions of the “Do you want this?” variety.
  • ◦ A negative response to a question is just great. The main thing you want is to be sure that you were asked all the right questions and that no reviews of your needs were omitted.
• • Where does your programmer find the necessary data for your program?
  • ◦ Most programming begins by talking with staff in each section of the library, asking in detail about their departmental needs.
  • ◦ Programmers also talk with management and owners—boards of directors and trustees, plus the administrators of parent organizations.
  • ◦ One of the dangers in talking with everyone involved is that a handful of people with strong opinions may try to take over the process. Programmers occasionally need to step in and encourage reticent people to speak up, just as they may have to tell very pushy people it’s time to hear from someone else.
  • ◦ A lot of data can be developed by looking at a library’s current spaces and asking what obsolete things should go and what missing things need to be added.
  • ◦ Unfortunately, some staff members who have been coping with inadequate libraries for years may want to think in terms of how their current buildings could be tweaked rather than in the more basic terms of what spaces the library needs when it’s done.
• • To obtain input from library users, programmers sometimes use “focus groups.”
  • ◦ Focus groups are discussion groups of people who have similar interests. For example, a programmer working with a public library might interview separate groups of parents of young children, older citizens, teenagers, and teachers.
  • ◦ Focus groups usually work best with up to about a dozen people with similar areas of interest—groups small enough for conversation, but not so small that the participants can’t interact with each other.
  • ◦ Focus groups are particularly useful when library staff or owners reject standard features of new libraries. For example, if public library board members don’t want any fiction in the library, someone needs to get them to face reality.
  • ◦ Focus groups also offer everyone in a community a chance to be heard and are therefore good for public relations.
• • Some libraries try written surveys, but they have a number of serious problems.
  • ◦ Reputable survey research is a highly technical area. In addition, the worlds of politics and marketing abound in dishonest surveys that have given the entire field a bad name.
  • ◦ Some of the basic rules for surveys include:
  • ◦ Ask neutral questions—questions that don’t tell the people being surveyed what you want them to say.
  • ◦ Be sure every question includes a “none of the above” answer category, to avoid forcing people to choose answers they don’t want.
  • ◦ Never report fractions of one percent. If you have a sample of 1,200 people, your percentages are accurate to about plus or minus 3 pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Basics of the Library Construction Process
• Part II: Characteristics of Successful Library Buildings
• Part III: Final Words
• Index