University Libraries and Space in the Digital World ed. by Graham Matthews and Graham Walton (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: University Libraries and Space in the Digital World ed. by Graham Matthews and Graham Walton Barbara I. Dewey University Libraries and Space in the Digital World, ed. Graham Matthews and Graham Walton. Surrey UK: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013. 228p. $89.96 (ISBN-978-1-4094-2382-9). University Libraries and Space in the Digital World seeks to explore a variety of topics on library space in the digital age. Editors Graham Matthews and Graham Walton want readers to have greater insight into how university libraries will continue to use physical space in the 21st century and to understand the history and future of library space. They propose to achieve their goal by using library experts from “across the world” as chapter authors. The editors are experienced academic library practitioners, researchers, and academics at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. They both have a long-standing interest in library space and recently completed a project evaluating how social learning space was being used at Loughborough University Library, during which the rationale for this book emerged (J. Bryant, G. Matthews, and G. Walton, “Academic Libraries and Social and Learning Space: A Case Study at Loughborough University Library,” Journal of Library and Information Science, 41, 1 (2009): 7-18.) The book contains chapters by authors from the UK (most numerously represented), US, Australia, and Finland. Chapters begin with the history of libraries and library space and move on to aspects of library space transformation, including the philosophical context of space. The book ends with a speculative chapter on the future of library space. Chapter authors have varying degrees of expertise and currency in research librarianship. On balance the quality of content is very good to excellent. Chapter 1, Space in the University Library – An Introduction, stresses drivers for space justification such as the budget crises, but then correctly points out that regardless of the economy a number of factors move university libraries to transform spaces. Authors Sarah Childs, Graham Matthews, and Graham Walton outline trends in university library space by decade beginning with pre-1970s through 2000s. It is here that the information commons concept is mentioned. However, the authors missed the relevance of, and real beginning for, the commons movement, which occurred in the early 1990s with the onset of the Internet, pedagogical innovations, and generational changes. Groundbreaking installations of this era included the University of Iowa’s Information Arcade and University of Southern California’s Levy Library. More focus in this collection should have been placed on the commons movement and its striking effect on library space planning. Premier space experts such as Joan Lippincott, associate director of the Coalition of Networked Information, would have been nice additions to this collection for her knowledge of the history and development of information commons. However, Lippincott’s work, so important to library space transformation, is cited in several of the chapters. Chapter 5, Library Space and Print, includes a discussion of both special collections and the trend for student-focused [End Page 426] space in newly formulated special collections departments and libraries. Major library projects, such as the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, underscore the core importance of special collections as collectively bringing the world’s unique scholarship to the table of knowledge. If the reader had only time to read one chapter it would have to be Chapter 6, From Stronghold to Threshold: New Library and New Opportunities. Chris Banks provides incredibly useful strategies for space planning in his case study of building the University of Aberdeen’s new university library and special collections center. The most important aspects, many of which are overlooked in other projects, including consultation with stakeholders, fund raising, selection of a design team, project governance, staff engagement, print and noise management, and moving in are effectively covered. The chapter ends with an important and potentially useful list of success factors for the library project. Chapter 9, University Library Staff Accommodation: Why Space Matters for the Forgotten Army, is one of the only writings I have seen focused on staff and space. Hopefully this chapter will be a catalyst for more work on staff space in the 21st...