2 Theological librarianship • Vol. 12, No. 1 april 2019

The Imperfect Solution: Library Conference Room

The focus of this essay is to highlight the creative use of underutilized, if imperfect, zones within a current library’s footprint. The assessment project identified that one major underutilized area was our Library Conference Room. This room constituted over 350 square feet of library space, which was reserved for bi-weekly library staff meetings and very little else. The room is located at the end of a dark administrative hallway that a visitor would understandably mistake as being for staff only. However, the bright, well-lit conference room has a large table that can seat about ten people; it was already set up for collaborative discussion, and it would cost the library no additional money to prepare for patron use. Because of the difficulty of access, this was an imperfect solution to meet patrons’ needs, a difficulty complicated by the prospect that increased noise and foot traffic in this hallway could disrupt vital operations in the staff offices. However, the staff’s desire to provide the community what they needed led us to put these concerns aside. We opened the space up to patron use, and we advertised it as such. Our strategy to market the Library Conference Room for community use involved the following:

1) Advertising the study space on the “Library Basics” Research Guide, marketed to incoming students. This guide includes vital information about basic library services, including printing, which causes it to receive heavy traffic from first-year students in our community.

2) Using some of our limited time at first-year orientation to introduce the conference room as collaborative study space.

3) Advertising on the library’s home page.

4) Working with the registrar’s office to schedule classes in this new space.

Following this aggressive marketing strategy in the months leading up to the Fall 2018 semester, reservations of the Library Conference Room increased over 60% on an hourly basis in September-October 2018 (as compared to September-October 2017). While this represents a small sample size, this small change is paying dividends for the Theology Library, as overall patron visits increased over 10% during that time. It is the staff’s belief that this traffic increase is due to the visits of students who would have otherwise opted for a different place to study. Shedding our instinct of resignation to budget realities and embracing imperfect solutions helped in reaching this increase.

Of course, the story does not end here: after our first-year orientation presentation, one first-year divinity student approached me about conference room availability. This student, in particular, sought a space for active, collaborative, group studying. Soon, a reading group for first-year students was launched, scheduled to meet in the Library Conference Room every Monday morning during the Fall 2018 semester. Already, this group has become an official student-interest group. Lines of communication with this group alerted library staff to a demand for a workshop on effective reading. The workshop was suggested by some first-year divinity students who were overwhelmed as they began their journey. Hosted by a library employee, the workshop was held last month during the group’s scheduled time in the conference room. It has been a success with its twelve attendees. In an era where the library’s overall budget is spread more and more thin, the onus is on librarians to address creatively the shortcomings of their spaces and collections. Librarians should see all corners of the library as an opportunity to better provide for the community. All that is needed is a little imagination.