Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal December 2007 Volume 5(6)

Buildings and design

Space on the web

The Perth College library team provides another roundup of useful websites.

Learning Space Theory
Library Space Planning is a website run by a Librarian at Yale who is running a project to match the design of learning spaces with the institution’s values. It looks at the steps that should be worked through in order to achieve a learning space that fits the needs of the institution and its learners and thinks about how the space might affect learning. The author of the website is surveying staff and students at different institutions about how they feel about study spaces, the aim being to identify successful learning spaces.
Designing Libraries is a website for sharing good practice and showing examples of recently completed projects. It also works as a network to share information through forums and email lists.
Learning Spaces is an e-book available online, featuring chapters written by different authors on the theory or picking out case studies.
The JISC website on learning spaces leads to some useful publications and also to an infokit that gives practical advice for your own project, including a section helping you to imagine what your space might look like.

Learning Spaces
Recent innovators in the field include Telford College, which has created a 21st century campus with learning streets, learning café areas and technology available throughout (see page 10). The Saltire Centre in Glasgow is an example of cutting edge design. It features wireless technology, meeting pods, learning café areas, a services mall and a four-floor atrium. Aberdeen University’s new library will cost somewhere in the region of £57m and is the largest fundraising project in the University’s long history. The JISC Learning Spaces case studies page gives further details about these spaces, and more.

Innovation
Building futures and Resource (the Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives) explore the libraries of the future, the demands they face and how these considerations should impact on the spaces that are built.
The current trend towards all things green has highlighted the ways in which future buildings may be required to be more environmentally friendly. This Libris Design reportexamines the extent of the need for sustainable buildings and examines how these ideas might be incorporated into library construction.
The learning technology and support service at the University of Bristol examine the type of investment required to construct effective learning spaces. The report examines the issues faced at Bristol and on a wider scale.
Finally, the issue is considered from an American perspective. The Director of Educational Technologies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse provides an in-depth presentation on collaborative learning environments and the impact they have on a students learning.
Perth College library team is Emma Brown, Richard Hughes and Donald Maclean.

Information Scotland Vol. 5(6) December 2007

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.