When the World Wide Web exploded in the mid-1990s, many of us managing libraries realized we were at one of the great turning points of history, equal to Gutenberg’s printing press: the initial fault line between the age of print and the digital age. Academic libraries first tried to cope with the explosion of web-based resources by wedging generic computer labs into traditional...

If you are picking up this book, you likely have been tasked with considering the creation of a learning commons within your academic library. Perhaps you are a librarian, library administrator, or a member of a task force recently assembled to create this new learning space within a library renovation project or the construction of a new library building. The work ahead of...

We undertook to write Creating a Learning Commons: A Practical Guide for Librarians as the result of our collaborative work and experiences during the development of our own academic library’s learning commons. To say that the process of working to create a learning commons space within an academic library can be daunting is an understatement. Working to propose, design,...

Keeping this in mind, it has become imperative when assessing informal learning spaces, like a learning commons, for libraries to develop plans to measure and hopefully demonstrate how, when, and why individual and social learning is occurring within the library. Many libraries currently employ various assessment methods to measure the usage of new and existing learning spaces (group study rooms,...

Many libraries, such as those surveyed for this book, have already begun to physically transform their floor layouts and related programming to accommodate their users’ needs while simultaneously working toward establishing new spaces and programming that foster both future growth and the library’s sustained grounding as a pivotal hub of learning on their college campus. In...

We estimate that the survey will take 10–20 minutes to complete. You will have the ability to add to or alter your responses up until the survey closure date of December 19, 2016.

Phase 1: Building Anticipation: “The Learning Commons Is Coming”

Lynn D. Lampert is the coordinator of information literacy and instruction at California State University (CSU), Northridge. Lynn served as a key member of the Oviatt Library’s Learning Commons Planning Team, which managed the $2.5 million learning commons renovation project. Lynn also helped develop and design the learning commons’ new makerspace area, which opened to...

This innovative series written and edited for librarians by librarians provides authoritative, practical information and guidance on a wide spectrum of library processes and operations.