student learning—what actually is to happen in the classroom and lab” and, one may add, in the learning commons.⁵ The key, then, is to replace our typical first question about what should be in a space with the less typical question, what should happen in the space. -- from first article in list The Information or the Learning Commons: Which Will We Have?

- How will the technology services in the Info Commons be supported? Who will staff the IT section of the service desk? How will we design and promote a program of cross-training or “informed referrals” between the different sections of the service desk?

- What services will be available in the 18 group study rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors of the renovated library? There are some donor funds available for furniture and equipment in those rooms. We have not determined what kind of services and what kind of support and oversight structures need to be in place to manage their use. How many rooms need computing equipment, what kind of services will be provided in the rooms? Will similar services be available in the S&E Library’s Group Study Rooms?

- What will the relationship between Instructional Technology services and spaces on the 1st floor be with the Commons spaces in the library. Are those services and spaces targeted at faculty or students. How will we make informed referrals down to the staff in those spaces?

- The Media Center on the ground floor will have 21 separate rooms for group study, video viewing, and audio listening. There will also be a large open space for individual audio and video access stations along with computer workstations (24 during the renovation and 40 in the full building). This area will be separately staffed to provide paging of the audio and video collection, as well as providing support for the services in this area. Over the next several years, as more video and audio content becomes available online, library media reserves will be delivered to the user regardless of his or her location and users will no longer be confined to the Media Center for access. We expect the services in the InfoCommons and Media Center will mirror each other more closely. What will the relationship between the Media Center and the Information Commons look like?

- Funding for staff, equipment, systems? What's the model?

Should some or all of the group study rooms be reservable? If so, how do we manage bookings? S&E uses the bookings module in Millennium but that requires staff mediation. Should we look for a self-booking tool? SCU uses Room Wizard but as of 5/5/08 they were fairly dissatisfied with the solution.

What is the role of the IC in providing accessible technology for students with special needs? Currently, there is one accessibility workstation in each library. Do we need more? Do we need to provide accessible technology in at least some of the group study rooms that we are considering? When the Media Center accepted the McHenry accessibility workstation, the representative from the Disability Resource Center advocated for a six seat accessibility lab and office space for one DRC staff in McHenry Library. I strongly discouraged her on the grounds that we did program planning for the library addition some years ago and it was too late to consider a major new program element. She seemed undeterred and indicated that the DRC would likely make a proposal to campus to install such a lab in the Media Center. I think we should talk about this option if for no other reason than to be prepared to answer it if DRC wishes to follow through on its idea.

When Special Collections and Receiving vacate the Media Center in 2010, the MC will gain four offices, six four-person group study rooms, an approximately 20' x 15' secure storage area behind the service desk, and approximately 600 sq ft of open public space . How can those assets be used for the IC?

The plan to expand from 24 to 40 workstations in the MC is based on the current furniture setup. Would it be better to have fewer workstations if each station had more individual/group workspace?

Over time, more media content will become available over the network. However, there are market reasons why adoption of distributed media in education will lag technology. There is a dearth of available academic content. Films Media Group leads the industry with chaptered search and retrieval and excellent metadata. However, their resource base is rather lean in titles appropriate for a research library collection and their pricing model is such that we would have to invest in a hosting solution to buy perpetual rights. While the library may be willing to foot that bill, there is a question of network overhead and local hosting to negotiate. Other vendors like California Newsreel, Women Make Movies, Bullfrog, et al are lagging in technology adoption and defining pricing models. Mass media producers are pursuing VOD for home markets and their licensing schemes do not yet consider the needs of libraries very well (if at all). While I do think that we will get to a high level of distributed media (the CCC hired an executive to work on media licensing this year), I expect that by the time we open the McHenry renovation in 2010, the Media Center will still be the dominant place for media study. (gc)

(from HME) I've gotten student feedback over the years that students want both quiet space to work on computers (individual study time) but also access to computers to do group work. I am wondering how the need for computers and group work are being accommodated.

The group study rooms will be an important resource for students who wish to work with technology collaboratively. We still have to decide how the rooms will be equipped and whether we want different configurations with some rooms stressing technology and others space and comfort (or something else). I expect that those rooms will be very popular and demand will frequently exceed supply. In the open lab space, there are conflicting priorities to manage if some students want individual quiet study and others want to collaborate, since collaboration tends not to be as quiet. Noise can be mitigated by limiting group size. We may wish to consider some IC furniture that can comfortably accommodate pairs and snugly accommodate trios but would not accommodate larger groups. We can also consider furniture that offers good acoustic partitioning and/or spatially separating individual stations from group areas.

Here are a few examples:

Group study at NCSU: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ncsulearningcommons/2219336348/

This room has comfortable furniture, space to spread out, power for student laptops, a monitor on the wall that can connect to a laptop for group presentations, and a whiteboard.

Group study LCD monitor with SmartBoard overlay at University of Tennessee http://flickr.com/photos/7207578@N08/411957977/

The SmartBoard is a great collaboration tool.

Commons at OSU: http://flickr.com/photos/dieverdog/2697960119/in/set-72157606349907689/

These workstations provide area for students to spread out and easily work in pairs. Note the privacy screens.

Another OSU: http://flickr.com/photos/dieverdog/2698780290/in/set-72157606349907689/

A pair of workstations with good acoustic separation. This could easily be adapted for small group work.

NWU: http://flickr.com/photos/69105254@N00/18672168/

This is a novel group study booth.

(gc)