I was privileged to attend a one day workshop with Kevin Hennah last year. He was looking at library design – the most important part of his session was about the promotion of the print collection in our school libraries. Kevin’s background is retail marketing, in particular display and promotions. He maintains that our customers are our students and teachers and they need to be connected with the product – our library resources. The physical collection – mostly print needs to be seen. He maintains that shelves and shelves of book spines are not very appealing to the customer. He strongly suggests ensuring that the library has as much face out shelving as possible. As far as arrangement is concerned it is up to the librarian to know the needs of the customer. Each library will be different with differing emphasis and customer needs. The one thing that all libraries have that is the same is the high impact areas in terms of the layout of the library. Obviously the entrance to the library and the first things the customer sees are what will make the most impact. Kevin suggests having the best books, new books and hot topic books at these high use areas. No need for fancy displays with lots of writing let the covers speak for themselves.

 I returned to my library after the conference and took lots of photos. I walked in as if I was new to the library, as if I was a customer and realized that as people walked in our doors what did they see? Shelves of books spines. I have worked over a few months to change the way we display our books – now as people walk in they see the same shelving units but instead of hundreds of books on it they see 9 – 12 books on display face out. The current display is books by the two authors coming to our school this month and in March. I put the display up yesterday and already I need to find more books to add to it. The display didn’t even have a sign – just the books. We are making do with shelving and furniture but I hope next year to purchase more display units and stands.

 I think arrangement of the collection should be as flexible as possible. At the moment we have the fiction collection divided into Picture books, I can read books, Primary years books, Young Adult and Adult as well as International Languages. Believe it or not this is a reduction on the number of collection in play when I arrived at the school. I think it is too many but with students from age 3 through to age 18 our entire collection has to cater for a wide range of needs. I hope to create more flexibility with the collection through adding mobile shelving and having shelving that can help create reading areas and collaborative spaces.

 I agree with the Winston Churchill quote Parkes uses “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Having attended the Kevin Hennah workshop I see the need for more flexibility in our library spaces as we serve school communities with changing and evolving needs. Our collections need to serve those needs and so does our library space.

So if libraries didn’t exist would we build them today?

The key thing about a library for me is all about SHARING. It is about sharing resources, sharing ideas and sharing space. I work in a school that has the word “community” in its name. This sharing environment is all about what fosters community and community fosters sharing – it is a lovely two way street. Even on social media we see people ‘sharing’ links, retweeting information. A few years ago an electronic library came into existence in Bulgaria. People were invited to upload work to it so others could read it. Two major things happened as a result – 1. people visited libraries or purchased the titles that people were uploading because they preferred to read the hard copies and 2. the Government shut the site down proclaiming it was a danger to the public (Masnick, 2010).

I think libraries would exist today – they seem to spring up in so many places without any organisational support. After the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, old fridges with glass doors were used a local community lending libraries – created by the people in the community who wanted to share their books with each other (Nolan, 2013). These people did not have access to thier badly damaged public libraries so they created their own local versions. I think when you delve into the history of libraries you see that many modern libraries began with wealthy people donating their massive private collection to the community. Libraries are about community and sharing – they are bigger than the building, the staff and the collection.

Hennah, K. (2014, September). Rethink. Reinvent. Rejuvenate. Workshop presented at the seventh triennial ECIS librarians’ conference.,     Waterloo, Belgium.

Masnick, M. (2010, June 30). If the public library was invented today, would the Gov’t call it organized crime and shut it down? Retrieved January 10, 2015, from https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/12152310025.shtml