Renewing our Libraries: Case Studies in Re‐Planning and Refurbishment

Citation

Joint, N. (2011), "Renewing our Libraries: Case Studies in Re‐Planning and Refurbishment", Library Review, Vol. 60 No. 4, pp. 347-348. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531111127901

In this work, Michael Dewe has successfully edited together an interesting volume of case studies of significant recent library refurbishments, which he tops and tails with an introduction and a summing up which put the case studies in context. The most appropriate market for the book probably consists of the many librarians faced with the practical challenge of reinventing a library service through redesigning their building in some way. I would suggest that, for such professionals, Dewe's work is invaluable, offering a gold‐mine of exemplary good practice, weighty advice, and useful detail.

In future the book will probably also serve as a scholarly record of “where we were” with library architecture in the second decade after the internet's establishment as a genuine mass information tool. However, the book also works well for the more general reader, who is interested in how libraries that are experiencing a loss of use due to competition from the web and dated buildings can respond to this challenge via architectural innovation.

A particular strength is that the majority of studies in this book include clear, quantitative evidence of services showing declining measures of use (falling visits, plummeting issue figures), and illustrates how to turn these into rising figures though service‐oriented building refurbishment – and refurbishment rather than new build. Thus, this use of numeric performance indicators to measure service quality before and after the refurbishment will interest the general professional reader with an interest in library management.

This numeric data shows how, when a tired library service is faced by a one‐off opportunity to do some sort of unavoidable but expensive building work, this limited opportunity can be turned into a much more effective and wide‐ranging project that transforms a service. It is not necessary to have a 20 or 40 million pound new build to save a declining service – in many cases in the public library world, figures between 100,000 and a million and a half pounds can be spent on a site to great effect, turning an old service into something quite visionary.

The essence of this trick is never to lose sight of the transformational aspects of your building redesign, and to make sure that, despite the trials and tribulations of building work, sufficient focus is maintained on spending what resources you have to that “higher purpose”. After all, most library buildings will develop infrastructural problems through time, which in turn demand significant expenditure. However, rather than spending money purely on just an answer to immediate problems (be it “more space is needed for stock”, or “the heating or ventilation is failing”), much more imaginative solutions can be found which both maintain and improve a library service, instead of patching up a tired book‐store as the same old print warehouse with few extra services. The case studies in this book demonstrate how this can be done time and again.

As a criticism of the book, odd typos aside (e.g. Glasgow Caledonia University, p. 13), one might point out that, what illustrations there are, are black and white, and are not particularly expansive. It can be frustrating to read about a building refurbishment and the “elusive ‘wow’ factor” (p. 253), and yet not be given illustrations that show you the “wow”. However, good colour illustrations of many of the buildings described in the book can be tracked down on the web, and these images can be used in tandem with this high quality text for an “all‐round” experience. Indeed, the author's own home institution, Aberystwyth University, hosts a library building database which is very useful for this purpose (www.designinglibraries.org.uk/).

So, all in all, a very successful work, and one which can be read both by library practitioners planning a building refurbishment, and the general reader interested in the broader issue of how to reinvigorate declining traditional library services.