The Good Library Blog

What people see and experience

• People who use, or would use, libraries are most interested in three things
1. What is available – the stock
2. Whether the building is attractive and suitable
3. Whether the building is open- the hours
• The makeover is an opportunity to transform these three.

Stock, Layout and Space allocation
• The Stock is a collection of categories. Every library is different and each should match the very particular requirements of its local community.
• When undertaking a makeover of stock you should start from a list of the needs of the community. Emphasise that which make your community different first: if you are in a place with a particularly interesting history, put that at the top of your list of priorities for giving space.
• The remaining space will be given to all those topics which interest everyone, but you can place more emphasis on those which characterise your area. The obvious example is the collection for small children which will be greater in a small local library which is used as a meeting place for children, than in a city centre which has a much older population .
• In this way determine how much space and emphasis you would ideally give to different subjects and categories. There are lists which show how reading habits differ and the proportion of the population, for example, that reads fiction, or uses cookery books. These will be available from your book supplier, or The Reading Agency.
• This ideal space allocation is a description of your understanding of your community, not a reflection of how many books you have on different subjects. You may have too few of some and too many of others and a makeover is an opportunity to correct this imbalance
• You should find a way of asking both your readers and “lapsed users” for their views about your stock, either in discussion or by giving out simple questionnaires. Ask some teachers and local booksellers to comment on your stock in detail. They will give you a load of good advice.
• If you have a local “Friends of libraries” group, you must involve them from the very start of discussions and get to hear what they think and feel.
• In a similar way research the newspapers and journals appropriate for your local community – particularly any that the library may not have stocked in the past but may reflect changes in the area.
• Now make a list of how much display space you wish to devote to different categories of books; and then do the same for films and music, if your library has space for these items too.
• Having allocated space to detailed categories you need to acquire the best stock to make the collections. Obviously you will be limited by your budget but this work is the most important of all
• It is surprising how few people realise that 80-90% or more of what people read (fiction and non fiction) is “back list” which means it was first published over a year ago. Good collections are predominantly back list. Don’t use your makeover money exclusively on front list. Front list adds style and fashion, but backlist is essentially more useable and useful.
• Look at each section you have identified on your plan and purchase new copies of the leading back list.. There are some titles and topics which are essential and you must have them; and some which are important but for which there are alternatives. Your library book supplier or a retail wholesaler will happily tell you what those titles are and, if needs be, you will find them in a good local bookstore or another library. Don’t be afraid of snooping round the stock of book shops with a notepad. They do it to you. (If they ask what you are doing, say you are a school teacher)

Making the building attractive and suitable

• There may be a tight limit on the funds available for a refit but however much is available, you should start by making a plan of the layout of the whole building. How much of the space you can afford to refurbish expensively can come later, but your rough plan is essential and the cost is mainly in your time and thought.
• As with your stock find a way to ask some local people, users and non users (separately) to talk about the library; what they like about it now and what they would like to see change. Do this by getting them to talk about actual visits they have made to the library or shops rather than allowing them to be hypothetical. “When did you last go to X’s shop? What did you buy? How did you find it?” - those kind of questions about past experience.
• The best way to plan the layout of a library is to make a scale drawing of the outline and use pieces of card or wood blocks scaled to match the furniture and display cabinets. This helps you to think with an open mind about the possibilities without worrying about how things are now. Every building is different but points to watch are
1. Make the entrance area as welcoming and attractive as possible. Don’t allow your visitors to feel they are being watched or they need permission to come in. Many shops nowadays place the cash points out of sight of the entrance so that people start browsing as soon as they cross the threshold.
2. Someone entering likes to have at least some sense of the scale of the room that they have come into, so make some sight lines clear to the ends of the building
3. Try to place the area for small children well away from the quiet study and reading areas so that children can enjoy themselves and people can work in peace
4. Try to divide the space into rooms like generous sitting rooms. Put tall book cases around the wall and also use them to form alcoves and quiet corners. Break up the space in this way so that it feels comfortable.
5. Don’t make service counters larger than they absolutely need to be. Don’t let them become the central or dominant feature of the library. In fact the transactions at a library counter are less complex than those at most shop checkouts, so there is no need for them to be large structures.
6. Don’t put entrance and exit check out gates, but do put unobtrusive electronic security shields and traffic counters near to the main doors. Don’t make a feature out of them.
7. Use surveillance cameras to watch any places where cash is handled and other parts of the library that cause anxiety to staff.
8. Position inquiry and lending counters where they have a good view of the library floor and avoid having more positions than necessary.
9. Use some windows to allow natural light but at the same time it is most important to make the maximum use of space available- remember your library is more useful the more stock it has in it which might help a reader find what they are looking for. If you cover windows with display fixtures, make sure the space behind is lit and accessible for making displays visible from the outside
10. Discuss the layout and go and visit shops, hotels and other public buildings for ideas:
11. There is a misconception that DDA (the disability discrimination act) applies in a special way to libraries, particularly about the height of displays. In fact it applies to all public premises including shops and everyone has had to adapt and alter premises and layouts accordingly. What you see in other premises, particularly of larger retailers, will conform to the law.
12. Having assembled your research and your opinions you should now seek shop fitters or designers to discuss the next stage (it is not normally appropriate to go to an architect)
13. Retailers often work within very tight budgets and timescales for their refit work. They all seek very competitive tenders from shop fitters and they will normally never allow their premises to be closed to the public while refit work is in progress. Retailers demand that work has to be done fast, cleanly and to a well prepared plan with minimum disruption.
14. One option to consider seriously, if your budget is tight, is only to refit the first 10m inside the library (or a limited space). This will normally include the main window areas and the most important displays. It will also include the parts that get most wear and weather. A shop fitter should be very happy to accept such a brief and a very short timetable of work. If you can do this during the retail peak season (October- January) when fitters are short of work, you may find you get a bargain price.
15. The shop fitter and their own design team will finish off your layout plan and make sure it conforms to all legal requirements and they will use it as a basis for their own planning. You can use it to rearrange fixtures further back in the library.
• Lighting a library is one of the most important tasks. The display shelves, the study areas and the windows need to be lit brightly and “locally”. Modern bookstores have addressed these problems and other retailers have learned to make their stores much brighter than they used to be
• At the same time the fittings used need to be cheap and long lasting. You don’t want to be changing bulbs all the time and if the equipment is not specified by an experienced shop designer, the maintenance cost and bother can be excessive.

Preparing for a refit

• You must make sure that everything is planned and all issues are settled before anyone lifts a hammer. Somebody has to be in charge of dealings with the builders and fitters and lines of responsibility must be clear. The timetable might change because of unforeseen circumstances, but there should be none of those at the outset.
• If the shop fitter is to work in phases (ie in one section of the library while the others remain open), there will be a need to move stock when the plan requires and that will normally be out of opening hours. Be ready for that and have plenty of people available.
• A refit is a difficult time even if everything works to plan because of the dirt and the discomfit. Be ready. Customers might complain but you mustn’t – it is their inconvenience that has to concern you. Put up plenty of notices explaining to the public what is happening and the timetable; apologise for the disruption to the service. Make sure there are clear arrangements for them about anything that might affect them.

Opening hours and membership

• To complete your makeover you need to have increased your opening hours from their previous number. Most shops these days are open at least 60 hours on seven days. They have learned to do this without increasing their cost, because for most of them the net effect has brought no increase in income. Libraries have to learn to do the same.
• Each situation is different, but the starting point is identifying any opportunities to open longer because your staff would prefer to work different hours. Councils do have all manner of strange employment practices, which are not part of contracts or legal agreements, but have become normal. Quite often a free and open discussion among staff will reveal all manner of possibilities for extending hours.
• After the re opening go back to your groups of readers, friends and non users and get them to talk about whether you have got any of the problems right. You are at the beginning of a new dialogue with your community, regard it as a start, not a finish.
• Make membership easy. After your refit you will find lots of new people, who never used the library before, want to join. It is their library and they paid for it- so hand over the cards with pleasure; give them out liberally; make your neighbours feel that you are giving them what is rightfully theirs. Make membership completely simple and instant. No rules.

Yourselves

• Whatever has been planned for stock, the building and the opening hours, the feeling your community receives is what you think of it- all of you who work in the library. You are all the librarians in their community.
• There is no better feeling than being able to help a customer: a small child find a book they enjoy reading; a person who is trying to find out how to trace a relative; someone who has been trying to obtain a book from the British Library or even an overseas academic database; or just someone who wants a good book to read.
• Enjoy it together and be proud. You do an incredibly important job.

Launch

• When people come to see your new building, aside from the day the Lord Mayor and the Minister comes, what will interest the public will be the stock. They will come looking for the books on their favourite topic and this is the moment you really have to make an impression. You can win them for life if you impress them with what is available.
• So the end of the refit is not the day the builder goes, or the dignitaries come – but the day the stock is on the shelves, clearly displayed in all its new abundance. “We are a new library”