Library space has been on my mind. Recently architects who are responsible for building a new hospital library came to visit my library. My library was built approximately 2 yrs ago (before I was here) and they wanted to know my thoughts on the space.

So I went into great detail about the pros and cons of my library space. Unfortunately there are a lot of cons. One of the things I mentioned was space. There just isn't enough "usable" space in my library. Technically I think the square footage is slightly bigger than the old library but, I don't have enough room for all my journals and books. For example, I only have room for two tall current journal display shelves. The unbound current journals are on top of one another, overlapping, and fighting to be seen in a very loose alphabetic order. Currently on the shelf you can see the British Journal of Anaesthesia, but behind it poking out just a little is BMJ, like a little child poking its head around it parents to be seen.

I explained to the architects that librarians by nature tend to be savers. There are a few of us who are ruthless in our weeding, but we are far and few between. I am a collection slasher, I take out huge swathes of books and journals whose dates are greater than 5-10 yrs and haven't been touched in two years. Still, I don't have enough shelf space to hold all of my print collection. It is inexcusable that a two year old library does not have enough shelf space on it's current journal display shelves to display each journal in its own spot.

I guess I got their attention. Apparently they are designing the library with quite a few shelves, because a physician from the renovating hospital dropped by to visit my library last week. He introduced himself as adoctor for said hospital and somebody who is very concerned about the new library. He was concerned because he felt the library needed more room. He was concerned that there was not enough room for computers and far too much space given to library shelves. He thought the future is computers and not books. I had to explain to him that I agree that many things are on the computer, however not everything is electronic and the majority of people would rather sit down and read a chapter out of Sabiston's than read it on a screen. He agreed but thought that all you needed were a few shelves for the reference books. After all, most of the journals are all online now ...right? ...Sigh... After a quick lesson on journal prices/licenses and online access and a half hour later discussing other space things, he left at least acknowledging the library still needs a lot of shelves.

Today I just read an interesting post from Lorcan Dempsey, Space, cost and value in which he briefly looks at the issue of space and cost/value of future library resources, especially print. He writes, "It would be interesting to know what the per-use cost of managing a book over time was. Acquisition costs, but then also costs of storage, shelving, air conditioning, and so on." His post also references a story in Update, November 2005 Volume 4 (11). p. 2 on the storage issues at Oxford University where they need three miles of additional shelving yearly for print resources.

After picking my jaw up off the ground (because the concept of needing three miles of shelves every year blows my mind), I thought about library space in a slightly altered light. Does my inquiring physician have a point? Are libraries still devoting too much "space" to our shelves. Granted we can't go to the extreme and only have enough shelves for reference material, but do we really need all of that space for our print materials? Why are we (librarians) keeping so much stuff that doesn't get used or used very infrequently? Are we wasting valuable space, money, time on these things when other resources might deserve more of our attention, money, and space?

Dempsey says the discussion on space and value are "now common, and 'systemwide' approaches are being discussion within regional and national contexts." He expects "that over the next few years, the costs of managing this distributed bookstock will bring about a much more coordinated approach to its collective management." His statement reminds me of a discussion I listened to while attending the OhioLINK HealthSci group meeting a few years ago. Many of the librarians were talking about storage and lack of room. One of the big problems they mentioned was that many academic libraries are unwilling to part with a book because they are judged by the number of volumes they own. So, If you have a state library consortia storage facility, how many copies of a book must be in there and what library should "give up" ownership of a duplicate title for the good of the consortia and space?

I am not in academic libraries. The hospital libraries I have been employed at have never been a part of ACRL. So, I looked up ACRL's Standards for Libraries in Higher Education.
Two suggested points of comparison for libraries in ACRL's Standards for Libraries in Higher Education are:

1. Ratio of volumes to combined total student (undergraduate and graduate, if applicable) and faculty FTE.
2. Ratio of volumes added per year to combined total student and faculty FTE.

Are these two suggested points really all that informative when comparing academic libraries? Of those tens of thousands of books which ones have never been used within the last 10 years? How useful are they? How many other libraries that have cooperative sharing agreements have the same useless books? Wouldn't it be better if only one copy was shared by all in the state?

Perhaps those who are looking at consortia agreements for storage facilities can work with ACRL so that the number of books held within and academic library is not a comparison point or altering it so that those contributing to consortia storage facilities are not penalized for dumping their copy of a duplicated title in storage.

It seems that it is as foolish to eliminate all but the library's reference shelves for computers as it is to add three miles of shelving a year for books. There must be a balance.