As one prominent librarian, Scott Bennett, has argued, libraries are entering a “time of technological change comparable in its revolutionary impact to the changes introduced in the Western world by the Gutenberg and the Fourdrinier machine.” In outlining a historical evolution of libraries, Bennett offers three pivotal paradigm shifts:
Reader-Center Paradigm
The library really started out as a reading space with design inspirations from monasteries. Library space was primarily a refuge for quiet contemplation. As books were few and precious, libraries had been designed for readers; often, a reading lectern or carrel for the monk, placed perpendicular to a window for the sake of light. Often patrons would need to inquire about the availabilities of books, which were often hidden in the back, where librarians were truly the "gatekeepers" of titles.
Book-Centered Paradigm
However, this soon changed as library collections began to grow. From its humble beginnings in the nineteenth century, most academic library collections were comparatively small, so much so that rooms could hold collections within a single room or set of rooms in buildings with other academic purposes. Even though collections had grown, faculty often opposed radical changes to a design that was so well suited to the particular character of teaching and learning within libraries. For that reason, academic libraries took on the shape of modern buildings assembled especially for the holding of its organic physical collections.
Learning-Centered Paradigm
Interestingly, the third paradigm comes full-circle, as the library returns the learner to the center of library space planning. Librarians and information technologists combined their efforts in re-designing innovative library spaces prompted by the information revolution. Often embodied in what is now often referred to as the learning or information commons, library space not only transformed with rapid and fundamental change in information technology, classrooms entered the equation in the pedagogical element. As a result, a learning-centered design practice created spaces to foster a culture of intentional learning.
UBC Main Library
The recently built Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is an example of the transformational trajectory of such learning that a library can offer. Built around the refurbished core of the 1925 UBC Main Library, the Centre is named after Irving. K. Barber, philanthropist and a graduate of UBC. One of the first three permanent buildings on campus, the Main Library’s architectural style was inspired by British tradition, a mix of Tudor, Gothic revival, and part of the academic Beaux-Arts tradition.
From Study Area to Book Stacks
Filled with long rectangular tables, Library had a concourse for its main study area, while book stacks were not open for browsing. Instead, “loan slips” to a staff member at a large counter in the concourse space called a loan desk. Because the book stacks were not fully open to all students until 1966, a “call boy” retrieved books from the stacks.
From Card Catalogue to OPAC
By 1968, a reference information desk emerged as the central information point for the Library, along with a card catalogue, the university’s only public record of its entire collection, system-wide. As the physical collection grew, so too did the card catalogue as it filled the entire concourse of the library. However, by 1978, when the collection reached two million items, the card catalogue was eventually closed and instead replaced by an online catalogue which made visits to the concourse increasingly unnecessary.
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
By the 1990’s, a Learning Commons was created. In 2008, the Main Library was replaced with a “Learning Centre,” which in many ways comes full circle in terms of paradigmatic shifts. Like those almost a century before them, students have returned to the library to not only occupy tables where they engage in discussion, but also with the advent of the latest computer technology, a wireless network, peer programs, classroom space, a café, library book stacks, a robotic automated storage retrieval system, teleconference room, and open space for community events and programming.
Reference
Bennett, Scott. "Libraries and Learning: A History of Paradigm Change". Portal : Libraries and the Academy. 9(2): 181-190.
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