What resonates throughout these pages is how essential it is for library and estates and facilities teams to work in partnership to deliver university strategy and to manage any risks to that delivery. In Chapter 1, Black and Kilpatrick discussed safety, business continuity and project risks, and in Chapter 4, O’Neill discussed analysing the risk of not approving or delivering on a business case. Identifying and managing risks to the delivery of university strategy involving libraries and space is the joint responsibility of library and estates leaders. Consider the annual planning cycle for universities. Faculties, schools and services plan how they will contribute to the delivery of university strategy. For example, if the university has a strategy to increase the number of study spaces to accommodate an increase in student numbers, the library leader as key stakeholder will make a useful contribution to any development master plan. Where there are impacts on existing library spaces or development of new spaces, the library and estates leaders will develop a joint business case during the planning cycle. Upon approval of the business case, library and estates leaders will be key players in the governance structure to ensure delivery of the project.

Consider the reopening of buildings as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. Libraries were among the first buildings to reopen to enable student and staff access to reliable Wi-Fi, personal computers and study spaces. Library teams and estates and facilities teams worked together to implement government guidelines around physical distancing, cleaning protocols and discreet, rapid response to decontamination after reported cases of positive testing. Certainly, at the University of East London, the estates and facilities team was invaluable in enabling the libraries to reopen quickly and safely.

The case studies in this book illustrate how open communication between the library and estates and facilities teams can positively impact on project delivery. The University of Northampton case study by Bradshaw and Powis in Chapter 9, particularly, illustrates how a good working relationship enabled them to deliver an ambitious university strategy.

Introduction

In my 20 years’ professional experience of leading five UK academic or research libraries, the most difficult, frustrating yet essential institutional relationship has been with the estates or facilities department. Throughout this chapter, ‘estates department’ or ‘estates director’ refers to the people and senior leader who manage, maintain and develop the physical infrastructure of a university and its associated services and utilities. The latter services can include the management of catering facilities, vending machines and student accommodation – which I define as ‘facilities’ even though ‘estates’ and ‘facilities’ are often used interchangeably. The importance of the estates/library services relationship has intensified in line with the increased higher education (HE) sector focus on ‘student experience’ during the 2000s as evidenced in the United Kingdom's (UK) National Student Survey (NSS), a national tool for benchmarking student satisfaction, as well as with the marketisation of HE in the UK.

Unlike other HE support services which can (rightly or wrongly) be replicated in some part at department level to enable local control and oversight of specialist or niche library functions, e.g., the library systems team, the security/reception team, porters, etc., the same is not true of estates services and their unique remit to maintain and develop the institutional estate. Yes, it is true that most large libraries employ some form of facilities or environment manager post, but such a role is mainly concerned with managing relationships and service levels on behalf of the head of service with estates colleagues and their sub-contractors. Such a role is rarely involved in the nuts and bolts of planning or constructing a new building or directly responsible for maintaining an existing library estate. This fact, in my view, creates a form of perpetual insecurity and paranoia arising from the lack of control over a key part of library operations that shades the working relationship between library and estates teams, especially when the library team are fielding estates-related calls from their customers.

Introduction

As pedagogy has moved away from knowledge transmission through lectures to more independent forms of learning and group work, recognition of the importance of social and informal learning spaces on campuses has risen (Bennett, 2009; Cox and Benson Marshall, 2021). Students need places to study, and often their residential accommodation is not well designed to support this. Acknowledging the importance of physical spaces is also to recognise the physical and emotional dimensions of learning (Cox, 2017). While digital might have been thought to reduce the importance of space, in fact we know that the digital has a strong material dimension (Gourlay and Oliver, 2018). Devices are physical objects that need to be carried, handled and charged, and their role in learning is shaped by the physical and social contexts of their use. And while digital has reduced the need for libraries to be warehouses for books, it has opened up the potential for libraries to offer multiple types of space to support different forms of learning. Librarians have demonstrated growing wisdom about how to design library spaces that enable learning. This has given them a potentially influential role in reconceptualising university space as a whole. How libraries have been redesigned provides a model for reconfiguring the whole estate to be much more about supporting different types of learning, rather than seeing the lecture theatre as the only place where learning happens or focusing on the material environment and not on the feel of spaces.

Introduction

The unifying theme of this case study is the experience of advocating for and planning the Learning Commons building at the University of Galway across a period of 25 years. During that time a series of major changes has shaped the specification and, indeed, the concept of the building. These changes have originated in a mix of local and global factors. Locally, institutional estates strategy, the direction of growth of the campus, rises in student numbers, a far more diverse and demanding student population and evolving priorities in the strategy of the University have been major influencers. Changes from without, notably global emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion as well as sustainability, and, in higher education especially, new approaches to teaching and learning, have had a significant impact. These have sat alongside new building regulations, construction industry inflation and technological evolution. User needs and expectations are fundamental to the design of any library building, and these too have changed hugely, mandating the inclusion of a very different range and distribution of spaces from those envisaged in the late 1990s.

Advocacy for reimagining the library building at the University of Galway has needed to evolve and to accommodate different political circumstances across two and a half decades. If the range of factors outlined above has shaped the building, politics have driven the direction of the project at large through a series of ups and downs, changes in institutional leadership, harnessing of student support, engagement with local politicians and the timing of funding opportunities.

Introduction

This chapter considers how colleagues in estates and facilities and library directorates work together to ensure the provision of high-quality and fitfor- purpose library facilities for students and staff. University libraries are regarded as a key service provision for students and the library aligns with the institution's strategic vision, mission and values in providing an excellent student experience, delivering operational excellence and supporting learning, teaching and research. Libraries are well recognised as being one of the key considerations when students are making university choices. The requirement to comply with legislation, particularly in relation to safety, is the bedrock of service delivery, while enabling a positive experience for all library users. Estates and facilities and library teams are both critical in delivering an excellent customer experience.

Estates and facilities teams have responsibilities across the whole university estate and need to prioritise the allocation of their staff and financial resources, taking all areas into account when considering repairs, maintenance and capital projects as well as provision of services. It is for library teams to develop elements of capital business cases for improvements to the library, explaining the benefits of proposed changes, and working with estates and facilities, who will contribute their understanding of the technical aspects and costs. Both capital and ongoing revenue implications need to be included in such business cases, with sufficient allocations being agreed before submission to the relevant governance and finance committees for approval before works can proceed. Both teams should have regular meetings with a clear agenda that covers operational and development activities, should work together to respond to changing priorities in university strategy, and need to interpret how this is reflected in physical infrastructure and service provision.

Introduction

University estates strategy takes a long-term view of an institution's mission, size and shape. The library, as an estate asset, generally evolves with the wider institutional strategy unless it is funded by an endowment which enables it to be discrete. Balancing the needs of current and future stakeholders is a delicate dance, as current users will want to see some benefit from enduring disruptions such as noise or displacement. Building flexibility into the design to enable spaces to expand or contract over time is an obvious solution, although this is easier said than done. But once we have built it, whether a new-build or a refurbishment, we need to continually check with the ‘sitting’ stakeholders to ensure that the spaces are fit for the current purpose while keeping an eye on the future. Continually is the operative word here, as stakeholders, space needs and institutional strategy change over time.

As the Director of the University of East London (UEL) Library, Archives and Learning Services (LALS), I have responsibility for service delivery within two modern buildings located on two out of the three UEL campus sites in East London. My team and I work with the estates projects team for any refurbishments or new buildings and the facilities management team for day-to-day operations, maintenance and security. Although the estates teams know how the library buildings are erected and maintained, my team and I know how the spaces within are used, which does not always mirror the intent of the design or programme of works. Prior to joining UEL, I worked at other London institutions where I had similar building responsibilities and worked with architects, designers, construction engineers, project managers, estates and facilities staff and cross-institutional stakeholders, including students and staff, to design, build and deliver spaces. One of my favourite past roles involved working on tenders for access-control systems, managed printing services, outsourced facilities services and general contract management.

The growing organism

A library is a growing organism. This is the fifth law of library science as defined by Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, a librarian and mathematician who is considered to be the founder of library science. In his seminal work, Five Laws of Library Science, Ranganathan defined core principles for librarianship: (1) books are for use; (2) every person his or her book; (3) every book its reader; (4) save time for the reader; and (5) a library is a growing organism (Ranganathan, 2006). Although originally published in 1931, the work remains largely relevant today, with ‘book’ interpreted as any physical or digital library resource and the ‘growing organism’ as a physical or virtual space.

This book focuses on the physical space as contemplated in Ranganathan's work. The fifth law considers the management of the inevitable growth of physical stock, the fixtures and fittings to contain it, the systems to track it, the reading rooms for the service users and the workspace for the library staff. The library leader of today has the same considerations, with the role of the library and its space continuing to transform in order to meet the evolving demands of users, ranging from access to books, to use of technologies, to keeping warm in cold weather.

Ranganathan's fifth law is non-contentious when funds are available to feed the ‘growing organism’ and allow it to ‘take … in new matter … change in size, and take new shapes and forms’ (Ranganathan, 2006).

Introduction

The University of Bradford places strategic priority on embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in all it does, as evidenced by the University frequently leading the sector in social inclusion and mobility rankings (HEPI, 2023). As Bradford's vice-chancellor stated, ‘At Bradford, the principle of equality of opportunity is at the heart of who we are, what we do, how and why we do it,’ (BBC, 2023). The University's ‘Making our Diversity Count: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2020–25’ (University of Bradford, 2020) puts emphasis on creating and promoting an inclusive working and learning environment at the University. The University of Bradford's J. B. Priestley Library is one of the key learning spaces within the University, and the library's strategy aligns with these university goals, voicing a strong commitment to providing a truly inclusive, safe and supportive learning environment for all library users.

Reviewing the inclusivity of library study spaces for our Users

At the end of 2021, as part of a University of Bradford library staff reading and discussion group session, library staff discussed the article ‘Meeting the Needs of Parents and Carers within Library Services: Responding to Student Voices at the University of East London’ (Clover, 2017). This article talked about how the library at the University of East London had been investigating how it could be more responsive in meeting the needs of students who are parents/carers of young children. It included results from a student survey through which parents overwhelmingly requested a separate dedicated area to be set up, preferably encompassing activities for children.

Regina Everitt: Let's start with your experience of using academic libraries.

Neil Everitt: As a mature student at Birkbeck, University of London, I used the library spaces as the transition from work to study, to take time to breathe, to catch up, before evening lectures. This (precious) 45 minutes or so, three times a week, gave me the opportunity to have some ‘me time’, important to an introvert, and replenish my energy reserves before the evening lectures.

The library also created a connection with the University ‘space’. This may have been replaced by other spaces such as the Students’ Union if I had been studying full time perhaps – but the library was an important element of how I remember my Birkbeck experience. Another major element of that experience was the support provided to utilise the resources available through the library and aid my transition into academic study.

Later, studying at Cranfield University, the space in and around the library was used to collaborate as part of small study teams, as part of a larger cohort of students, designed to replicate the way teams operate in organisations. The study teams provided support to their members by dividing the workload, and working together on projects and case studies, and created natural competition between the study teams. The teams were given free rein to utilise the variety of spaces available at the University, but speed was needed to bag the most appropriate space for the task, to avoid five tired and over-caffeinated individuals huddling around a single laptop screen as a spreadsheet was analysed or last-minute tweaks to a presentation were agreed.

Introduction

My son visited his mates in their first year of university. Upon his return, I was keen to hear what they thought about the campus. Having been to the University for a meeting, I was aware that it had a large, modern library with fantastic courtyard views over lush gardens. Although one of my university libraries has a wonderful view overlooking the Royal Albert Docks in London, I confess to having a bit of garden envy.

‘Good weekend?’ I asked. ‘Yeah, good,’ he said in near-monosyllabic detail. ‘They have a great library,’ I said, foraging for a more textured response. He is used to excitement about libraries from me. He has what I hope are fond memories of whiling away the time in the children's section in the local public library, flipping through picture books.

‘Oh, I don't even think they know where that is,’ he laughed.

Well, it's there when they discover they need it, I thought to myself. Unsurprisingly, in the heady, early days of university life, the ‘perceived value’ of the university library may not be obvious to some students. However, as course demands set in (such as the need for learning resources, study spaces and research skills development), the library's value comes to the fore. Bain & Company Inc. identify 30 elements of value for customers, and group them on a pyramid in four categories: functional, emotional, life changing and social impact – like Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Almquist et al., 2016). The functional or lowest rung of the ladder covers basic needs.

Introduction

We are leaving Gramsci behind now – farewell Antonio! ‘Thank goodness’, I hear some of you breathe a sigh of relief. ‘I didn't understand a word he was saying and not just because he spoke Italian.’ I get it: ‘cultural hegemony’ doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Remember, Gramsci wrote down many of his ideas while he was in a Fascist jail and had to use coded language in order to get his work through the prison censors and out into the world. Also, he didn't write directly about public libraries of course; they were just a detail within a much bigger picture that he was trying to paint. We now have Corrigan and Gillespie with us to explain how Gramsci's ideas are relevant to public libraries. They remind us that public libraries were a ruling class response to the threat of proletarian uprising when Europe was swept by revolutionary fervour in 1848. In Britain this was manifested by the Chartist Movement which organised mass rallies across the land. The Management library emerged from this popular discontent as an agent of social control to manage the reading habits and idle time of the working class. But, at the same time, the Management library had the potential to become a weapon in the hands of the masses during the class struggle. This contradiction has not been fully resolved which explains why, although the Management library continues to maintain the cultural hegemony of the ruling class, it has also been subject to closures in the name of neoliberal austerity politics and economics.