Academic Librarians are a generous bunch. In addition to shepherding their library’s academic and social programs, supporting their dedicated staff, forging and extending relationships with departments across campus, advocating for the spaces and resources that students need to excel in their work, and being outspoken proponents of the dissemination of accurate and truthful information to all, academic librarians still find the time to contribute their thought leadership to the broader library community. Their dedication to a particular college or university seems to be matched only by their commitment to the broader practice of librarianship, and to library science as a profession, and as a calling. It is largely through their active pledge to share knowledge with others that we have come to appreciate and admire the important work the deans and directors of the higher ed library world do.
Recently, VMDO had an opportunity to collaborate with one such librarian: Dean Sophia Sotilleo of the University of Maryland’s Bowie State University, the state’s oldest HBCU. Working through the sponsorship of the Library Journal, and in conjunction with The Journal’s Design Institute hosted in Cincinnati Ohio in October, VMDO assisted Dean Sotilleo and her staff in a design exercise that focused on improving the institution’s Thurgood Marshall Library, the flagship academic building on the BSU campus. Through a series of community engagement workshops, the goals for improving the library took shape: to make the library more welcoming to students, to improve the zoning of the library to facilitate multiple simultaneous events, to build synergies between complementary programs distributed across the 167,000sf library, and to improve the connection between the interior of the library and the beautiful campus landscapes that envelop it.
The results of our exchange were at once adventurous and measured. It was established at the outset that a menu of design ideas needed to be created that would allow Bowie State to weigh a range of opportunities, all with an eye to improving efficiency, enhancing current strengths, and making the building feel more like the accessible academic hub it is for all students, whether they are enrolled full-time or study at night, they are a commuter or residential student, or whether they are a first-year, first generation student or a graduate student from overseas. The speculative nature of the collaboration lent itself to both imminently practical short-term solutions and more daring proposals that would completely re-envision the TML.
The design “solutions” posed a series of possibilities that built upon progressively more involved initiatives to address the programmatic and spatial needs of the library. The proposed design interventions were also planned in a series of phases, allowing Bowie State to roll-out discreet portions of the plan while working within realistic budgetary limits. Similarly, the options all orchestrated work in a way that ensured the continual operation of the library and avoided the need to take the building offline for long stretches of the academic calendar.
The accompanying plan diagrams illustrate the intent of the design and highlight the key features of the proposed work:
- An expanded entry lobby and flex space with a café and a 24hr study zone that provides access to library resources after the building is closed.
- A suite of co-located academic partner programs, organized around shared conference rooms, and easy to find and access from the main library entry.
- Consolidated staff and back-of-house space, bringing key personnel together and returning more space to users.
- Reallocating collection space along the perimeter of the library for flexible student study and workspaces with good natural daylighting and views to the surrounding landscape.
- An open, welcoming floor plan that promotes visibility through the large space and views to distant campus landmarks.
- A new, generously sized interior stair and cascading seat-step that connect the main library level with the lower floor and the popular student union quad beyond.
Some of the options are intentionally practical/functional and are meant to provide immediate means for addressing current needs. The acquisition of furniture and the re-location of certain staff and partner spaces could happen rapidly, and without significant disruption to ongoing library operations. Other concepts like the introduction of a café or the inclusion of a new stair and enhanced exterior windows and doors are more costly and would require greater planning and design efforts. Taken together, the steps outlined in our design collaboration with Bowie State University would provide a much-needed boost to the effectiveness of this important building and would be a fitting recognition of the role the academic library and its librarians play in the lives of the diverse group of students that rely on it today.
