 Please welcome along to this event which is Library Spaces in the Campus of the Future. My name is Kate Price. I am University Librarian at Queen Mary University of London and I'm also a member of the RLUK board and we've got a great event for you today. The aim of the RLUK space programme, of which this is one event, is to develop a forum where RLUK members can engage in an open dialogue and share their knowledge and experience around spatial redesign and capital builds. As part of the new RLUK strategy, the programme aims to hold three events in 2022 and also develop resources on themes of interest to RLUK members. Today's event involves three presentations exploring aspects of the library space in the campus of the future. Specifically we'll have the opportunity to discuss how we can plan strategically for the future of library space, as well as considering the role of the collections in that space and possibilities for engaging effectively with our users in the campus of the future. So without further ado, I'm going to move on to our first presentation and we're going to welcome Jeremy Upton, who's Director of Library and University Collections at the University of Edinburgh. Jeremy is Director, as I say, at the University of Edinburgh and is responsible for ensuring the professional management of and access to the University's library and museum collections both physical and digital and for their physical environment. So over to you Jeremy to introduce your presentation. Thanks very much everyone. Good afternoon and good to be here. Just give me a moment and I'll share my screen. Okay, first of all I just wanted to say well thank you Kate for the introduction and also I think to RLUK particularly thank you for setting up this series. I know it was running for a period pre-COVID but it certainly feels to me sitting up here in Edinburgh that an opportunity to discuss all aspects of what we do with our library space is now even more important post-COVID and I'll dig into a little bit of that in my presentation. So thank you for this opportunity. So in terms of what I'd like to cover in my 20 minutes or maybe a little bit less what I see is give you some of the context of where we are at the University of Edinburgh. So again reflecting what I just said it's really good for us at this point to have an opportunity to start thinking about some of the questions we're looking at this afternoon because we are beginning a piece of work ourselves. I want to reflect perhaps in terms of strategy and strategic thinking where we were thinking about library buildings pre-COVID and how that operated and give some reflections on that and then perhaps suggest how things might have changed with post-COVID and how it is a different environment that we're looking at and particularly as the title of my talk says to relate that back to the whole concept of university strategy and suggest perhaps there are some opportunities there as I mean I'd bid for myself as we struggle to think about how we might use library space going forward over the next 5, 10 years and how we make decisions about how we prioritise that and what we're actually going to put at the forefront in many of our library buildings. So thank you for that. So in terms of where we are at the University of Edinburgh and our building and I would imagine that some of you have been up to see us in Edinburgh. So our main library building 1967 building went through a refurbishment as many other places gave us opportunity to expand particularly around about things like study space and give us that the gradated approach to libraries of some more public noisier spaces etc and moving up to the building to the quieter and we'd reached a point a couple of years back pre-COVID where we realised actually it's time to do a bit more work on this but unfortunately with the financial situation we've now reached a situation where we are not going to get any expansion of our floor space. So I suppose we're facing that challenge of knowing that there is still demand but we don't have more physical space on how to deal with that and so that whole question around about prioritisation becomes really important to us. I think and it's good to hear that we're going to have a talk later on this afternoon about the whole question of collections review. I certainly think that we feel we're a bit behind on that at the moment in terms of having reviewed our collections but certainly recognise there is plenty of opportunity there to make changes in terms of what we have, what we have, what we hold, how we hold it, where we hold it and that's something actively we want to start looking at which gives us some scope to do some new thinking. Even though we're not going to get the kind of major investment to extend our building going forward I've certainly recognised we can't leave it standing still and we are at a point where we now need to start thinking about how can we change our buildings within our existing footprint, what do we want to do over the five years and how are we going to decide what the priorities for those spaces might be. So it's a very active question for us at the moment and of course feeding into that there are things which are making us think afresh. So in our institution again I'd imagine like a number of your institutions, the institution is looking closely at the whole question of curriculum review, how we teach, what we teach, what the priorities should be, should it be as subject focus, should there be more generic type activities within that and of course that's going to have an impact on all aspects of library activity but also I'd argue have a significant impact on how and how we might want to use our library spaces to support what the university is trying to do and then I'll obviously say COVID reflections I think there are some particular things there which we might want to pick up on. So library pre-COVID and how we think about it and what we thought about it. Even recently I mean we've been talking a lot in the university up here in Edinburgh about what is the perception of us as a library amongst our senior managers within the university and that's why I've put these images up here because what we find still is there is quite a traditional view of what library is and what library space is and what the library space functions as. And as I've said to many of my colleagues it still always amuses me with TV interviews when people are talking seriously about something and they want to use a library space. Inevitably they're going to be lined up in front of a series of leather band volumes because it's a kind of perception that many people still have about what libraries and what library spaces look like and I've also included an image of our pre-1960s building, a play fair library, the kind of again standard image of in many people's minds of what libraries think like and I think to me thinking this over what it emphasises that people do have at least many people have quite a static view about physically what libraries are and what they do and I was thinking back over some of the the projects we've done with architectural practices in the past thinking about the library. There is very much a sense that people even in those conversations understand at least they feel they understand what we are that we don't have to delve into in so much detail about what the nature of a library is, its services and what physical spaces it needs for that. And I can think of some examples of projects I've been close to which I've heard about where in fact the architects don't really speak perhaps as much as we might like to us about what a library could be because they feel they understand it so clearly or it is so clearly understood what it is about. And so even pre this kind of discussion for us we understood that we had an issue here because we recognise across the board I'm sure like yourselves as our library is changing. So we've started a piece of work to really kind of look at the identity and the communications piece and begin to try and change that because we recognise it's a barrier for us going forward and what we want to do. But I suppose the main point I'm making here to me is that things were quite stable and static perhaps at least people's understanding of what that were was was quite stable and static. So this is an image of our refurbished main library building as we come in and talk can go back to the theme about using strategy although and I had a quick opportunity to review the original brochure for our 1967 building that the very much is the talk in that there's very little talk about kind of vision and bigger pictures of how this building supports what the university is trying to achieve. There are still elements I would admit within our building which I think do reflect what the university was trying to say in the 1960s. So one of the striking features of our building is the entrance where you come in very low you can see the entrance gates here and then you enter into a very large space a very large foyer and clearly intention was there to create an impression of grandeur that you enter when you enter into a place you're entering into a very serious place of serious learning and study which I would guess still remains for us but was very much at the time the way the university wanted to present itself. So there were elements I think at that time where even university strategy was was at play and was contributing to thinking about the design of the building. So thinking back over the the Covid period and what kind of things have we picked up I've mentioned already that the university here at Edinburgh is thinking about curriculum review and that as I said going to result I think for us in quite significant change about how we think about our spaces and how we deliver them and what we do with them. So it's contributing to a time where there is a lot of change a lot of change thinking and I would perhaps argue and hopefully argue that there are some opportunities to think differently about everything we do including library space. We're all experiencing that conversion to what some people are now calling digitally enhanced learning and again trying to understand what that means on a very practical level of space we know that there will need to be opportunities for students to to work with digital technologies more when they're on campus as they attend their hybrid type events and we need to change to do that. But of course we still haven't really understood yet or had time to understood yet what the the full implications of that might actually be. So it's another thing which suggests that we will be looking at change significant change in how we look at space. And I did pick up recently from JISC they're done a leader survey and one of the top five things they picked up on the university leaders was that they want that they are looking at that whole kind of review of physical space on campus. So it's in the atmosphere it's out there it's something which is a priority at the moment trying to understand how the university is a physical space might change in the future which as I said I think is both an opportunity and a space for us to be rethinking about how we do things. So it's a good time to have that kind of reflection. I think there are other reflections I've picked up on though from COVID which suggests that there have been some quite significant what I describe here as disruptions and we're beginning to try and get our head around what that might actually mean. So certainly here in Edinburgh I'm sure like a lot of you there was a very strong focus during the COVID period on study space and it became to me to some degree perhaps a bit one of the isolated things which was looked at when we are thinking about library service delivered into the university and certainly one of the trends I suppose we've seen here is that the concept of study space as a service which is separate from the library has begun to emerge as something which is cross campus clearly the library is heavily involved in delivering it but does that loosen that kind of that aspect of that aspect of the physical bit of the library that's no longer exclusive to a library concept actually it's something which is becoming much wider and therefore perhaps ask some interesting questions about what is the library physically from that point of view. As we've discussed earlier and like many of you we've seen that massive move towards providing more of our collections digitally so again thinking back to the leather band volumes that kind of concept of what the library space is a place where we keep all these kind of things has been loosened even further which again I think contributes to us thinking about and asking these kind of questions and the final point I'll highlight here is that I've reflected on and obviously we'll have to see over time future trends it's just something we noticed this year traditionally around about summertime examination period would be a time when the physical library would be absolutely overwhelmed with people wanting to come in and study but actually this year because of the change of the way that assessments have been done at our university with more stuff moving online with more continuous assessment my line is we could actually buy a cup of coffee if you went down to our library cafe and actually sit there and talk to someone without having to queue for about 10 minutes before getting anyone the other counter so there are quite significant changes we're observing already which say the space is going to change and we need to find some ways to think then how how are we going to prioritize how are we going to shape what we do going forward into the future but the other trend I've picked up which I again I'm thinking about quite a lot is that there is also a I wouldn't say a counter trend but a trend out there which say yes but there is elements where we want to return to the physical okay you might say we have the extreme coming out of some some noises out of government about how we must return to face-to-face teaching because that is a measure of quality but there are other kind of sounds which suggest the physical campus will remain important to all of us and therefore we need to try and define what that actually is going to be and how the library might contribute towards that physicality so I took a quote I've got a quote here out of a recent piece from Wonky an article which came through highlighting this thing about what students actually want when they come to the university they still want that physical experience even though this is a piece talking about digitally enhanced learning so it sits very strongly alongside that whole kind of new approach to what a university might be the physical is going to be important within our own institution there's been a lot of discussion about this and the phrase which is being rolled out quite often is we want to be a university where most people are on the campus most of the time that's not denying that of course we're going to be looking at different styles of delivery different modes of delivery but re-emphasizing that that physical part of what it means to be at university is important and what I've beginning to what I've started to think is then okay well that is the case clearly that physical piece is important certain aspects of the university will become more digital so does that mean actually the library's contribution to that physical experience will become even more important and actually will have a higher university or more of a university role to play in that kind of space and therefore given the title of my talk should we look more closely at prioritizing ways we can support some of the university's strategies in a more significant way within our buildings so I just wanted to touch on the whole little bit without going to too much depth onto the whole concept of what how we can use physical spaces to represent ideas and thinking and this gave me a great excuse so please excuse me for this to bring up one of my holiday snaps I was fortunate enough to to have a trip over to Germany just a couple of weeks back and I was for the first time able to visit the city of Leipzig and there's a large structure there called excuse my German the Filke Schlacht Denkmal which is a memorial space to the the the the Napoleonic War which took place at the battle which took at took place outside Leipzig in 1813 and this massive structure with its internal features was constructed to be ready for the hundredth anniversary trip for 1913 which it was completed I would recommend if any of you have a chance to go to Leipzig please do take a look at it but wandering around this I mean I have to say I'm still struggling to interpret exactly what people were trying to express through the building but to me it was a strong strong reminder that one of our things we like to do is express ideas to our physical built space and often to do this in extremely powerful way and of course you can see where perhaps this is leading in terms of my thinking about the library building being a physical expression of university strategy possibly not in the dramatic way you see in the picture in front of you and then it also reminded me of a conversation I had when I was fortunate enough quite some time ago to make a visit to Israel Palestine and going around that particular part of the world and the person who was taking us around was saying this was kept highlighting how when human beings come across a place of significance the first thing they want to do is build on it put something on it so again emphasizing that idea of using built structures to express ideas which as I say led me back to think a bit more actually there could be a lot of good ways that we could use our physical not on this scale but use our physical spaces to express ideas about the university and maybe given all the change which I've highlighted taking place maybe we should give that a slightly higher priority in terms of what we do so my thinking I admit is still quite early on this but I just wanted to bring forward at the end of my presentation some ideas how we're beginning to explore that and in the spirit of this program I'll obviously really look forward to hearing your thoughts and whether your ideas are going in similar directions and what you think about this as a kind of way of thinking about prioritizing our spaces so I've come up with three spaces three ideas where we've begun to explore this and what I've done is I've gone back to our university strategy 2030 looked for phrases and suggested perhaps how we are or how we're beginning to think about how we reflect those in our physical space so one of the big issues we're exploring is the whole concept of belonging we admit at the University of Edinburgh because of our size partly we do have a bit of a challenge around about our students feeling part of the university and we have this phrase in our strategy document about fostering a welcome community where they feel part of the university so unsurprisingly of course that we say within the library though but it's very difficult for someone to feel part of something if they don't actually understand what it is they're coming to be part of where it's come from what its history is what its culture is and we are in a fortunate position in the University of Edinburgh in having a very fine grade A listed building but to be quite honest up to this point we've never used it in that way to say it is part of the history of the university so we are now beginning to think more seriously about how can we use the physical building to connect our students to the institution is it a place where we could tell stories about the institution can the building itself if we tell stories about the building itself will that help with that sense of belonging as well as course being a space where perhaps we will invest more in putting more of our history our culture our objects out there into the space where then students come into experience it given that it's going to be probably one of the most significant physical spaces on campus that it will be a space where they can begin to have that sense of belonging that sense of understanding of what it means to be part of the University of Edinburgh and how their time here contributes to what the institution will be and what it will be going forward so that's one aspect where we're beginning to explore can we use what the University at the strategic level wants to do to help us shape what we want to do within our physical building I think the next one is which is probably quite an obvious one for many of you is that whole concept of open and we've been talking so much about open when it comes to open scholarship open publishing all these kind of things but open can also I think apply to our physical spaces and yet again so we have phrases within our strategy which talk about being accessible and supporting and being collaborative and open and going back to that picture which I showed at the start of my talk about our foyer we've already identified the fact that we have barriers running right across the front of the door probably doesn't quite give that kind of message to our community at the moment but if we want to respond to that kind of nature of what the University wants to be then that is something we're going to have to look at very seriously how do we make more of our space open and available to our community to come in and be part of and give that a priority perhaps over some of the other things which we've done in the past and the final one I want to just quickly to pick up on a kind of our initial thinking is about this whole piece going back to curriculum review and thinking about what is our duty beyond the subject studies which our students do to support them and prepare them for the workplace and as it says here you know preparing graduates to make a difference whatever they do wherever they do it and how can we contribute to that so one thing we've been investing in quite heavily the University of Edinburgh is in the maker space which has been great for all kinds of reasons and I could give a separate talk as to why I think that's appropriate for this to do that so that is true but I suppose in terms of the building space I mean one of the things we've begun to say okay we have something which helps express that but why at the moment do we have it tucked away on one of our floors where it's not very visible if we're thinking about this at a university strategic level shouldn't the priority be to try and push it into a more public and a more open space so we're seriously thinking about giving making that a priority and trying to find space in the building where it will have that kind of prominence because that will then be us responding to that university level of strategic activity so I hope that helps introduce that kind of idea how we're beginning to think about the whole concept of that there is so much opportunity of change that we have so many difficult questions to think about particularly around about prioritization but perhaps looking more carefully or thinking more carefully at our institutional level of strategy there could be some ways that can some things that could help us think about how we do the shaping so very much look forward to your comments and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to to talk to you this afternoon about our initial thinking and obviously I'm very happy to talk after this event if anyone wants to contact me directly so thank you very much thank you Jeremy that was fascinating and just a reminder to everybody that you can use the chat function just to if there's any anything that sparks thoughts in your your mind you'd like to share and do use the q&a function for any questions you'd like to ask Jeremy or the rest of the panel at the end and thank you Jeremy that was fantastic and we'll move on to our next speaker Michael fake who is associate director of student learning and experience at the University of Leeds libraries where he's worked since 2016 and he's responsible has responsibility for the library estate and space planning and leads the library's sustainable environments program so over to you Michael for your talk thank you thank you very much thanks Kate and thank you Jeremy I thought that was a fascinating talk and I think there are some echoes of some of the themes that you talked about in my presentation so I've titled this slow and fast change and why have I given it that title I suppose what I'm trying to identify in that is that historically Leeds has been very fortunate we've had a lot of large-scale capital investment big new buildings refurbishment of our libraries in the last seven or eight years and that's sort of traditionally I think how we thought about study space big one-off big bang kind of changes to our environment and I think one of the things that we're starting to recognize in a post-pandemic future campus kind of environment is that actually although that still has a place we need to partner that with fast change by which I mean something that is much more agile is much more nimble is perhaps cheaper more cheerful but is is more adaptive and able to be agile in the face of what is still a very uncertain and changing campus environment so I'll sort of expand on that as I go but if I start with a little bit background so University of Leeds is fairly big 38,000 students we've got five libraries with about just under 5,000 study spaces across them and our sort of group and social spaces are very heavily concentrated in those newer locations so we talked about new buildings we had a completely new library built the Laidlaw in 2015 and the following couple of years we refurbished our largest library the Edward Boyle library completely gutted the internals completely reconfigured and refurbished and a couple of years after that we had further work in the intersection of the Brotherton library slightly smaller scale but nevertheless still significant so this as I say there's been a lot of very significant programmed capital investment and we've seen kind of big changes to the libraries as a result but over that same period we've seen really significant changes in how students are engaging with our library space and I think the pandemic has has simply accelerated trends that we could see evidence before 2020 so the first really kind of obvious point is the massive increase in traffic so over the five years before 2020 we saw increase of traffic by something like 40 percent we had about three million turnstile entries pre-covid and although they haven't quite recovered to that level now they're very much getting getting closer we expect them to exceed that next year and that increase is much faster than can be accounted for simply by the growth in student numbers in fact the average individual student is visiting or has been visiting our libraries about 24 percent more often than they were in 2015 now if we drill down into that data a little bit more actually there's an interesting contrast in fact for the majority of our students there is no change at all they are using our libraries in exactly the same way they have as far back as our records go you know a good sort of 10 or 15 years about 50 percent of our students come into our buildings maybe once a week during during term time and that's that's consistent and hasn't changed where we've seen the really radical change is in what we've labeled super users there's this kind of core of of students who make really intensive use of library space they're coming in and two or three times a day during the vacation period so a much much greater proportion of their time and that group of users has doubled from around four percent in in 2015 to about eight percent in 2020 so a minority but a really significant minority and a minority that is really kind of changing the the kind of traffic flows and the sort of sense of business and vibrancy in our in our buildings at the same time as i'm sure is the case in all of your libraries print circulation has nosedived and it's been doing that for a long time during the pandemic and absolutely hit the floor and we see no real sign that that is picking up in any significant way so what are the students demanding when they're coming into the libraries it's not print it's it's all of those basics that we've been trying to cater to for for many years but but with increasing urgency and and vociferousness so there's the demand for more power and data we can clearly see that where in some of our legacy areas that that isn't being provided they are they are avoiding those at all costs they're looking for high quality furniture high quality environment so again we can see the patterns of usage are very focused on those new build locations the the areas that are are more open are lighter more airy and more well ventilated have more comfy furniture more variety of furniture and they're looking for variety of work spaces so things that are adaptable places with group study with social study but we also see still very heavy use of single study spaces and parallel study where people are working individually but in in close to that to their friends and colleagues we're seeing more and more demand for round-the-clock access to that study space at Leeds we still only provide 24-hour access during the exam periods but the pressure to extend that service is becoming overwhelming we know we've got to make changes there to meet student expectations and and finally and I think this is something that is post-COVID rather than pre-COVID we are seeing that demand for for spaces for online engagement I think I can't remember the phrase you used Joan was it digital engagement but that idea that that people need a space where they can comfortably engage in an online seminar an online workshop an online conversation without feeling that they're disrupting or disturbing their their neighbors but I put a question mark against that because I think we're still unclear just how embedded that is and how how deep the demand for that goes how long we're going to see that being something that students are asking for or is that actually something that's short term and we're going to see people moving away from as the university gets back to a very much focus on face-to-face teaching so we have a number of challenges that run alongside those those shifting demands we do have very significant legacy spaces the image here is of the basement of the brotherton library for anyone who's been to leads to the university you will almost certainly have encountered the brotherton library the grand old dame of the campus built in 1936 huge dome beautiful chandelier and it's you know it's every graduation day photo is taken there but if you go down into the basement in that same building suddenly you're in a completely different world it's the servants quarters you can see all of the piping it's it's hot in the summer it's cold in the winter it's noisy there's no power the data gets blocked by the shelving and really we just sort of cram a desk wherever we can and and hope for the best these are clearly kind of spaces of last resort but it's still a significant proportion of our of our study space and that's a real that's a real challenge that we're still looking to address but at the same time there is significant pressure now on the capital budgets i said at the start we've been very very fortunate over the last eight years or so in being able to access significant investment from the university but the pie is shrinking there are a lot more demands on on the funds that are available the university's investment in meeting its carbon at zero targets take a considerable chunk of capital we're still working through the fire safety remedial works that post post-grenfil so more of us are sort of fighting over a smaller a smaller pot and that means that we're having to think in slightly different terms about where and when we ask for capital investment um as i said earlier i think there's some uncertainty about some of those post-covid trends the things that we saw really appearing during the pandemic how persistent are they going to be um hybrid working is here for our staff absolutely but the university as a as a sort of stated policy is trying to move away from hybrid teaching um so for how long are we going to see um that demand for for online learning spaces um is that something which is going to remain um widely in demand or is it going to going to shrink um and and finally here i've put ownership um of study space so within the library we're very clear we we own the library spaces and we've got responsibility for them there are lots of other study spaces around the campus where the ownership is much more ambiguous or opaque there are conflicting stakeholders there are departments and services who are who are kind of you know hoarding their study spaces others who are trying to encourage people from across campus to use them and i think one of the things that clearly came from the pandemic was as an institution a recognition of just how fundamental study space is to the student experience overall um and i think as a consequence of that there is a move institutionally to try and be much more joined up much more coherent much more aligned in how we approach study space so that we're not all going off and doing our own thing in isolation um but we've still got some way to go to reach that to reach that point and in the meantime we are kind of left in this limbo of well to what degree does the library push this agenda to what degree do we try and lead a university agenda to what degree do we follow others in the in the institution so all of that is a sort of the background essentially to our library vision which we launched in i think it was october and november last year um our 10-year vision knowledge for all um and threaded through that our issues around space and student environment and i wanted to draw out what i think of the four key aspects of that vision um which which address which address the space um space issue which are kind of factoring into how we think about this going forward um the first is sustainability as a university we've committed to net zero we've got um real kind of impetus behind that we want to make sure the libraries are playing their part in in that so sustainability in the sense of environmental but also in that wider sustainability agenda um we recognize there are changing needs and we do need to be adaptable and adaptive in reconfiguring spaces um where that's where that's appropriate but we um and that can mean things like increasing the provision of data and power and and you know the high quality furniture all those elements but we also want to go beyond just the um the kind of the most basic study space of of a desk where you can revise and write your essay we do think that the university library has a really key role in providing um something that goes above and beyond that so providing disruptive environments creative environments innovative environments where students can more easily meet people from other disciplines can collaborate can engage in the sort of creative activities that you know I mean Jeremy showed the maker spaces at Edinburgh and I think that's exactly the kind of thing we're talking about there you know spaces where actually students can go beyond the the the traditional use of of a library of a library study space um and finally um and I think fundamentally uh important is um an appreciation of the need to have user-led development of our spaces and services we want to make sure that we're genuinely informed by what users want what they need what they're going to use so that we don't do what I think we've sometimes been guilty of in the past of of kind of cooking up grand schemes in our offices um rolling them out over two or three years and then finding that actually they're perhaps not quite what the students wanted they're not quite meeting their needs or they're they're not used in the way that we expected them to be used so being much more um collaborative working with students as partners being much more user-led in how we in how we develop those um develop those spaces so what does that mean in practice what does fast change and slow change mean um at Leeds well this is a we're kind of still early in the process so um these are these are relatively small examples but I think they're perhaps illustrative of where we're trying to go so we have really embraced this idea of user-led development of spaces and we've been doing some work within our our staff team um to really embed that way of thinking we started a training program around UX techniques and and and and theory um thinking about UX research but but also prototyping and I think the prototyping is the keyword um we run a a cohort of staff through that this um this this Easter we're going to run a couple more cohorts of staff over the next over the next year to really try and embed that into the way we way we operate um and in parallel to that we've set up a UX fund to support that agile development and and the point of that is that it's a um a very light touch way of accessing money there's there's not huge kind of barriers or committee structures to to kind of wade your way through there's not lots of paperwork you can come to that fund with a with a decent idea um get the money fairly quickly and and off you go and we're really trying to encourage that way of working now I should say that that UX approach is not just about space that's about our services overall but but we are seeing that it's being applied um to spaces more more easily more readily than perhaps in other areas of of of library activity um and what you see in the image here is is a kind of a first iteration of that our our well-being space um I'm I'm not suggesting for a moment this is cutting edge I know there are plenty of other libraries who've already gone down this down this route and um and developed these but I think it sort of shows a slight shift in how we're approaching the development of space um so this was an example where a handful of staff in our frontline customer services team um they saw an opportunity they knew that students were asking for this kind of thing they identified a space that could work for it um they got a bit of money through the UX fund they did some um quick research with students to kind of get a sense of what might work they grabbed some bits of furniture from furniture stores and cribbed it from other bits of our library estate threw it together um and there we were we had something and that process took a couple of weeks rather than uh something that might in the past have taken six months or a year um and from that point on we're now in the position where we can start to iterate this we're actually seeing well how well used are these which bits of that that kind of experiment are working which are not and we can chop and change those much much more quickly than than we ever could with the this of the old way of approaching this so it's a really kind of dynamic engaging user-led approach um and not only is that supporting our students um we really kind of see it working for our staff too I think there's a real sort of sense of engagement um an ownership of space strategy um in a way that um is perhaps not there with the large capital program where it's all kind of gone up through um you know terrifying university committees and and and long and windy papers um so that's one example I think another example I'd point to is the approach we've taken to online learning spaces this idea that you know you need you want a space where you can engage in an online lecture and online workshop um and our approach there I think is is interesting and as much as we haven't gone for um new furniture we haven't invested in um uh you know in soundproofing in baffles and in kind of pods um we've we've kind of taken approach around communication we basically applied a sort of permissive policy we've said these parts of the library space we expect you to do that and the people around you will expect you to be doing that too so they can't be upset when you start talking into a microphone and if we provide um enough um headsets um uh at the moment that seems to be working that seems to actually be be kind of uh and delivering what students are are asking for and again by doing it in that very very light touch way that very kind of quick and easy way um we've got the adaptability there to be able to double down on that if we find that really that's that's needed and we need to do more of it and we need to kind of really start to invest in um kind of support for that um or very easily back out of that if we find that that those spaces are not required um you know two or three is heads so that's kind of fast change but there's also the slow change and that hasn't gone you know we still um we still know that there is a place for this there's still something there's still a number of things that we want to do that that require that kind of level of of investment and kind of long term long term planning um I mentioned the changes to the brotherton west building in 2019 um I think that's an example of some recent refurbishment of of spaces that we're still kind of following that old school old school approach um interestingly there we've kind of adopted um new sort of furniture layouts that allow us to be a bit more adaptable um in how they're used so in the past we've had when we built the ladle or when we refurbished the other boil we've got lots of kind of horseshoe shaped booths which we thought were going to be brilliant for group work and individual work and actually what we often find is that one person sits there and it blocks out the entire thing no one else wants to wants to approach it because it feels like you're intruding so we've we've gone for um kind of furniture styles and approaches that are much more open and much more flexible um and with this sort of layout we're really seeing um much less of that kind of hogging of an entire space by a single person it seems to be working much much more effectively um but we're starting to think about the future and really that that point I made earlier about being more innovative or more disruptive more creative spaces um so we are now starting to think about well how can we get those into the library um can we give a give a side significant chunks of our of our real estate you know big offices meeting rooms um areas that are currently being utilized by Prince Dark and Jane will talk a little bit about our Prince strategy um in a moment um can we free those up and turn them over to different sorts of spaces so maker spaces the the kind of thing that Jeremy has talked about can we find spaces there in the library for that um can we develop family spaces so that we are more open and more supporting uh you know different different kind of groups of users um can we create entrepreneurial spaces so that students have a place where they can go and engage in kind of entrepreneurial activity and and I think part of why we're able to now start thinking along those lines um is because again institutionally I think there's a recognition that the library is the place to do that um all of these sorts of spaces already exist at leads in various different locations around our campus um but again they're often owned by a faculty a department a service hidden away in a basement somewhere hidden away in a corner of the campus that lots of our students feel scared to go to or feel intimidated by or feel they don't they don't belong um and I think there's finally a recognition I mean we've been making this point for a long time it's finally a recognition that the library is actually the place to do that it is a hub it is a central location it is a place where students come um it is a place that is kind of seen as neutral as seen as friendly as seen as um a home to all of our all of our users rather than just one particular department or faculty so yes um fast and slow change I think these two things sit in parallel um we're not dropping one but we are starting to work um much more around uh around the other and seeing how we can maintain agility maintain that sort of flexibility that we all had to pick up during the during the pandemic and see how that applies to um the um the campus of the future um that's it I think so I'm going to hand back to Kate thank you thank you very much Michael that was fascinating um we started to get some good questions through on the q and a so uh there'll be some things for for you to answer at the end there um everybody else just keep on sending the questions that's brilliant thank you very much um and our next presentation just to to complete the trio is a double header and it's been given by Jane Saunders and Sandra Base-Girdle so Jane is Associate Director of Content and Discovery at the University of Leeds Libraries and Michael just mentioned her name earlier and Sandra is Associate Director of Collection Strategies at the University of Manchester Library and both are members of the RLEK CSN Print Storage Group so without further ado I'm going to hand over to Sandra first I think and and Jane as well I think it's me speaking first but um Sandra's in the background with the slides I hope thank you thank you Sandra um thank you Kate and um thank you for the opportunity to be able to share work that has been carried out by the Collection Strategy Network of RLEK around the UK approach to the collective attention of print monographs and what this might mean for space and preservation and access so have the next slide please Sandra so thinking about a collaborative approach to print monographs as I'm sure many of you are aware um has been under way for for more than a decade now and we've listed some of the key milestones and initiatives here on this slide so back in 2008 the UK Research Reserve now administered by the British Library launched and was both pioneering and successful in helping libraries to manage down their print journal collections in a coordinated and responsible way and so that space could be saved and collections and access and preserved the National Monograph Strategy Report published in 2014 stressed collaborative solutions for the management of books and referenced the co-pack collection management tools released in 2014 also and those tools made it possible for libraries to analyse their collections in relation to those held in other co-pack libraries the co-pack collection management tool has now been superseded by the JISC library hub compare tool which works with the data held in the National Bibliographic Knowledge Base and also over the last eight years and many libraries in the UK have experimented with OCLC's green glass tool which allows comparison of collections between libraries and indeed green glass underpins many collaborative print management and projects in North America and OCLC examined what a collective collection in the UK might look like and the findings were published in its report from 2016 Strength in Numbers the RRED UK collective collection and white rose libraries with the support of JISC followed up on this with their own investigation using green glass in 2017 and also in 2017 information power was commissioned by UKRR, RRED UK, SCONROR and HEFC to investigate a national approach to the management of low use materials and indeed earlier talks have referenced the fact that use of print circulation of print is indeed fallen the recommended scenario for the UK was a central shared repository preferably at Boston Spa to preserve research material for the UK HE research community, release library space, coordinate retention and provide quick and easy access and that was followed up in 2018 by Theo Stubbs working on behalf of the UKRR who established through interviews with senior library colleagues in academic libraries that there was an appetite for a collaborative approach to managing printed collections and his report makes tentative recommendations for UKRR monographs and of course throughout this period many libraries have continued to use the co-pack collection management tool and its successor JISC library hub compare to inform their stock management decisions and in view of this following a period of consultation in 2020 the JISC library hub community advisory board published its guidelines on recording the tension commitments in the National Bibliographic Knowledge Base to provide further information for those libraries making decisions around monograph disposal and to lay the groundwork for any coordinated approach to print monograph and management. Next slide please Sandra and so mindful of all of this work and the RLUK board were keen to progress and this idea of a collaborative approach and looking at print storage and so the RLUK collection strategy network formed the print storage group in autumn 2021 and the print storage group first decided to get an up-to-date picture on issues surrounding print storage and so launched a survey on libraries approaches to print storage and this was conducted in November 2021. Responses were invited from Sconell and RLUK libraries but in actual facts we had 30 respondents and all of those were RLUK members and this may mean that this is more of an issue for RLUK libraries. Next slide please. So what did the survey tell us? Well we asked what is your current print storage arrangement and you can see there the responses that we received with libraries having several different ways to store materials using different options there. Next slide please and we also asked if libraries have additional requirements for print storage in the next five years and around 50% of respondents had need for additional space in the next five years. What we were wanting to establish was whether or not space for collections, space for print collections were still a live issue and this cleared the signal that yes it was a live issue for 50% of the respondents. Next slide please and we were also asking if there were plans to withdraw and dispose of print collections in the next five years and 26 libraries responded yes to that so the majority of libraries were actively planning to dispose of material in the next five years. Next slide please. So then we were interested in what criteria are libraries using when they're making decisions around withdrawal and you can see there the local plans and policies are critical and also usage data is critical you know our things being used aren't being used but I think it was very heartening though to see that the majority were also considering holdings of the libraries and that also UK RR for journals is being used too so there is clearly a shared awareness of the danger that if libraries are removing low-use items relatively rare materials may be lost to researchers in the in the UK. Next slide please. So then we asked do you feel if you're do you feel your library would benefit from a UK national approach to reflect different tension of print monographs and there was no unanimous yes to that and we felt that that then gave us a mandate to work up a set of recommendations for the RR UK board around what this approach could look like and the board endorsed these recommendations in May 2022. I think now I hand over to Sandra. Thanks thanks Jane so just to pick up there and so the RR UK board agreed the vision statement proposed by the collection strategies network here and the vision developed was through a UK wide but distributed collection of print monographs and this is designed to be a pragmatic solution to help libraries manage their print collections now however it does not preclude any centralized or shared storage being developed in the future. The advantage of a distributed approach is that it allows for action to be taken in the short and medium term to safeguard printed monographs whilst enabling libraries to reduce their collections if they wish to do so in a responsible way. Libraries who adopt this approach will be able to take action locally with the insurance that they are working with a UK wide context specifically by checking the GIS library hub to ensure that any scarce items are not disposed of and flagging items they're willing to keep by adding retention statements to their own catalogue records. So in order to put this vision into practice we're developing a roadmap with short, medium along the term actions. We're still at the early investigative stages one month into the short term roadmap and we've started to have some initial discussions with GIS on the potential for the National Bibliographic Knowledge Base or MBK to support this work. The MBK includes all the catalogue records which underpin the GIS library hub and this gives us the ability to compare records across all contributing libraries. We're also keen to promote the use of retention statements on which more shortly. Another of our early actions is to explore the level of items to be retained as part of the distributed collection and we're working with GIS to see how the data in the MBK can inform our work. GIS can be very positive in our talks with them and very see this work aligning with the work of the MBK. There will be a balance through made here between the number of copies to be retained UK wide and the amount of checking involved. A lower number of copies will mean an increase in the amount of checking to ensure the identified item is in a suitable condition to act as a preservation copy. We're also having discussions on the preservation aspect with the legal deposit libraries. The group are consulting widely on our approach and this will be a key element of our planning this move forward. Members of the group are holding discussions with SCONL, the British Library and the legal deposit libraries as a separate strand of work and as you can see here longer term actions will include investigating options for digital surrogates and for the metadata analysis both of which are likely to be complex areas of work. So to come back to retention statements. So one of our immediate actions is to develop an approach to the use of retention statements in relation to this distributed UK collection. As mentioned earlier retention statements are one of the key elements and these enable libraries to note within their own institutions and nationally that they are going to retain an item in perpetuity and that this will then become part of a distributed collection. Retention statements can be added to catalogue records by the individual institution to indicate they're committed to hold a particular item for a set period. So this can be indefinitely or it can be until a review date. Through the work with JISC and the Library Hub there are already guidelines for the use of retention statements and the links provided here. We're hoping to make this link more prominent and accessible than it currently is so it can be more easily discoverable. These guidelines will be reviewed to ensure it's clear how this approach fits with the vision for a UK distributed collection and we're also investigating options to add these statements in bulk if that would be useful for individual libraries. So as our investigations proceed we're mindful of the the challenges and opportunities going forward. Coordination amongst a large group of libraries will always be a challenge and this is where the work of the our UK collection strategies network will be very useful. We've certainly found it much easier to collaborate in an era of Zoom and Teams. Another challenge we're still facing at this early stage is how we name this work and that was something that was discussed at this morning's CSN meeting and something we're still working on. We're also hoping that the MBK data will give us an insight into how unique or rare our collections are on a macro scale as well as at individual library level. We hope to analyse how these copies are distributed across the contributing libraries. For example that whether it's just a small group of libraries or whether the distribution is across a large number of libraries. So the opportunities here are in particularly in the context of the conversations today include the potential to free up library space for other uses as we make increasingly informed decisions on collection management. A distributed UK collection will provide an improved understanding of our collections. For example we're hoping this work will enable us to identify last copies held within the UK and by using just MBK we also aim to make the best use of our existing infrastructure to enable a more light touch approach. There is the potential for use case studies to be developed and to help demonstrate the practical opportunities of this work. And finally we hope to see an increased adoption of retention statements to underpin the work in this area and going forward. So if you're interested in knowing more about the work please contact the collection Strategies Network through Jane or myself and our contact details are provided here or through any of the other members and we look forward to any questions and comments as part of the panel discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much Jane and Sandra. As a member of the RLEK board can I just say on behalf of us all how delighted we are to see this starting to take shape after many lengthy discussions over many years as you highlighted at the top of your presentation. So we have real enthusiasm for this concept of the distributed collection and seeing that take shape. So can I just bring everybody from the panel back in? Brilliant. So all four of you there. We've got some questions come through from the Q&A. We've got plenty of time so we've got a good 20 minutes to ask some of these questions and anything else anybody would like to ask. So thank you very much for your very clear and very thought-provoking presentations. I'm going to start and I'll just go first come as we'll go first. So Phil from it looks like from Lancaster. So a question from Phil. A question for Jeremy. Phil is really struck by the three themes that you identified and in particular the role of the library in relation to belonging. You talked about the university community. For us at Lancaster it's very much a community of communities. What role do you see for the library as an enabler in bringing communities together and reflecting their diversity? Okay thanks for the question. It's great I had a chance to have a quick think about this during the previous talk. So I think there's a couple of things I would pick up on that point. I think when we've been thinking about that whole concept of open and connected to that sense of belonging thinking is very much it's beyond the university. So I think that's one point I would say is that we see there is potential for that becoming a space which is about where people from university and outside the university can come in together. And I think one thing I would highlight there is I'm sure like some of you we have a university community strategy. So coming back to my theme of strategy that is something which is very much the university is thinking much more about with exploring parts of it and obviously we feel as a cultural organization we have a lot to contribute to that because often we're a touch point. I'm thinking again about some of the practical things that we can do within our spaces to support that. I mean one of the most you know kind of some of the most striking experiences I've had is when with our heritage materials we bring in communities from outside and get them to tell us about what we have and the kind of conversations that start up from that both you know obviously around about the collections and in between ourselves and the communities and how that then both develops obviously knowledge of the collections but also starts up conversations between the institution and the communities and again I can see if which it would be my vision that we could open up more of our library you could imagine a vibrant space where more of those kind of things would happen in a kind of open and visible way and you can actually begin to see how communities come together in events it would be picked up students passing through for other things could see these kind of activities. So I hope that kind of gives you some ideas as to how I could at least something I could see how the library as space could work to support that kind of activity. Fantastic thank you Jeremy. I've got the next question is from Jenny, Jenny Campbell from Newcastle and she says hi Michael a really interesting presentation definite synergies with what we're seeing here at Newcastle although we're obviously working at a smaller scale my question is about your super users do you have any demographics on this group thank you. Yeah so we do I mean it is very heavily concentrated in international students and taught postgraduate students and often those are the same thing but not always and I think that's particularly interesting because they that group of users has moved from being our our least engaged in terms of use of the library spaces to our most engaged so the growth has been really really radical there and that goes beyond the super users as well I mean that that core is driving a lot of the traffic but actually taught postgraduates and international students in general we've seen a real flipping in terms of of how much space how much use they make of space I should confess however that the data that we're basing this on is slightly flimsy in as much as we only have turnstile entry data we don't yet have turnstile exit data in fact we've been installing exit turnstiles this week so we've we've kind of got half a picture but we don't really yet understand what we're hoping to get from from those new turnstiles but also by implementing other sorts of technologies like we're sort of currently experimenting with the institution is currently experimenting with tools that can sort of track how often you connect to the wi-fi so sort of Cisco things that you know you get brilliant maps of people moving around inside the buildings and so we're hoping to understand from that kind of data much more about dwell times where and how those groups move around within our buildings so that we can get a much fuller picture of what is it those students are using you know is it actually that they're just kind of coming in repeatedly to borrow books or to return books or to sit at a desk or to meet their friends or to do some of those other sorts of activities that we're we're hoping to encourage really interesting thanks Michael we've got a question from Emma Evans Emma I hope I've spelled out your name correctly if not very very sorry so the question is I'm aware of the general idea of UX but what is prototyping specifically this is a question for Michael again that's me again isn't it yeah um so so so the the idea behind prototyping is that we don't just stop with the research and we can go out and we can track users and we can talk to them and we can have conversations we can get a sense of what they want to do but in the past what we'll have done with that data is go away form a committee um write a paper develop a plan and a year later we might have something that we can roll out the the point of prototyping is that actually we do something immediately we try it you know and it's not the perfect the final solution it's not the end point it's something that lets us kind of see you know are we on the right track is it working effectively so it is you know in the example of the wellbeing space it is just grabbing some chairs and shoving them in a corner and seeing if people sit on them I had an image which I was going to use and I decided not to in the end just because it's too shaming but we've got this beautiful foyer to the labor library which was built in 2015 with a with a huge video while it's a big investment of of money right at the start of the the bill and what happened in practice was that people just keep leaning on the wall and kept breaking it and we kept replacing the panels and replacing them and then it and then we sort of ran out of content we you know to actually produce a video to make use of it was really expensive and people didn't look at it after the first time they'd been into the building so this huge kind of back screen is is a white elephant and one of the things that we did during that the kind of UX program was we just grabbed some some tables on little rollers and shoved them into that corner now they look ugly they look chaotic they look like they shouldn't really be there they certainly don't fit with the architect's vision for the labor library when it was first kind of invented in 2015 but people use them they actually sit in those chairs and that tells us okay maybe not these tables and maybe not these chairs but there is a need for something here that is not you know we can get rid of the video well we can get some kind of furniture some sort of layout and so the prototyping is really just that first iteration and then we just iterate and iterate thanks Michael really fascinating stuff I'm sure that's something that all of us can achieve in real life um okay our next question is from Christopher Sipkin from Royal Holloway University of London are any of our speakers seeing a strategic ambition to reduce the footprint occupied by academic staff not just professional services as hybrid working becomes the norm and institutions give more serious attention to environmental sustainability and building running costs this is just starting to be discussed at a senior level in my institution potential opportunities here for bringing academics back into the library especially as interdisciplinary challenge-led research becomes widespread so would anybody like to comment on that question I can jump in again I mean I think that is true we are starting to see that conversation begin at Leeds you know we've got a large a large campus is it necessary that's a lot of you know I talked about carbon that's here earlier and there's a lot of heating that has to go on to a lot of energy used to heat up huge buildings when there may only be a handful of people in there so the institution is certainly thinking about well how can we concentrate our academics in smaller spaces but it's an interesting question because I don't think the idea of the library is really kind of factored into that you know is the library actually a potential home for for the academics or encouraging them to when they're on campus to just use the spaces that we've already got in the library that is that is an interesting idea and that that sort of suggestion that it then reminds our academics that we exist we don't we don't see them very often and again thinking about our turnstile stats that the academics were notable by their absence and so I think it's a really a really interesting idea and perhaps we should be getting involved in that conversation now. Yeah chucking a couple of comments we're a bit I'm a bit like Michael in that I'm not so close to the conversation at the University of Edinburgh although I know they are taking place one of the joys of our institution is it's very very federated so although the university may make some statements about that a lot of that conversation will happen down at school level and will obtain quite a lot of power to do that but picking up on what Michael said I think it's a really interesting point to raise and it takes me back to conversations I had with one library refurbishment I was involved with and speaking to academics and at that time did how much it happened of course they were saying we were excited because they saw the libraries in escape place which get them away from some of the day-to-day administrative and other but genuinely felt there was some sense of that it could become or could re-become if that's a word a space where they could do some serious work so I could see that if things change that could be a theme possibly which might come back into play which people might want to explore. I'll come in from the Queen Mary point of view as well we've already done a large piece about professional services before COVID it was actually in train during COVID so the non-student facing professional services before moved into shared space with a metric of four desks per 10 staff and that is starting to be rolled out experimentally I think with the first academic school in September so having taken the prototyping of the professional services space which is a very nice co-working environment very nicely laid out all brand new fitments and IT and actually those of us not down there are quite jealous of it so the school of business and management are going to experiment with a similar type of that Queen Mary it's called new ways of working so it is hybrid it's recognising the hybridity and also managing down that kind of one-to-one desk office large runs of unused books on a shelf type academic space and looking at sharing spaces instead it'd be very very interesting to see how that actually works out because as we know academic colleagues are very proprietary over their individual spaces for various different reasons so we'll see how that goes and it's definitely one to watch I think but also very interesting about thinking about whether library spaces could be that alternative space for academic colleagues we have a research reading room which is specifically for research it's not specifically PhD students it's open and offered to academic staff some of whom do use it as a place to be for concentrated space particularly for because in some of our schools their offices are quite small and tended to be knocked on by the student every five minutes so hiding themselves away into a library suits those very few people that do it it is not highly used by academics as Michael's seen from his turnstile numbers were similar but those sort of junior colleagues maybe that once at the quiet space they tend to use library research reading room as well so it is a very interesting question that Christopher thank you so Phil again at Lancaster has a general question if you build it will they come what sort of staff resourcing do you anticipate your need to support the effective use of new spaces at Lancaster we have new events research and digital studios slash mega spaces and a policy range of activities over the past year and we've recognised a considerable staff resource they demand to be effective so that's around space staff conjunction so in terms of library resourcing for new types of spaces if anybody would like to comment around the panel so they come back in on the maker space not with any solutions I'm afraid but just I suppose to confirm what Phil has said because I'm speaking to my team just a couple of days ago and as with it you as with all things you reach a we've reached a certain point and we're doing some good stuff but if we want to move on to the next point then of course you do run up absolutely into those questions about resourcing particularly staff numbers I mean we've been quite clever in that we use it we predominantly use student support because peer-to-peer student level in this kind of space works very effectively so that also of course as a side effect to keeping the cost perhaps a bit lower but there's no getting away from it if we truly want to expand it up to become something which is at a much bigger university level then we do have some challenges around that so I suppose I'm not can't think of any easy answer to that but I suppose what we just reminded us you have to be real about these things when you're planning it's very easy to get excited about some of these developments but sadly you eventually have to return to thinking about the the true implications in terms of resource if you want to deliver something so yeah thank you if I jump in as well I think I suppose my reflection on this and this isn't something we particularly followed yet we're still at the kind of an early stage in thinking about things like maker spaces but I made the point in my presentation that the institution has recognised that the library is the place to deliver this but actually these things exist already outside outside the library so I guess I guess it's about kind of going back to the institution and saying okay we we can be the location and we can we can kind of cede some space to this and we can provide infrastructure and support around it but actually as an institution we need to fund this this shouldn't be a project that the library is doing on its own you know this has to be joined up and I guess that goes again to your point Jeremy about being tied in with the university strategy easy to say of course the university don't always give us what we ask for thank you both and we're getting quite a few questions so apologies we don't get to the end of them but we've got a couple of really interesting ones and Marie Carnegie from Durham is says oh I've lost that one oh there we are pop back and up again I'm really interested in the changing expectations and needs of different students do you feel you get very different feedback from new students and experienced students so what are the reflections about how new students coming through maybe the ones post COVID are using space differently to students that are coming back and have previously had experience of using libraries it's a yeah it's a really good question and I'm not sure I've got I'm not sure I've got a very coherent answer I think one of the things that we have seen post COVID is that it's taken a little bit of time to rebuild a sort of sense of a sort of sense of community between the students and our staff you know the kind of staff I think are still moving out of a sort of policing kind of mode and the way in which staff and students engage with each other is perhaps different but I'm not sure that that's different between different cohorts of students I think that's that's more about things on the staff side yeah no I'm not sure I have an answer so just a comment so Maria hello it's a while since we spoke and so thank you for your question I think one thing again like Michael we don't have the data yet but I think it's a really obviously someone to monitor but I think one thing we are aware of the courses but the next cohort of students have come through school during COVID and I've certainly picked up there have been comments that in terms of how they've had to learn their experience of working with libraries of course has changed compared to say the students who are pre-COVID and I say I don't have much detail on this but I certainly hear that we're thinking about what difference is that going to make what difference is we going to see do we have to teach them things which perhaps they hadn't which were more natural perhaps in a world which didn't have the restrictions on COVID there's certainly been some discussion about that on obviously I think you know I think there's that particular group of students have really suffered in so many ways so there are many things that universities will have to look at in terms of how to support them and help them but that is one thing which I think we are kind of aware of which might come through as a difference that they've had that different final two years of schooling learning experience and that might then translate into seeing some differences in terms of how when they come in what they what they're kind of expected expectations of what they believe the library should be and what it's doing. Fantastic thank you both and I think we can shoe on in one more question so apologies if your question doesn't get asked but we've got one from higher up a tale how might we consider the time element along with space what are the opinions of the panelists on how space could be offered for being used as project space for longer periods of time how could we think about generosity of time and space as efficiently drives other areas of campus yes and we get questions about that can can we book a space every day for three months for a project so is that something that any of the panel have considered. Well actually that reminded me when we were talking a moment ago about Christopher's question about academics coming into our space actually it reminded me that we do in fact have some academics who've moved into the library because we've got some of our I talked about some of our legacy spaces and areas in the libraries that are not really quite up to scratch for our students and we've ceded a couple of offices in the corner of one of our least refurbished buildings to an academic funded project for I think three years and that's come with money so actually we're kind of riding on the back of that because there's a bit of redevelopment of that space that follows on from it so I think there is there is you know there's there's opportunity there for us and one of the reasons why we were interested in engaging with that project was because it showed it got the academics into our buildings that actually got them to to kind of inhabit the space and it reminded again and reminded our staff that they're part of a wider university and the students too you know that that's of proximity of this project work with the study space with the library kind of back room work so I think it's definitely a fruitful area if you've got the space that you can give up and I think that's the challenge is that you know it's like road building every good study space is immediately used up and I don't think we've hit the ceiling yet in terms of meeting student demand so it's a challenge to be able to justify the time when there are always students who just want to come in and use it more quickly you know just come in on that just Michael I was thinking about what you said earlier about your entrepreneurial spaces then actually tying that a bit I guess to combine kind of thinking about the library being a representation of what the university is saying it's about so I don't know if this is what you're thinking of but you could kind of imagine a situation where you have spaces which in effect students have to put proposals forward to be able to use which would be longer term but then by having them in there there's a visibility of the university's commitment to entrepreneurial activity which is something very seen as being positive both by yourselves and the institute I don't know if that's the way you were thinking but you could see then how that allowing that ability for a longer term use of space would provide a return in all kinds of different ways in terms of what you're trying to achieve