 Okay. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Library Spaces Workshop series conducted by colleagues from the University of Florida. I'm Sue Boffman from the Association of Research Libraries and very pleased to welcome everyone this morning. Today's workshop is the first of three sessions regarding the methods used by the University of Florida team in their Library Spaces Research Project. These sessions are brought to you under the auspices of the Research Library Impact Framework Initiative. I'm pleased to note that funds from our IMLS grant are supporting the workshop series. The three sessions will be recorded and we'll share the recordings at the conclusion of this series. I want to add a special thanks to Laura Spears and Val Minson and all of the team, of course, for not only being a part of the RLIF initiative but also for organizing these sessions for us. But thank you again for joining us. I'm looking forward to today's session and the next two over the next several weeks. And with that, Val, I'm going to turn the podium over to you. Thank you, Sue. Laura is going to control our slides today. Thank you, Laura. And so Adrian, Meg, Laura and I are really excited to share our efforts supporting student creativity and student success through library space design. Go to slide two, please. Before we just jump in, I do want to share this morning's agenda so you know what you're getting into. And so let's just start real quick with some introductions because we are a large presenting team today. I'm Val Minson, Assistant Dean of Assessment and Student Engagement for the UF Smathers Libraries. And I'm also Chair of Marston Science Library, which is the library, one of the campus libraries that we did the majority, all of our study in. And Laura, if you want to jump in next. I'm Laura Spares. I'm the Director of Assessment and User Experience for the Smathers Libraries. And I've been working on this project, seems like a long time. So we're really glad to be here today. Meg? Sure. I'm Meg Portillo, coming from the architecture building on the University of Florida campus in the College of Design, Construction and Planning, where I'm a professor and Associate Dean of Research. This team, we're so happy to share some of our findings with you and look forward to our time together. Adrian Del Monte just graduated with his PhD from the College of Design, Construction and Planning just months ago and is a faculty member in the Philippines. Adrian, why don't you introduce yourself? Hi, good morning, everyone. I'm Adrian Del Monte. As Dr. Portillo mentioned, I was actually a graduate student like four semesters, my last four semesters as a graduate student, I was actually spending research for this project. So thank you, ARL and Marston Library together with our Interior Design Department for giving me this opportunity to basically work on this project. So yeah, I was a graduate student who basically worked some of these, some parts of this research. And he says some parts, but really he had his hand in every aspect of this and his expertise really shows in how we developed our methodology and everything. Okay, so for today, we're going to talk about the study background. You already are aware that this was an ARL, IMLS funded project. We're going to talk about the ways that libraries can support creativity and that's going to be MAG leading that conversation. And then we'll go into our methodology. Adrian will talk about the spatial analysis and the focus groups. Laura will talk about our survey and run a little interactive piece using Mentimeter. And then we'll close out with some overall findings and ways that we can continue the conversation around supporting student success and student creativity. Next slide. So where did it all begin? So we, there was a call, an ARL call for research proposals in 2019 and our team was selected to explore very specifically how library spaces facilitate innovative research, creative thinking and problem solving. And we weren't the only team who was awarded this to explore that particular area. We also had UC Davis, Iowa, Syracuse, Johns Hopkins and Temple, many of which have representatives here today. Next slide. So the Marston team, so this team, the research team included, it was really two separate but melded units. The Marston team or the library team included four of us from the libraries and we had expertise in assessment and bakery services. And then we also had four from the College of Design, Construction and Planning. So our colleagues in that unit understood interiors and space design and they have a really fabulous foundation and user-centered planning. So we came together to sort of answer this question of how libraries can support students' creativity. But let's take a quick look at our library building at our library space. Our building opened in 1987 and we have five floors of five very different biomes. So we have a top floor that's silent, sneezes will get you ousted really fast. We have a fourth floor that's quiet and it has some collections. And then our first, second and third floors had been renovated. Our fourth and fifth floors had not. So there are still 1987 themed. And then the first, second and third floors, we have a more collaborative spaces. The third floor has group study. It's what I would call a floor where students go to study alone in public. The second floor is our entry level. It's our major service points. And then the first floor is where the majority of our students study. So 60% of students go down to the first floor to study. It's important to mention that our first through third floors being renovated prior to the renovation, we had about 700,000 visitors a year. After the renovation, those numbers increased every year. And we are now at about right before COVID at 2 million visitors per year. So we've been doing renovations that have been very successful, but have still left us unsure whether we are meeting the creativity, problem solving, innovation needs of our students. So this picture here is an image of one of our renovated floors. And it sort of shows you how we've approached this on the fly without any study behind us. This is our entry level floor. And if you go to the next image, this is our 1987 decor of one of our upper floors. So you can see that we have these old chairs are atrociously awful. But we do have students who have asked to have these gifted to them when they graduate because they've spent so much time in Marston. So just absolutely hilarious. The next slide, please. So we get to our research question. How do library spaces facilitate creative thinking, innovative research, and problem solving? And that's the question that we wanted to answer. And whenever the libraries first applied for this, we realized we were out of our depth. And so we wanted to pull in people who really understood interiors. And I think we've had a richer project for it. And let's go to the next slide. And so what we did as a team, our two separate teams, we developed sort of a four-part project or methodology. We had a spatial analysis. We had an online survey that had initially started as an intercept survey. We had focus groups. And we had we sort of had the design develop, which has now been submitted to the deans and submitted for it's at the approval at the UF level. Next slide. But before we get into the methodology, which is next, I want to quickly say that we had submitted our proposal and our design pre-COVID, right? And then COVID hit. And as everybody here has experienced, it's a very different environment. And if you're going to do a space study in a pandemic, it's going to look very different. So at this time that that we rolled out the study, a lot to a county was ranking pretty high in the state for COVID cases. You can see on the left hand side that our our once we reopened our numbers. I mean, we were 100% most days and we dropped to 11% pretty quickly. And we're right now, we're still only at about 40% on average. And so our capacity reduced greatly. We had mask and social distancing requirements. We had to move our survey from an intercept survey to a an online survey. And of course, our focus groups shifted to in person from in person to virtual. So there were a lot of changes that were made that were not in the initial development of the methodology, but which we had to shift gears for. Okay. Meg, I think you're next. Thank you, Val. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time trying to give you a little recap of what our thinking was on how to operationalize some of our key terms and what that would mean for the study, the methodology and ultimately the evidence based design proposals that we were going to be developing. I'm ultimately with a goal of a space for students designed, you know, by students in the process. So when you look at the research, the field of creativity, there are many, many definitions. Some could argue there is many definitions of creativity as there are scholars in the field studying it. But there is a clear underlying convergence, whether you're looking at notables in the field like Robert Sternberg to Gary Davis to Teresa Amable that creativity has to involve novelty. So something that is unique, different, and it also needs to have a value or worth. So it's not just being different for the sake of being different, but there has to be sort of an underlying value to it. And the research on creativity that really, although scholars have been writing about creativity since really the beginning of time, you all know the origins of the word Eureka, right, which purportedly our comedies shouted after solving a particularly difficult math problem while in the bathtub and that feeling of discovery. And in ancient times, creativity was really thought to be divinely inspired, that creativity was not a trait to be cultivated or honed. It was from the gods. It was mysterious. It was a little frightening. And oftentimes, those who were highly, what we would consider now as highly creative were viewed to be disruptors and oftentimes suffer the consequences. And others who there's a whole time and place component to creativity, right? So Van Gogh, who clearly was highly creative and really pushed the medium of expression in terms of his painting to a whole other level, only sold one painting in his life and it was to his brother Theo. Now granted, Theo was an art, he was an art collector and was in the field, but there was not a convergence between time and place. So if we look at creativity, we're saying it has to have novelty, it has to have value. And there is a framework that looks at creativity from four different vantage points. There's the creative person, those traits and abilities and tendencies that are inherent to the individual and these can, there's similarity shared on approaching problems and openness to experience perhaps whether you are in physics or poetry in your creative mode. There's a process that you go through and others have tried to define steps and stages in that process. And then there's often a product and that product again can take many, many modalities and there's an environment that can happen at different levels for all of those components to converge between. When we're thinking about the library project, we, originally as you know and are experiencing and all have your stories about how COVID has impacted us and every realm of our life personally and in the workplace and on campus, creativity really is at the top of the pyramid. Those of you, many of you are probably familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs that looks at self-actualization and Alora is going to be talking about that a little bit more later. But in terms of basic human needs at the very bottom of that hierarchy, it's physiological needs. So you have to think about air quality. In a building, there has to be shelter from the elements. There needs to be heat. You need to have cooling. And so that's an essential need for functioning and if that's not working, you're not going to get up to the pinnacle, which would be creativity. That purposeful self-actualization. So we have special talent creativity, but we also have a way of approaching life that is creative and we view you. We're in the camp that views creativity as a normally distributed trait and that all of us have creativity to differing degrees. All students, again likewise, and you can develop and hone this characteristic. Creativity can be more global or generalized or it can be domain specific. But then the next phase of Maslow's hierarchy really does look at safety and security. So that's physical space and with COVID, all of a sudden it's social distancing. It's wearing masks. And then it's also psychological security. So some people, we all have their differences that need to be respected in terms of what's your comfort level for even going back in the library. We went from 11% to 40%. So again, that all has to be recognized. And yet our study is looking for the self-actualization that happens with creativity, whether it's pushing inside on a daily exercise that a student is trying to work out and come up with a proposal for a capstone project or whether it's a doctoral student writing another chapter of his dissertation trying to analyze her findings. And how can we facilitate that? But the point being is you can't, if those basic needs are not met, you're not going to be able to reinforce creativity. So because of the pandemic, we really did have to sort of rethink all those stages. So let me, I have a few minutes left before I turn the floor over to, I believe, Laura is going to be sharing some of this. But we really started thinking of placemaking and how that could happen at different levels. And we started thinking, creativity is not just the domain of the individual, creativity happens in teams. How can we stimulate creativity in that arena as well? And again, the library is such an important pulse point on campus. And there's transformation happening in the library. It's extremely exciting. Something that was interesting in our findings was how really the students do feel so connected. They feel like the library is really theirs. And from, we had domestic, international students, undergrads, graduates, there really is a strong sense of belonging that this is their space. And so in terms of considering creativity, we developed a creativity checklist that was based on some classic research that has been done on identifying key traits of creativity. And we'll be sharing those findings. And we were able to have the students, we wanted them to essentially give us a pulse. What's the baseline of how they view the present space? And then to step back and also think about what could be that ideal space. So it was interesting to read on the actual space. Again, there was a continuum of perceptions of that space, but there were some commonalities that we could really hang onto and use as a springboard to think about what possibilities there were in this space. And essentially, Jason, Manila and I, who was a colleague in my academic department, we were involved in submitting, being invited to write about creating a creative ecology for this book by Joanne Asher Thompson and Nancy Blossom were editors of this. But it was looking at design of the future. And essentially, what we want to really achieve is to recognize that there is an inherent tension in every sphere of activity within the library. Within every environment, there's tension even as an individual between which kind of space you want to go into. Are you going to be able to today, you want to be closer to windows or you want to have a hum of activity or you really are going to need absolute silence? And to really think about that choice and control is incredibly important on every level of the ecosystem, whether you're working individually or groups. And we'll talk more about choice and control later. But it really, we have the creative person, but we also have the creative process where you're moving really from, you know, you're preparing, you're getting materials, you're going into databases, you're acquiring knowledge, you're doing exploration, you're in the preparation phase. And then you move into incubation, you have all this knowledge and you're wanting to again develop a thesis statement. And how can you bring all this information together? And then you go into illumination where you get ideas and then verification is where you put those ideas out there for others to react to in the field. So individuals have their own tendencies and preferences, but then you also have a process that people can be going through in creativity. So now, Laura is going to take the floor and talk to you about how we approach spatial analysis. Actually, Adrienne's going to do this section. So go ahead, Adrienne. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Dr. Portillo. At the very beginning of this project, we were actually thinking whatever the ways that we can actually capture what was the requirement for us to be able to have a good foundation when it comes to design. And then it still happened that it was in 2019 that some of our graduate students and colleagues in the interior design department actually did an initial spatial analysis, particularly for the basement. That was basically one of the things that we look into when it comes to how we can further basically our design for the Marston Library. So what we did is basically we applied spatial analysis throughout all floors. It's basically examining the relationship of how spatial features of Marston Library can facilitate users' activities. Laura, next slide, please. So basically, these involves a routine examination which seeks to explain the patterns of how students utilize the spaces. So it's more like a limited behavioral mapping in which we trace like how students basically, how usually the students work within the confined of their tables or in a desk. So we come up with 16 observations per floor. Basically, I was there at the corner of the room observing how these students are actually doing. But before that, the librarians actually came up with a schedule. Like, what are the peak hours of the library on a weekdays and weekend? So we identify Wednesdays and Saturdays to be the ideal schedule for us to observe how students are actually working or studying within Marston Library. So we set up eight observation schedules and it yielded us basically 16 observations. The maximum number of hours that I spent observing this per floor is basically about 20 minutes and it was scheduled from last week of February until like a second week of February. No, no, last week of January to the second week of February. So I spent basically 15 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes upper floor doing visual sweep on the activities of each space users. Basically, in layman's term, basically I was like people watching. I was like taking down notes. What are the things that they're doing? Like, if they're like reading alone or if they're like chatting with their group mates, and then what else? So basically, I look for a spot where I can observe most people in a discrete manner. Since I was a student, I was like trying to be a student of that time. So basically, I look for a, like what they call this one, a corner where I can see most of the students and then from time to time I move from one floor to the other, basically making some observation. One thing probably that I wanted to share about like doing spatial analysis is that if you can print the updated floor plan of the library, if say for example, you wanted to do like spatial analysis, it would be best to include the forniterally out basically the existing floor plan. So you can easily mark and do annotations, whatever like you're trying to observe. So if you have a digital version or an app-based mapping, during the very first stage of our spatial analysis, we actually wanted to do, we actually wanted to tap one of our students, graduate student who had developed an app for spatial analysis. Unfortunately, through, because of licensing problems, we're not able to get those apps. And then if I know there are some free software that you can actually do like app-based mapping that would also be best, especially if you're doing like multiple observations. And then if you have a number of colleagues who basically will do annotations for this mapping. So for our case, we basically used a manual tabulation and mapping. So I use color coding, Laura, next slide please. So basically these how it looks like for the manual tabulation. I use color coding and then we identify like based on prior study that was conducted by my colleagues, we identify like having individual group and then in a group but working individually. So these are the three things that we identify that most students are actually working within within Marston Library. Aside from that, we also identify the public and private spaces and communal spaces, public and communal spaces and private and enclosed spaces within Marston Library. So Laura and the rest of librarians did actually incredible job. They managed to tabulate and compute the data from this floor plan with the one you're seeing in the PowerPoint slide. They basically come up with tabulated data from this floor plan into a spreadsheet, basically dividing the actual usage of the floor space by according to its type, either individual or group. And then basically this gave us an idea of the spaces within Marston Library. It confirms also to prior study that some, most of the spaces within Marston Library are underutilized. It was also more students are actually using individual seating for individual work. So these are the preference among students. So yeah, so which later on we can explain some of these information that we gather through focus group discussion since we were able to get some information from the students. Laura. Thank you. Okay, so we started out with an intercept survey and it of course turned out not to be an intercept because an intercept would mean that we were standing in the libraries coming up to students as they're in the process of actually using the libraries. And that didn't work out that way, obviously because of COVID. So we waited and then once we were back in the building, we were out from March through August. And then once the libraries reopened, it was constrained. You know, the facilities were limited capacity due to social distancing. So we developed an online survey that I'm going to send to you in a minute. And you can see how we set up the survey and how we built in aspects of the libraries to make sure that people could see what they were, you know, potentially voting on. So to kind of recap what Meg was talking about. And, you know, I followed this through and thought and thought a lot about, you know, the choice and control and the concept of creativity. And in their work, Meg and Jason Manili had cited Graham Wallace. I went back and looked at Graham Wallace's work on the art of thought and the process of creativity and broke it down because Laura will operationalize anything she sees. So broke it down and looked at the iterations of the process where Graham Wallace had developed four stages, but Eugene Sadler Smith took it to another level and, you know, identified these stages. So on the left, you have the five stages preparation is that stage where, you know, if you've, you know, been inside of any research project, you're doing a lot of literature review and looking at the landscape you're preparing. It's a time where you're working methodically in your own domain. And really, it's an intense process of solitude. And then you get into incubation. And this is a part of the process that can be really informal. It's unconscious exploration. Sandra Erdely calls this information encountering, where you're not necessarily focusing on one particular aspect of a problem, but you're really kind of looking around and seeing a lot of different things. You're distracted, you're conversational, and you're active. And then you have intimation, which is where the train of thought begins. And there's an increase of association between thoughts. And you start to be a little bit expressive, ideating, writing down notes, outlining, and kind of articulating your thoughts. And then you have illumination, that Eureka moment, where, you know, the, there's a flash and an idea. And it's where you start to really kind of culminate the train of association. And you start to articulate through your creativity and make your ideas permanent. And then verification is this day, where we present our research and talk about it and ask you to reflect on it and ask us questions, because this is how research gets better. And so in looking at the space typology next to it in that center group, you have the spaces that Adrienne looked at in the spatial analysis, looking at private individual group and public and the combinations of these and how students use spaces. One of our researchers Sheila Bosch had done work previously and published a paper called Together Alone. And basically, you know, or alone together, I can't remember the exact name, but basically it's the fact that there's a spectrum of working that's individual and group and private and individual. And it coincides with this process where a person isn't always just working by themselves. They're in this path, and they need all different kinds of environments and inspiration and motivation. And so that's where the choice and control comes in, because, you know, they want their space to be what they need, depending on where they're at in this process. And so for the creative ecology on the right side, for the libraries, this is where the libraries make this tangible access to resources for preparation, authoritative resources, individual and private space and facilitated group input. When you get down to illumination, their need for creative technologies, private, quiet areas, group and individual study, private study areas, it's not just one thing that contributes to this creative process. So we developed the survey and we ended up with 12 questions and our adjective checklist, which you'll see in a few minutes. And because we had to do this online, we ended up sending it out to 52,000 plus students. And then we ended up with 608 total responses. And I'm going to give you this in the chat. So I'm going to have to, I just put the survey in the chat so that you could open it up and take a look at it. It's a PDF. And you'll see how we set up the survey. And you can see the adjective checklist. And so we sent that out online. And that was in November 9th through November 23rd. And we sent out three emails to the first week and won the second week. And we ended up with 608 total responses, but only 337 had completed the survey and also visited Marston Science Library. So we made that restriction because we felt like they hadn't been in the space, which a lot of people in fall of 2020 may have responded and had never been into the library that received the email. And so first we started looking at who's, you know, what floors were they using, we distinguished between undergraduate and graduate because one of the purposes of doing the study was to understand whether or not we should have a dedicated graduate floor. The fifth floor is considered a silent floor and we assumed, you know, presumed that graduate students were using this space as they do in one of the other libraries on campus. And so what we found, first of all, is that that wasn't necessarily the case is that graduate students actually were using other floors quite a bit. And so then we also asked them what types of tasks they were using. And again, recognizing the limitations, you can see that students are using all different kinds of, they're doing all different kinds of things, but it does break down between classes undergraduate and graduate. And so what we did also find is that there was a strong limitation for group work during COVID. And so that was definitely limited about 30% of the time that they came into the library, it was limited. So we basically took the survey results, we did a statistical analysis, we did some qualitative coding. And then that led us to the focus group prompts. Okay, so we have our findings by floor. And we're going to go into a lot of the findings during our third workshop. But we want to make sure that you have a chance to understand the focus groups, but we did get our findings. And one of the key findings that we had was that on every single floor, there was a movement in an ideal space would be less crowded. And Marston is a big library. And the basement says less crowded, but the basement is over 700 seats. So whether or not they need to have fewer seats, that's something that probably won't happen because it's a very, very busy library. But we did have that comment on every single floor that crowding was an issue. And then the fourth and fifth floor, the fourth floor had the strongest difference on the values between the current space and an ideal space. And it also had a correlation between collaborative and self-reliant. Collaborative and social, as social went up, the score for collaborative went up also. The fifth floor, definitely they desired more arousing and exciting features in the fifth floor and would also have more playful and collaborative features. So Adrian, go ahead. Thanks, Laura. So basically the final stage of our study was for us to conduct a focus group discussion. Can you please proceed to the next slide? Thank you. So basically we conducted five, in total of five focus group discussion, four for students, two of which for undergrad students and two for graduate students. Within the composition of students' focus group discussion, there's like a maximum of five students per focus group. And then similarly with the employees' focus group, we basically have like about five or six members for the focus group discussion. I believe it was me, Baal and Dr. Perteo, who basically among the moderators for both the graduate and undergraduate students. And it was only Dr. Perteo and I who basically moderate the focus group discussion for employees' session. We basically utilized online Zoom in particular for our focus group discussion because we conducted this about January this year. That was at the height of pandemic. Everyone was still an online session, so we basically have to use Zoom for the focus group discussion. And then we also utilized pool everywhere as part of the preliminary questions, basically like an icebreaker for us to get to know some of our respondents. And then basically our discussion was centered on current spaces and ideal spaces. Basically what we got from focus group discussion validated what was the result from our survey. So these are, we basically have seven prompts for for our focus group discussion. And then one thing probably they wanted to highlight is that we wanted to get the ambivalence particularly on these specific adjectives like being playful and serious space. We wanted to get the perceptions of our respondents of how they'll define a playful space versus serious space together with social space and then social space. And there is like actually a divide between graduate and undergraduate student, particularly how they viewed social space and then social space. Like say for example for graduate student they would, they basically would go to the library since most of their time they would usually spend in the laboratory and then going to the library could be their chance to do like a social, to be part of a community. And then they considered having a space within the library to be a social space. And then some notion of a social space would mean like they don't want, they don't want crowded spaces or sometimes they don't want like these specific noises that basically would trigger their idea that they're basically like in a crowded space. So they want some isolation sometimes. But most graduate student prefer actually to be seen within the library simply because their environment in their laboratories they've been confined. So sometimes the idea that they go to the library to basically to basically socialize. So these are some of the prompts that we ask basically if they're working independently we wanted to know like how their spaces would look like. And it so happened that most of our respondents were kind of descriptive when it comes to the kind of furniture, the kind of environment that they wanted to describe when it comes to these type of questions. So it basically gives us, Laura can you please move forward to the next slide. So basically it gives us this series of themes pertaining to how we analyze the focus group result. So on your right basically the lower right tabulation these are the things that we derive from the focus group discussion. We basically get statics, ambience, amenities, architectural. We're talking here about some features within the building that basically would trigger their answers on specific architectural features. There's also building features, there's color, comfort. So these are some of the things that basically that we were able to collect pertaining to themes from the answers based on the prompts that was that we gave during the focus group session. Aside from that most undergraduate students basically focus predominantly on the importance of group studies and furnishings. So they were very much descriptive when it comes to the kind of furniture that we wanted. Like they wanted basically like a big desk having like this specific light or sometimes like a background noise for them to have like a comfortable library setting. And then graduate students focused, discussed the importance of group and individual study. I think I've mentioned this a while ago that they basically go to the library to socialize and then they want to be part of a community because they feel isolated within their laboratories. So going to the library that's their chance to basically mingle. I think there is a notion that graduate student wanted like specific floor. I think this was raised at the very beginning of our project that they wanted to have like specific floor for graduate student. But it so happened that most of our respondents would say that they actually wanted to be part of the community. They don't want to be secluded in a specific floor. If they wanted to be in like a graduate study floor they would go to the other library that basically has like specific graduate student space. So I think that was like one of those information that's common across graduate student when we raise these concerns pertaining to having like an exclusive space for graduate students. Aside from that, among the things that basically highlighted during the focus group discussion is like having like a good set of furniture, like having to control the temperature and lighting. So these were some of those information that basically wanted the students to have a control pertaining to their built environment. And then next slide please. So basically in a general perspective, most undergrad students wanted to have sense of identity pertaining to the library spaces. They believed that it's a science library and then they wanted to have like sense of identity within the library. And then it was actually seconded by most employees when we had an interview that they feel that in general they wanted some identity for Marston Library since it looks like a generic library. It was actually highlighted like in one of the interviews that prior to renovation of Marston Library they basically have like this ginormous sculpture within the entry way. And it was something that people remind them of Marston Library and eventually it was taken down. And then they feel that Marston Library is almost like similar to any other libraries simply because there is no identity for the library. So aside from that, having like simple elements pertaining to attachment to nature, like having these biophilic elements within the environment, they find it appropriate to have incorporated within the built environment. Like simple design elements that basically will enhance their experience within the built environment. That's basically the general notion of what they call this, the focus group discussion. And then what else? Choice and control. So basically when we had an analysis, most students preferred to basically have like a choice and control within their space like having a chance to basically look for the kind of furniture that they wanted to sit or probably like if they can manipulate while working because they don't just want to focus on like a specific cubicle when they're studying. So I'm not sure if I cover everything, but so far these are the things that I remember when it comes to the focus group discussion. Laura or Val? Okay, we're now next to the interactive activity. All right, so we are going to ask you to go to menti.com and we're going to take the opportunity to show you the actual survey that we did and we're going to limit it to the eight adjective pairs that we found to be part of the creativity index by analyzing the differences. What we found is that eight of these, and it kind of goes along with Maslow's hierarchy, that these eight adjectives really are the ones that contribute to actually contributing to the process. So I'm going to stop. Well, let's see. Okay, and if, okay, so the first question, can you see the results? Okay, so let's see. So we're going to go back. Okay, so in a current library, go ahead and do your current library as well. And these, this is how we set it up. We set it up as a five point likert scale and the adjectives were on either side and it went from strongly, very strongly, strongly, neither, not very strongly, or actually strongly was on both ends. And so you could say how you felt the current library was. And then we asked them to go to the next part of it and answer the same rate, the same adjectives on what they thought an ideal library should be. And so, so you can see this is, you know, the current library that you operate in, our participant, this is how you feel your spaces are. And then if we go back, this is what you would want in an ideal library space. Pretty fun, huh? Okay, so then we will move this back out of the way. And what we found is for our students, these were their feelings about the current space. And so 81% of the respondents were undergrads visiting the libraries two to five hours a week over half of them. And 84% of them had been or consistent in person users. And so this was how the current space felt to them. And you can see on the right hand side, there's some strong unsocial and self-reliant responses where students felt like the library could have done, you know, would be rated on that, and then more serious than playful. And then for an ideal space, obviously for the thing, you know, the adjectives like pleasant, unpleasant, relaxing, distressing. There's this, you know, big movement over to the left side. And so we did a means comparison, which we're going to look at in workshop three. But you can see that there's movement into the ends on, you know, who wouldn't want a more friendly space than an unfriendly space. Yeah, I'd like it to be more pleasant than unpleasant. But what we also saw is that there was a strong movement into collaborative and public. And we also saw that with graduate students in reference to the fifth floor, which we found a little bit surprising that, you know, there was the desire for that to be the case on the graduate floor as well. And so that's, we're going to go through a lot more of the analysis in the third workshop. But this is where we started is to see, you know, we didn't do the means comparison, but the means weren't terribly indicative, except for where the movement was between the current and the ideal responses. So there you go. That's it. You're muted, Meg. Thanks, Laura. We're going to quickly go through these. Again, we'll be delving in, we're deeply in Jason Manili who headed up some of the design studies, what we call the design charrettes with the students in our next session. But this will give you an overview of what we were looking at from a design sense in terms of re-envisioning library. That sense of place and placemaking really resonated throughout the different instruments that was important. That Marsden, again, has strong science roots, whether it was graduates, undergraduates or employees, it seemed like there was untapped potential to create a really strong sense of the roots and the potential of this particular library on campus. Adrienne? One of our analysis from, given from the spatial analysis was basically, we identify that there are a lot of spaces within Marsden library that's being under utilized. Most of the time, the notion is that there has to have a group spaces within this floor. So for us to be able to renovate the spaces and then address the need for having a group spaces, we actually have to address the need for individual, meaning providing spaces for individual students. Since most of the users were actually individual students, but basically they wanted to take over some of the group spaces since there are limited spaces for individual students. So that's the idea here is that for us to be able to come up with design intended for individual students across all floors, and then later on we'll address the need for a much larger group of students, which basically can be also addressed throughout the whole Marsden library building. So next, the students in particular, the undergraduates had very specific thoughts as to furnishings and where they wanted to sit and having what we might call in our field up palette of postures where students wanted the opportunity to maybe stand and have some sit stand work options or to have chairs you could really fold into during that incubation phase of reflection or taking breaks. And there'd be perhaps some chairs you could perch on and having shorter group meetings. So again, really thinking about ergonomics, spaces you'd spend more time in, less time in, and again having maybe a broader swath of seating options than typically you might find in libraries. Adrian. The upper two floors of Marsden library were actually, most students would actually go there simply because aside from it's less crowded, it's less noisy, they can actually have a view of the campus. And then aside from that, there's greenery within their vision. So one thing probably that we feel that it's essential for us to have like a better connection with nature within Marsden library is to bring some of these elements like a biophilic elements like having plants, probably collars or even like sound, natural sound, sound of nature that can be incorporated within library to basically enhance their creativity or even like make them more, what they call this, they can, they either stay longer or it becomes more appealing for them to basically use the library often. So that's idea like having like different elements, natural elements incorporated within the built environment. And I think biophilia which is really references our human need to have contact with nature also is stress reduction with which which is always important. Stress and mental health issues as we all know have really increased during the past few years and having the opportunity even and possibly doing more with the atrium area adjacent to the library, allowing students to have these swing spaces to to engage with nature to de stress which has been shown empirically to enhance creativity as well as choice and control, both for individual and larger groups is important. So let's go to the next slide please. So here we just have we'll go, I'll just run through this really quickly so we have enough time you can see again some of these were low hanging fruit like replaced damaged furniture. And then other times, the students got really specific about materiality and color and proximity of one space next to another, increasing the ability to write almost Florida to ceiling and to have seating and workspace for small groups, bigger groups, allowing for again, this this flexibility. And again, it's it's being on that razor's edge between not having too much arousal in this space but to still have its stimulating that that's that's the job of the designers to try to come up with in conjunction with all these end users. Also, having sight lines to the to the restrooms that were really sometimes very tucked away on the individual floors. And again, over and over and over, like Val and her space with her plant, it's trying to increase this, this affinity to nature was it's a universal trait but it's also heightened within the times in which we live. Let's move on. So I we want to leave you time for questions and I know some of the findings we've spoke about throughout so our recommendations were very specific in the end and we presented to the library deans we presented to Marston employees. And and those recommendations went up to the library leadership board, but also to the UF committee because what it's done is we have recommendations on how to develop how to renovate our fourth and fifth floors which are our quiet and silent study floors that are really data driven. It is about a $1.6 million renovation for those two floors and we expect we are expecting to have that renovation completed hopefully by spring so January 2023 based off of these findings and the work that we've done. We're happy to take questions now, but I also want to mention our next two workshops. The first is where we talk about the importance and opportunities of partnering with a campus design studio partnering with your local mags or Adrians or Jason's. But also if you don't have a mag or Adrienne or Jason what sort of opportunities might exist for you to partner with with interior design academic units that are at other institutions. And Jason is really specifically in that first that second workshop going to talk about his work doing charrettes. So these were student led research design projects and and they came in the students came and presented to us their particular recommendations. It was so much fun hearing from those students and and all that they had to offer. Some of them I will say did get rid of our circulation desk entirely. Um no circulation desk on any of our floors but it was a lot of fun to see what the students recommended and and there was a lot of actionable content from them. And in the second workshop we talk about the creativity index and really go into that and and make it usable for a different institution who might want to implement. So now we can open this up for questions at this point. And I want to thank you, Meg, Adrienne, Laura for for your excellent sections and for in some cases efficiently navigating the shortening of some of our slides. I know this was a lot. This is such an excellent project. I love I love hearing about this so I'm so glad that I could I could come. I did have a quick question. I know this is centered on the the science library. I wonder if you would be willing to kind of like make some guesses or or or kind of apply what you've learned specific to the science library and see would there be other libraries at UF that would have similar revelations or or what do you think is there is there an aspect of your population that impacts the type of feedback that you're getting back first. And maybe Adrienne or Meg would comment on this. I think one of the things is important. It's important to remember about Marston is that we're five floors but we're a very open floor plan. So you come up onto a floor and you can see all you basically see 360 windows on our fifth floor. And I think that you know whether somebody wants privacy or you know to study public how how the current versus the ideal and how people study independently might your results might change based on that. Meg or Adrienne I don't know if you'd add to that or or Laura. Well and we did do a prior study on at our library west building of the graduate student floor and that floor is definitely you know it's restricted to graduate students they have to register to use it and you know they swipe to take the elevator up to to that floor the sixth floor and but that floor you know we've gotten a lot of feedback about it because it doesn't have a lot of these elements of you know having choice and control having any kind of windows or you know that biophilic feel to it doesn't have that at all it is very old-fashioned traditional space. And so for for us applying what we found would definitely be a value in that space. And you know one of the reasons why we worked in the theory as well was to be able to share this out you know to make it more scalable and you know which was one of the purposes of you know the RILF project so the ARL framework project easier to say so. I think Ava you have a great point and um something that was interesting about our sample is we have a wider swath of majors representing the undergrads because many undergrads taking their liberal arts and sciences classes that Marsden is central and it's easy to come in and out there's Starbucks there it's but then I think the graduates are more as Adrienne had pointed out are coming from those natural science fields and majors where they are a bit more cloistered putting long hours and on you know those NSF you know funded grant projects and so I think I think that's I think that that's another interesting aspect. I think the undergrads give again a very broad swath experience and then the grads had some special needs because I know in the focus group those were almost all from the sciences. Thank you thank you. Sarah Sarah Quinn has a question. Hi hello I'm hailing from the University of Pittsburgh and I work in the science engineering library here. We are in the very beginning stages of um our redesign of our space and I'm the project manager for this project but I have one kind of specific question. I was really interested in that kind of biofuelic design especially because my library does not have any windows to the outside and I really crave that myself. I love working outdoors in the garden and that sun that light so my question here is do you have any design ideas or any kind of idea to help increase that biofuelic design in a space that has no windows to the outside? So one of the things I would say um we actually have plants in areas where there are no windows on our side where the windows are are very marginal and we almost need in libraries like a list of plants that are you know no light friendly and we have a bunch that do fabulously well and so I can connect you to my my plant guru. We have a plant group called plant parents and so they all manage it but um we can talk more about actually doing plants. We we've also done aquariums and I think those can take a lot of work. We've partnered with our our student aqua tropics like an aqua club that's not exactly the name you know but like the student club that manages tropical fish research and um and that's been great. Pothos as as Steven said are fabulous also z plants those are two that do really well yeah um and then and then of course there's artwork. Yeah whether they're murals if you're able to do things with light um I the design renovation of one of the major buildings on the University of Wisconsin um Madison campus I was visiting uh pre-pandemic and they had native birds um they had their song you know their songs wired into the restrooms on the different floors and it was just so it was really kind of wonderful and surprising so if you think of you know not having windows is a tremendous that's a real that's a tough one but there are just think of all this sensory modalities from um smell to um you know you're hearing the acoustics um how you can try to connect with nature and again I don't know if there are any if there's any adjacent space as well. Adrian do you have any any other thoughts? I think it was covered but ideally um having plants and having this sensory or auditory particularly will basically enhance your space uh when it comes to design like um the use of greens, blues, grounds these are some the the generic uh notion of having a biophilic within within the built environment but most especially if you incorporate plants yeah. Thank you so much you know I mean we do have windows they just um face out to the hallway so we're kind of the islands in the middle of our floors sir but thank you so much. Thank you Sarah. Hey this is Greg Davis of Iowa State I wanted to congratulate the Florida team on a great project I'm already thinking about ways that I might be able to do some of the things you've done in my library and uh and I'm looking forward to the the next two presentations you got on the drawing board too so and I had a question about uh here at Iowa State last fall we did a survey to work with our campus student accessibility services group and we surveyed students on our campus that uh they served students that had disabilities and I was really surprised in our results we got a lot of feedback from students that had identified as neurodiverse and it sort of changed the way we've looked at our library spaces a little bit we're now working on our project to identify sensory-friendly spaces in our library of different types and so I'm wondering in your focus group work did did you come across students that identified with disabilities maybe neurodiverse students and did any of that information make it into your your results Adrienne did you want to answer that or do you want me to it doesn't go ahead I'll just follow up okay you know we didn't ask any questions about neurodiversity but I think that it would be very worth I think we could do the dedicated focus group sort of um facilitated by our our DRC our disability resource center um that really I think would answer some questions for us what I did what we did find was that that was surprising to me because our first floor when we renovated it we did all these flashy colors you know like wave finding colors you're going to be under purple or and what we found from our students was that like no no we want muted colors you know they don't want to be they don't want to be grabbed they they want to get up from their seat and find something stimulating they don't want to sit in a stimulating environment and I I think that really connects to um neurodiversity needs you know in some cases Adrienne would you have any um our focus group discussion we actually we actually tried to look for like specific um students who might be from uh who might be included from this demographic but we didn't find any respondents who signed up for our focus group discussion so unfortunately we were not able to cover them for this research yeah I think that's you know we actually tried to do some focus groups with our students identified as neurodiverse we just a couple weeks ago we sent out an invitation and we got like zero responses so that student group as a group maybe just are not into doing focus group activities we um Greg I I had the same experience um with another study that we're doing on our web design and trying to recruit from our disability resource center um we we didn't get anyone um to participate and yet it's definitely as more and more is available online incredibly important so um yeah we're going to have to go back to the drawing board on that so if you come up with something please do share and within the you have um Greg you have such a strong college of design at ISU um they're national leaders but they're there would very typically be I know on the interiors faculty as well as in the architecture and even landscape architecture faculty for example in interiors we have um several faculty Dr. Namkew Park has done a lot of work on um looking at you know more high functioning ospergers um individuals to those that um may have um more challenges navigating the environment um with autism and um she's in she does national research and is you know she just wasn't um she was on leave and was not you know part of our team but I think that that certainly would be um so important to be able to tap into and maybe getting local focus groups is tough but there um our national organization had a competition on designing support centers for um readiness to work for folks that that did young people who had ospergers who were transitioning from um school into more independent living and they did a whole national design project that had experts from around the country looking at those things so it is being done and I really commend you for doing that and know um several faculty um Daisy and Kim and um Jay Wah Lee um at ISU and they just you have a terrific resource probably a stone's throw away from your office. Yeah you're right Meg we do have a great resource and we've actually got a little bit of a project going with one of the constructors right now into design college and I think I'm going to invite them to your next workshop because I think they might be interested in hearing how your design studio is working so oh that's great we'll see if we can get a couple more people to join us next time. Good thanks and I would put a plug in for Jason so he he wasn't here for today's talk but he's he was our primary contact he was the first person that I reached out to when we you know we had put together this proposal we were going to do this space study and study creativity and then we had realized like oh my god like we are not experts in this like what are we going to do we're going to embarrass Sue she's going to be so you know so I reached I was like okay we reached out to Jason he is so interesting and and has it can really pull this like I think really coalesce creativity um um and how libraries can think about space in a way that's intriguing and he is a fabulous teacher and so his work with charrettes you're going to see somebody who can pull out from students these ideas that can help you develop user-centered design so that's a plug for the second workshop did you have your hand up Greg are you no okay we have a few minutes left but we are happy to take any other questions I do think that there are some things so we covered a lot today and our study was had the three parts they were really you know the the what we had called the intercept which is really an online survey we had the adjective checklist and we had the focus groups and we're hoping to make those sort of package those so that if if somebody wants to implement those um at your institution it's in a it's in a you know we we can package it up for you to sort of use it locally and make adjustments easily um and so we're going to talk about that and hopefully by the third workshop maybe have some some things made available but if you have any if you have you know one aspect of the study that you would like to implement and and want to reach out we can push that forward a little faster on our end um if there's interest so and I will say let me quickly say Stephanie McRenold is on here I want to put a plug in Syracuse did uh did implement the the adjective checklist um and we're talking with them now because I think there is a challenge in taking your findings on the adjective checklist and translating them into real tangible recommendations and so it um you know we're working on on the connections between all of the three pieces and that's Laura's real forte and uh so anyways well we have five minutes of a free time I sue you want me to hand to you as a final or sure now thank you thank you Val, Meg, Adrienne and Laura very much for this workshop um it makes me wish I was back in a library and could I could be a part of some of this um really interesting and and sounds like a lot of fun work but thank you all we look forward to seeing you next week same time same place and so thank you all very much I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and we'll see you next week thank you all thank you