 I want to give just a quick outline of what I plan to do. Today we're going to do a very brief introduction and then I'm going to just briefly tell you the methodological approach that we've taken in this study with young people and spaces in public libraries. Then I want to just give you just a brief overview of the quantitative findings that we have derived as well as a few of the qualitative findings. And then we'll talk more specifically about a particular topic exceeding and then we'll conclude with some general comments before Jeremy talks. Urban centers are reviving again as we hear in the paper on a daily basis. Moribund cities and commercial districts prior to 2000 are now crackling and bubbling as residential centers with fashionable foodie nests and pulsing with exciting destination attractions and entertainments. Yet despite this urban renaissance so many of us have longed for it's also a radically lopsided regeneration. Manifest manifesting a decidedly anti youth urban regime. The numbers tell a clear story about this an age based segregation increasingly swept clean of young people. Only 13 percent of this city's population is now under 18. In Seattle it's 15 percent 17 percent in Boston whereas compared to the national average it's about 24 percent of the city's population is populated by young people in our rush to promote higher density urbanism asks urbanist Cade Benfield. Are we inadvertently creating child free zones that are inhospitable to families with kids. We are as committed to diversity as we like to say shouldn't that include young people. And yet one institution of civic civil society remains steadfast even doubling down in its efforts to avoid this re urbanized Jim Crow Jr. I call it our own public libraries. Although libraries have traditionally been devoted heart and soul to children over the past 15 years or so and in terms of trying to try harder to offer young adults a space of their own libraries have actually found another gear. But it's not a simple library as hero story either. In fact it's a little unnerving especially for someone like me who's a researcher that little of this recent white space effort is advanced with demonstrable evidence data fact or analysis practitioners across the country are increasingly finding this previously marginalized population deserving of more attention than they have in the past where library spaces for young people have received less space and less design attention than bathrooms on the good side. However this lack of evidence based experimentation with library space design opens up a pretty large field for people like Jeremy and myself so a few years ago and not unlike the way most research projects get started it bubbled up from something I'd been doing before I resumed the advocacy for YA space that I had pioneered at the LA Public Library in the 1990s and persuaded a panel of IMLS grant reviewers to give me a multi grant year multi grant multi year grant to capture what was actually going on in the nation's YA library spaces together with three other researchers and Dr. Kemp here today is among them and 11 San Jose State LIS graduate research assistants. We asked five years worth of the most recent most recent and renovated libraries nearly 800 nationally to tell us what they were doing. Three hundred and thirty two told us in survey responses in video footage and in data that we derived from virtual experience in second life. We even asked young people themselves to tell us what they thought about libraries what what libraries were doing and we got back what we got back represents the first empirical LIS data to support evidence based library YA spaces. We've even we've been successful too in disseminating our findings I'll briefly excerpt from three recent studies today but we've been published now in top tier scholarly journals several practitioner journals just last week for example we learned that another article was accepted for public libraries and another yet still under review with public libraries and we presented or have forthcoming presentations at school state national and even international conferences both as scholars as well as graduate students our students are out presenting some of this material too. So this is a good example of how a team of scholars and students together have begun to systematically build our LIS knowledge base to fill a gaping hole in a historical gaping hole to in our daily practice. And for those of you not explicitly connected to serving young adults I would urge you to consider how the questions and data will share with you today pertain to your own library and user populations. If you do I believe you'll agree that I'm less is getting its money is worth out of our project. In terms of the quantitative study while I do not intend to overwhelm you with the statistics that we captured from our first study I do want to have you appreciate that we approach nearly eight hundred new and renovated libraries across the country and heard back from roughly three hundred and fifty of them. That's a substantial number from which to draw insights if not conclusions about what libraries are currently offering the nation's young people. Our first study examined the role that youth participation played in the design of these new white spaces. Libraries have for many years been touting the need to better involve youth in service development. And so it made sense to ask about the outcomes that libraries observed in response. We developed our own youth participation index YPI to quantify and assess the patterns we found. Nineteen of our surveys 30 questions cohered around the idea of youth participation among many factors. We asked about the degree to which why ideas and direct advocacy contributed to the development and the design of the spaces including the extent of why volunteering in them the degree of employment that they experienced in them the role that they may have played during an advisory board capacity and the degree to which they were actively involved in the space administration. Not surprisingly libraries reported higher youth participation said that they achieved more successful places so the more participation the young people had the more that the the staffs were pleased with the spaces outcomes. Indeed libraries with high YPI ratings reported service improvements across a wide range of outcomes as well as higher staff satisfaction with the new spaces to not only the highlights libraries with higher YPA scores represented and reported more influence and attracting independent outside funding greater input on white space design which oftentimes contributed to larger spaces larger proportional spaces in the libraries the square footage that we found that libraries were reporting for white spaces was across the country three percent three percent. Libraries with higher YPI's also reported higher YA library use of course decidedly less reliance on behavioral rules and concern for line of site spatial arrangements and higher degrees of concern for libraries featuring more green construction young people cared about green construction. While I have difficulty believing that libraries will cotton to claims about the reduced reliance on behavioral rules or the faith based efficacy involved with line of site arrangements no matter how many hundreds of libraries we examine the benefits of higher degrees of youth participation do clearly point to broad and improved service outcomes. After years of literature promoting youth participation however there were overall relatively few libraries to earn high YPI scores. At one end nine percent of our libraries reported no youth involvement at all while two hundred and eight reported low scores reporting from one to seven youth participation factors only twenty seven libraries among the two hundred and fifty seven usable surveys that's eleven percent reported or indicated that why he's played a substantial participatory role because researchers know that deriving analysis merely from self-reported surveys will often raise methodological questions. Our second study just accepted for publication in public libraries as I mentioned involved distributing twenty five video cameras to libraries all over the country that had completed our online survey. We asked why a library staff along with young adults to record two to three minute video tours of their white spaces. We asked them to narrate and document what they felt was most important to them. We received forty two videos back twenty two from librarians and twenty from young adults. We transcribed the narrations. We then coded them and analyzed them and together these videos furnished a fairly crunchy insight into the thoughts feelings and meanings of librarians and their white users. Although we asked for their own responses we were after a few things in particular. First and different from the surveys we asked that librarians and why is themselves wanted to show us what they value but more interesting yet we wanted to see if these two groups agreed on what they felt was important if so what was it and if not what did they differ about what we found was something that builds upon what we learned from our first study that due to disconnects between staff and why is while there are similarities in what they found there were also some very important differences. First and not surprisingly librarians often concentrated on discussing library materials and resources. Why is on the other hand emphasize their experiences during their library visits indicating that they appreciate the library for resources but they also want a social dimension of their experience in those spaces as well. Another interesting finding which was slightly over one third of the librarians about thirty six percent emphasize the notion for separation in terms of why spaces from other places. We all know that young adults want to be as far away from as possible from children right. Well not so fast. We found that while thirty six percent of the staff assumed that this is true only 10 percent 10 percent of the young adults expressed a desire for visual or physical separation from libraries especially from children's spaces. Well you can say that they just forgot to mention it or that if we'd ask them directly they would tell us that they want separation but also I want you to remember that we asked them to tell us what was important to them and the separation thing didn't move the needle in terms of the Y.A. register while it did appear important to librarians. This apparent negligence of the Y.A.'s to emphasize spatial separation however makes sense if we take time to evaluate it. In many of our buildings particularly in urban areas where populations of where population densities are high or in areas where they're populated by poor or immigrant families parents often send their kids to the library together where the older kids take care of their younger siblings. If we interpret design through our own separation assumptions then we are inadvertently placing undue role strain on these kids either preventing the Y.A.'s from enjoying the Y.A. spaces because they need to stay with the children or saddling them with their younger siblings when they do visit their Y.A. spaces. The point here is that when we drive our own unexamined assumptions through design something which is as true for collection development or programming or outreach we are possibly then inflicting barriers on our users and our service profiles. This might cause you to consider how your own assumptions operate in your own spaces. After looking at these broad strokes about youth participation and then the disagreement and agreements between librarians and young adults we use our next study to drill down into one highly applicable and practical design concept emerging from both parts of the surveys. The 257 usable online surveys that Y.A.'s returned from libraries across the country let us detect a strong opinion pulse about the seemingly mundane and simple topic seating. So our third study simply asked how can libraries improve seating for library users? The answer we found should not really surprise anybody but at the outset let's just set aside the fact that libraries have implemented their seating concepts and policies forever without any research or any evidence whatsoever and these legacies beg questions about the unnecessary obstacles and postural limitations at play here and this assumes that libraries even offer Y.A.'s seating and most of them do not. So I mean have you ever even have you looked at Y.A.'s seating recently? I called out the information trough. There are three other insights that we got actually from these surveys that Y.A.'s told us about. One, they simply want a large vocabulary of postural options. These things that we're sitting in here do not offer postural options. You do the sit down and shut up or you stand somewhere. Second, we learned from these otherwise we can learn from their otherwise what I refer to as fugitive postures. We can look at how they sit when they're comfortable and derive some of those things. And third, a full third of them given current choices like this would rather just sit on the floor. In general, expanding the variety of seating opportunities and increasing their control over their own postural enactments remain potent features that libraries, even those with limited resources, can explore to radically improve spatial equity. In this study, we took the opportunity to help librarians better envision some of these other options and so the study became more of a visual anecdote. I've already mentioned the lack of evidence surrounding library seating policies. One in particular is the ubiquitous one but to a chair policy. We can further explore this issue in Q&A if you want for reasons against or all of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that there's no evidence supporting any claims whatsoever about this ubiquitous policy. Further, young people demonstrate in many other venues the capacity to thrive when working thrive while working together and yet libraries turned a blind eye. The best insight we gain from these young voices, however, is a desire for a wider array of postural choices. The information trough just doesn't cut it. Of course, these are not new ideas about the ways young people and their bodies work. We encounter youth every day in every place enacting postures that make them comfortable. Libraries, among other institutions, however, simply ignore or worse punish them. Here are a few historical images of young people making themselves comfortable. You may well recognize or even remember preferring these kind of floor interpretations and using stairs as viable seating options. And if not, then I'm confident you will recognize this from the 1985 John Hughes classic film The Breakfast Club. Young people from explicitly different backgrounds are depicted as making common convivial space not only on the floor that they reappropriate enacting a kind of consecrated community council, but it's the floor of their library, their school library. Note the postural individuality and variety depicted even as the group convenes on an open floor without furniture. We actually coined a name for this democracy of the floor. We call it Davidotasis, derived from the Greek Davido, which is floor and tasus, which means oriented or seeking. Floor seeking. Here are a few images of young people even in institutional settings demonstrating how they can comfortably thrive in a variety of floor configurations. The question that may come quickly to your mind is how can libraries realistically adopt this Davidotasis thing? Well, it's not difficult to facilitate floor or floor for proximate seating options, particularly if these notions are integrated into design. This is a modest two-tier carpet covered platform in a small branch library. We can discuss its assets and liabilities later in Q&A if you like. Here's a more sophisticated interpretation of platform seating, one promoting the postural liberation from task chairs and wooden tables. Note the two Ottomans on casters also. Finally, here's the best flowering of a YA space in recently constructed county library. Here are the architects, one of our grant partners I hasten to add, incorporates a wide variety of seating options, including a three-tiered carpet covered riser integrated into a rather small space, but yet affording all of the features and qualities that libraries have told us in so many ways and for so long that they want. Here, young people get options. They get variety, flexibility and freedom, all without being turned into postural fugitives. These contrasting images best represent what we're learning about seating. So here is where I believe we are on this issue of YA space equity in libraries. On the one hand, it's true that libraries have become increasingly aware of the importance to offer young adult spaces of their own. Today, unlike as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, new libraries will at least gesture toward representing YA's in their designs and floor plants. On the other hand, new and recently renovated buildings also unfortunately exhibit a continuing inability to develop evidence-based practice or respond to the aesthetic postural preferences expressed by this user group. We love to talk about computer and learning labs. Learning commons is a common phrase we use today and the more recent one, you know, we may recognize as maker spaces. But we have no evidence to support claims of best practices. We have no knowledge base or even criteria from which to draw in terms of establishing or delivering demonstrable successful spaces. In most instances, the profession unreflectively are unreflective processes and legacy privileging of collections continue at the expense of creating accommodating, hospitable, equitable and purpose-built environments for young people. It should be obvious though that without practice relevant research, library solutions will remain ad hoc. By the way, we promise the IMLS, our granting agency, that we would keep all of our studies raw data open and accessible to the public. So if you're interested in digging into several thousand survey responses, video transcripts and other fun stuff like that, we've mounted it all on our youthvax. It's a project that I've been developing with another one of our project researchers, Dr. Mike Mills from San Francisco's Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. On a broader register, like all public places, libraries demonstrate who counts and what activities matter in a community. Libraries as public spaces represent a unique civic experience for young people. American libraries, however, often trumpet these democratic ideals but do not always execute them in practice. Still, although commercial interests continually attempt to intensify their profiles, public libraries remain rather free, fee-free and essentially commercial-free environments. They facilitate rare spaces for intellectual exploration and offer a range of activities and opportunities to access rich and well-organized informational and cultural resources. They provide connections to professionals trained to help them access information, allow for observation and interaction within an age-integrated community and thus facilitate the development of social capital. And in the face of the culture's increasing privatized public experience, libraries offer youth from poor material circumstances access to well-maintained public environments. The library's physical plant thus represents valuable and unique spatial capital for youth. Library designs that include the actual physical realities and preferences of young people will better express these values in their public spaces. It's been a cliche for quite some time that YA experience is the bellwether of coming technological change. Indeed, it serves as the canary in the library coalmine for experimenting with social software, gaming, virtual experience, among others. But what we've discovered in our examination of library spaces for young adults is just how poor our general knowledge is, our general knowledge basis about designing and evaluating library spaces for all users. In many ways, the learning that we're conducting with this particular project about gathering and analyzing and spatial data is highly pertinent and applicable to all types of libraries and almost all library users. So here our work could really serve as a model. We were asked today, and Mark wanted to make sure that we were sensitive to the fact that not all of you are YA librarians. So I wanted to make sure that I ended with just a few concluding comments that are more general. When asked informed questions, library users demonstrate awareness of the importance of libraries as public spaces and are capable of offering insightful and practical solutions to address design challenges. Time after time, I hear librarians say that they asked young people what they wanted in the spaces and of course the things that young people say they wanted are completely impossible for libraries. So they were not asked informed questions. Librarians need to prepare better to engage spatial design. When we asked librarians how they entered into these new building processes, they demonstrated a stunning lack of curiosity and preparation for engaging design professionals. At a time when libraries face keen competition from technological and institutional transformations in the storage of and access to information, we must consistently seek ways to prove their value in contributing to the well-being of our communities. In being more responsive to what users want, in deriving such insights as we can from observing and engaging them, we can achieve higher degrees of comfort for them in our library buildings. And then finally, in order to achieve these goals, libraries need and should demand practice relevant research, the kind of stuff that we've been doing, practice relevant research on spaces and facility designs and evaluation procedures. And this includes what architects call post-occupancy studies. After a building is done and it's up and running for about a year, you should go back in and examine it and get your users to give you feedback on how you need to change it. So that's about as much detail as we have time for today. Thank you for inviting us to share our work with you. And I'm hoping that we'll have some good time for some question and answers after Jeremy's presentation. Thank you.