Library Planning in the Electronic Era:
Are the Stacks Necessary?
by Chuck Finnerty
Chuck Finnerty, a former John Cotton Dana award winner, is president/owner of Designs For Information. He has been actively involved in space needs assessment, library design, relocation management and project implementation in the special library arena. Finnerty has spoken about library space planning at many SLA annual conferences, and has written on the topic.
Where Are Stacks Going?
"Get rid of the stacks." As with all catch phrases, this one was first used in moderation and eventually progressed to the cliché level. Suddenly the cliché is everywhere. It surrounds us and is one of the more prominent clichés in the special library world today. It signifies a seemingly radical development, but is really part of a long line of change in space planning requirements that all special libraries need to heed in order to survive and flourish.
The evolution of information delivery by special libraries can be traced through the changes in space planning requirements. Particularly in corporate settings, file rooms were first transformed into more traditional libraries, and in many cases served as a showcase for upper management to display to visitors. This was followed by the computerized information centers of today. In all of these cases, the type and mixture of collections and staff dictated the use of space. The journey continues today, with the question being, "How much stack material will we keep?"
The cost of real estate, constant changes in technology and staff configuration forces us to look at information resources, no matter what their format, as a dynamic commodity. We may have stacks today, but tomorrow they could be replaced by anything.
The Path Away from Stacks
In the early '80s, before the advent of the personal computer, special libraries were frequently staffed by a single information professional. A clerical staff supported the information professional and maintained a paper collection, which was sufficient to meet the needs of the parent organization. In time-critical environments, "Just in Case" was the motto for collection development and book stacks dominated a facility's space.
As online indexing proliferated, the need for large collections was still prevalent, but space needed to be set aside for computer work stations as well (much to the chagrin of upper management). In addition, the high cost of computer equipment made it prohibitive to put computers on individual desktops; consequently, searching facilities were frequently set up in a separate location in the library. Originally these PC work stations were solely for use by the library staff, but they often became a shared resource as end-users began to do their own research online. The arrival of more sophisticated information tools was an impetus for special libraries to expand their professional staffs, while support staffs were already as large as ever in order to maintain online sources. By the '90s, space planning changed to accommodate individual staff work stations. As more and more sources were digitized, the need for maintaining large collections of periodicals and corporate documents dwindled.
With collections getting smaller, libraries began to emphasize their real assetthe professional staff. As information became increasingly integrated into the daily needs of the organization, many libraries began to look more like the surrounding office space. In some instances, the library moved from a defined separate space to a "library without walls." As many library managers can attest, there was (and is) a trend to place the information professional in the immediate vicinity of the groups being served, thereby cutting down on the space needed for a central library facility. Space planners and architects seized on this integration concept and began using standard systems furniture in the library. Gone were the massive, custom-built reference desks. If a library relocated on a Friday, facilities wanted a new group to be able to occupy the vacant space by Monday. One important result of this mentality was the reluctance of management to pay for added floor load capability in any specific area. Without the added floor strength, space-efficient, mobile-aisle systems housing major collections could not be used, limiting the size of collections.
A Balancing Act
The library is often built as a functional stop in a larger open-space layout. The facility as a destination point is gone, in many places along with the walls. The library should be built with an eye to deconstruct. In other words, what is your educated guess as to the next collection or service to be curtailed, with a resulting reduction in needed space?
The need for stack space and its added costs will vary greatly by the mandate of the library and the discipline served. In the legal profession there has been a long battle waged on how extensive a collection is required. In one instance a legal library has been asked to place a renewed emphasis on training new associates on strategies for searching the print collections. Many partners believe that pure electronic source searching does not result in a complete final reference product.
Janet Accardo at Skadden Arps, a major international law firm, had a busy several years preparing for a major relocation of her law firm. Within a year of that move, the library was told the space it was occupying would be needed for attorney offices. A study was undertaken and the library is now split, with 70 percent of the facility relocated to space on the concourse level. The typical scenario says it does not make sense for a library to relocate unless there is allowance for at least a 30 percent increase in stack space. In a legal environment, where much of the collection is serial in nature, the library relocated with no net gain in stack space, forcing the staff to prioritize its resources.
Tough decisions must be made in the commercial arena, as well. When Ellen Miller joined J.P. Morgan, the firm was in the process of shifting its corporate emphasis from that of a commercial bank to an investment bank. Within two years, Miller was asked to build an investment banking information support function and then merge it into the already existing research library, with a collection dominated by commercial banking and economics sources. Careful planning and aggressive weeding of the research library collection allowed both equal-sized libraries to be merged into one space with no loss of function. While the need for constant monitoring of library use and organizational direction were key issues in this transition, quick response to the constant change in the use of organizational space requires a current space-needs assessment.
At one time, a space-needs plan was something that a library manager prepared a week before the architect or library space planner showed up. Today we find that an ongoing evaluation of your space needs is a constant challenge for the library manager. Especially in major cities, where square-footage costs are high, library managers have always had to prove their space requests were legitimate and necessaryand often they've had to make do with less than originally planned.
In order to deal with this situation effectively, it is important to prepare a space-needs assessment before meeting with corporate management and architects/facilities planners to discuss a new or revamped library. This assessment involves a review of current collection, staff and function areas with a proposed future strategy for each of the following items:
· Collection survey: Collections should be measured by counting the number of ranges/sections/shelves and then listing them by collection categories expressed in number of shelves per collection (e.g., reference, bound journals, current periodicals, corporate documents, etc.). These measurements should be based on actual space in use, not the capacity of the equipment. A realistic growth (or contraction) factoroften different for each collectionshould be used to project shelving needs for each collection. If you maintain collection usage statistics, this is the place to use them to convince management of the necessity for keeping hard copy (or to convince yourself that you really can dispose of certain collections with impunity). The projected shelving needs should then be converted to a square-footage requirement.
· Staff: This list should reflect organization work station standards (e.g., professional staff is assigned to an 8' by 8' work station) where available and appropriate. Functional exceptions such as catalogers, who need more space to support their functional role, should be identified and explained. Staff count should reflect head count at grow out. In the past, when facilities management prepared a stacking plan (a chart of the location of all moving groups and their location), a 10-year period was projected. In the dynamic period of expansion during the '90s, that window was often condensed. Today, based on organizational fluidity and technological advances, we are lucky if we can accurately project needs for three years. Part of the consistent call for more activity in less space is a smaller work station (6' by 6'). Even in the sphere of personal space, more work in less space is desirable.
· Function areas: This category would include a range of special areasfrom technical services functions (such as cataloging and binding) to functional use areas (such as mail room, computer center, microform room and various types of user areas). These areas need space more so than the typical single-space assignment and
While 9/11 did not cause a tectonic shift everywhere in storage choices, it did start an acceleration of decreased reliance on massive print collections.
Tom Fearon of Lehman Brothers, Bob Sengstacken of Deloitte and Touche and Susie Adinolfi of Merrill Lynch worked at the World Financial Center complex and had to face a new day without their stacks. Here are their stories:
· Lehman Brothers was perhaps the fastest to act for both the short and long term. The company took over a major hotel in New York, converting all rooms into two-person offices and using the public meeting facilities to house support functions. The library set up shop in a hotel ballroom, using the lobby for meetings. The vendor community contributed support for a short time by electronically delivering necessary documents. As an indication of the dynamic nature of the New York real estate market, an arrangement was made for financial document production at another financial services institution, which was consolidating from a location near the hotel to a larger facility across town. Fearon and the Lehman staff successfully provided necessary information to their far-flung user constituency, without any backup hard copy collection.
When Lehman relocated to a new permanent location (in one of the fastest real estate deals in history), Fearon and his managers opted to provide for a streamlined, but nonetheless substantial, hard copy collection. As pointed out by Rich Willner, a director at Lehman Brothers, part of the reason for this decision was the tangible cost-savings in eliminating multiple copy subscriptions for expensive periodicals and housing them in a central location.
· Deloitte and Touche suffered a similar fate (Deloitte was preparing to move back to the World Financial Center in early June). The firm's circulating collection was destroyed by sprinkler system damage. Its tax reference collection, which was not destroyed, caused other problems. Due to the serial nature of the collection, what was not destroyed by the blast was rendered useless in the following months because it could not be maintained and updated. What bodes well for the future was the ability of the library staff to change user habits and foster the use of electronic resources during this time. According to Sengstacken, Deloitte is "rebuilding a core collection of higher quality and smaller size."
· For several months Merrill Lynch employees were crowded at 30'' by 30'' counter tops, in a small conference room at an off-site facility immediately adjacent to "Ground Zero." Within several weeks of the attacks, staff was going back and forth between the two locations while clean up was going on. The library, nonetheless, had to begin importing hard copy books to their "war room." Merrill was the first corporation to re-occupy their original space in the World Financial Center. The collections and all other daily needs (other than an ease of access to "Ground Zero") were in place. Therefore, Merrill was able to delay the "Whither the stacks?" question. Adinolfi, Merrill director in charge of library services, developed a newfound appreciation for the "not ready for prime time" Web-based services, but plans to continue running a stack-based facility for now.
call for separate square-footage allocation. Even in the electronic era, there can be a need for more space. The need for conference training rooms in libraries is almost totally the result of more in-depth training in the use of information tools. In the urban or suburban campus environment this conference/training room serves as a magnet in attracting additional users. It can even be set up as a videoconferencing center that can serve the entire organization.
· To this allocation, management and the architectural team would add a factor for departmental circulation of staff and users, as well as the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
A Look Ahead
Location and adjacency have been affected by e-mail and the ability to disseminate documents electronically. There is much less emphasis on a facility that needs to be close to its major users. These days a library may well end up in a service area to take advantage of the floor load requirement. Today a library can fit and function anywhere.
In networked printing environments, the library has taken on the role of a production shop (e.g., in financial services companies, financial reports; in research environments, historic copies of research and scholarly journals). Veronica Plucinski, senior director of the Information Center at Pfizer, talks about the pharmaceutical research environment where there is a continuing need for articles from bound journal collections. Many organizations allocate hard copy placement needs based on the area of research studied at various facilities. The use of combined online catalogs allows these facilities to assign document delivery fulfillment through the use of internal inter-library loans. As the digital archiving of older research publications expands, the need to retain hard copy will further diminish.
One option, long popular in the academic arena, is the use of depository services. Many educational facilities and the New York Public Library System place less actively used books in off-site storage. Clancy Library Services, a provider of off-site storage that houses less frequently used books for the Columbia Law Library, is expanding its services to cater to the more recent needs of the corporate market.
Despite the proliferation of information services now being sent to the desktop, both in the library and directly to the user departments, there is still a need for the library to provide public computer work stations.
Part of the reasoning covers possible network shutdowns, while the other part of the rationale is economic (i.e., the lowered cost of a more limited licensing agreement with the information provider). This also allows end-users to escape from their desks for a while to an environment more conducive to concentration.
In colleges, publishing and other arenas, the library can become a gathering place, a facility and occasion for the impromptu, but timely, exchange of ideas and intellectual intelligence. At Scholastic, a multimedia publishing company for children and educators, Bert Schachter fills a corporate mandate by expanding the use of the library facility as a corporate intelligence center, staging talks, readings, product displays and other corporate events on a regular basis.
The future of the stacks is just one of the many issues a library manager faces today. Taken alone, it's an issue of huge importance to the library, organization management and users of the facility. When looked at in the overall context, it's just one component of the question "How do we give our users the best information product in the most efficient way, at the least cost?"
Damn the clichés. 
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