Olin Renovation Focus Groups Summary
March 2008

In the period December 2007-February 2008, the Library conducted 11 focus groups, and three individual interviews for participants who couldn't make the focus groups, on the subject of Olin renovation.

The focus group sessions were advertised through fliers at Olin Library’s Circulation and Reference desks, in the public areas of Olin and Uris libraries, and to all the departments and programs in the College of Arts and Sciences. 

E-mails were also sent to all current holders of individual research studies, graduate carrels, and to departments that currently have reading rooms in Olin.  A random sample of students and faculty in Arts and Sciences also received e-mails. Special care was taken to target the departments with reading rooms in Olin – all their chairs and administrative assistants were contacted initially about the focus groups in December 2007, and a second time in January 2008 if they had not replied to the initial invitation.

In January, the department chairs were also sent the exact questions that were going to be asked in the focus group to solicit their e-mail feedback. The focus groups were also advertised to the Student Library Advisory Council and the faculty Library Advisory Board. Some participants brought written feedback they had collected from other faculty and students in their departments to the focus group sessions.

Summary of Findings:
A sentence that best describes the summary findings is, "It's all relative." The perceptions of the patrons depended on their subject affiliation, current status (undergraduate, graduate student, faculty), length of tenure at Cornell, experiences from previous research library environments, as well as memories of previous environments at Cornell.

The issues that all Olin patrons tended to agree on include (in no particular order):

• need for improved quality of life, especially climate control and sound proofing
• need for clearly defined spaces, which have a clear purpose
• need for individual quiet spaces
• importance of keeping a core physical collection on central campus (however, the definition of "core" was unclear and tended to depend on the subject area)
• mostly, patron groups tended to view their own group's needs as paramount; however, there tended to be a general consensus that graduate students, especially at the dissertation writing stage, need individual quiet spaces in the library because they are in the least favorable position relative to their research needs and availability of spaces
• patrons who currently hold spaces in the Library tended to praise their utility and their absolute necessity in the renovated spaces, despite their clearly stated deficiencies (in terms of comfort, quality of life, and sometimes unclear boundaries on precedence of use)
• the most important characteristics of spaces in the library are: views/windows, inspiration, variety, and flexibility
• in general, patrons tended to recommend low-end technology spaces and applications but all requested reliable and ubiquitous wireless as well as power outlets
• use of individual spaces (both research studies and carrels) should be based on use (no consistent suggestions of how use should be measured emerged)
• staff were universally praised by all patron categories

Issues on which patrons tended to disagree (in no particular order):

• number and availability of computers (even though most patrons viewed the number as insufficient, only a few suggested that more computers should be installed on the 7th floor)
• other groups' needs compared to their own (all groups tended to see their own space needs as greater that those of other groups; however, faculty, especially those who are recent hires acknowledged that graduate students are disenfranchised and need more space in the library)
• other groups' available spaces outside the library (e.g. graduate students and undergrads tend to perceive faculty as already having enough individual space outside the library, while faculty insist that they need quiet space for research and writing outside their departments and homes)
• needs of graduate students (faculty who have had longer careers at Cornell tended to stress that there is a hierarchical system in the academe, which translates into: individual spaces should go to faculty, and reading rooms should be reserved for faculty and graduate students' use with no undergraduates allowed; faculty who have had shorter tenures at Cornell, consider the needs of graduate students much greater both in terms of individual spaces and research reading rooms)
• undergraduates and research (do they do any or not--opinions varied)
• the extent to which Olin Library should serve undergraduates (opinions varied from Olin Library should return to its closed stacks with no undergraduates allowed at all, to more nuanced views of separate spaces so that the more social nature of the undergraduate interactions can be accommodated in group study rooms; to a celebration of the fact that Olin Library is full of undergraduates, which makes it a living, not a dead, library; the view that Olin should be closed to undergraduates was expressed by faculty who have been at Cornell the longest; the more nuanced view was by far the predominant one, expressed by the majority of faculty, and virtually all graduate students; undergraduate students did not have a particular awareness of the issue, clearly seeing Olin as much as their library as anybody else's)
• access to research reading rooms (noise, food consumption, and group study were universally lamented by faculty and graduate students; some form of restricted access was generally suggested, but very few people suggested locking the rooms; undergraduate students expressed ignorance to the purpose of the rooms)
• LibCafe (views ranged from "the worst thing that ever happened to Olin" through "a great place to socialize, to "the best thing about Olin")
• the future of research (in general younger faculty and graduate students acknowledged the future pre-eminence of online research; a difference along subject lines was noticed: scientists and social scientists tended to predict faster and more ubiquitous penetration of online resources; humanists tended to value print research resources; most seemed to recognize subject differences; no one envisioned the complete disappearance of the physical library, but the future use of libraries was conceived differently--on the one hand, the main function was seen to remain the physical storage of core collections to enable browsing and serendipity, on the other, a quiet research and writing space was seen as the library's function in the future)
• the stacks (seen as scary, uninviting, etc. by students; seen as the most valuable asset of Olin by faculty and grads)