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This chapter explores the recent trend in libraries: that of the establishment of spaces specifically set aside for creative work. The rise of these dedicated creative spaces is owed to a confluence of factors that happen to be finding their expression together in recent years. This chapter examines the history of these spaces and explores the factors that gave rise to them and will fuel them moving forward.

A viewpoint piece, this chapter combines historical research and historical/comparative analyses to examine the ways by which libraries have supported creative work in the past and how they may continue to do so into the 21st century.

The key threads brought together include a societal recognition of the value of creativity and related skills and attributes; the philosophies, values, and missions of libraries in both their long-standing forms and in recent evolutions; the rise of participatory culture as a result of inexpensive technologies; improved means to build community and share results of efforts; and library experience and historical practice in matters related to creativity. The chapter concludes with advice for those interested in the establishment of such spaces, grounding those reflections in the author’s experiences in developing a new creative space at Virginia Commonwealth University.

While a number of pieces have been written that discuss the practicalities of developing certain kinds of creative spaces, very little has been written that situates these spaces in larger social and library professional contexts; this chapter begins to fill that gap.

Librarians have been urged to emphasize social justice and human rights issues in their library mission, but they may find themselves challenged to provide additional services, such as access to legal information for those who cannot afford an attorney. Social justice services in libraries are seldom adequately funded and providing services in this area is labor intensive. In addition, there is an emotional intensity in library services for social justice that is often not considered in the initial enthusiasm of providing services in this area. Yet there seems to be no limit to the need. An interesting and useful perspective on how a public agency such as a library responds in circumstances of limited resources and unlimited demand can be found in the book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, by Michael Lipsky. In this perspective, lower level civil servants who interact directly with members of the general public exercise a level of discretion in the amount of services provided and how those services are administered. This chapter explores how this can generate tensions between more traditional library bureaucracy and social justice services, such as providing public access to justice resources in law libraries. However, the “street-level” response is evolving into a sustainability perspective as librarians embrace a more social justice–oriented outlook in library service planning.

Libraries can be seen as the collective identity of its employees engaged in providing a myriad of services to a community of patrons. Libraries can also exist in virtual settings, defined with descriptive parameters, described by a wider user group external to the library environment. The diverse nature of what constitutes libraries is illustrated by researchers, such as Marino and Lapintie (2015), who use the term “meta-meeting place” when describing its environs. Whatever model is used to describe contemporary libraries, the library environment usually has numerous needs and demands coming from a variety of stakeholders, from administrators to patrons. This chapter examines how we, as librarians, with users, co-construct library as both space and place.

We used a theoretical framework (social constructionism) to show how library identity is established by its users in the space planning process to address their needs and expectations and provided a case study of the main library at the University of South Florida.

We found that libraries are reflective of the vision and values of a diverse community and the social-political milieu in which they are housed. Librarians used a number of innovative methods and frames to create best/evidence-based practice approaches in space planning, re-envisioning library functions, and conducting outcomes/programmatic assessment. For librarians to create that sense of place and space for our users requires effective and open conversations and examination of our own inherent (and often unacknowledged) contradictions as to what libraries are or should be as enduring structures with evolving uses and changing users. For example, only a few of the studies focused on the spatial use and feel of libraries using new technologies or methodologies, such as social network analysis, discourse analysis, or GPS, to map the use of physical and virtual space.

First, new ways of working and engaging require reexamination of assessment and evaluation procedures and processes. To accomplish this, we must develop a more effective culture of assessment and to use innovative evaluation measures to determine use, user paths, and formal and informal groupings. Changes that affect patron and staff perceptions of library as place/third space may be difficult to assess using quantitative surveys, such as LibQual, that may not provide an opportunity for respondents to provide specifics of what “place” means to them. Second, it is important to have effective communication among all members of the library (patrons, library staff, and university administration) so that we design spaces/places that enhance the relationships among users, technology, pedagogy, and learning spaces, not just the latest “thing” in the literature.

This value of this review is to provide a social constructionist perspective (frame) on how we plan library space. This approach provides opportunities to truly engage our patrons and administration in the co-construction of what “our library” should be since it provides insight to group, place, and social dynamics.

As adults and young adults have become increasingly active on social media, public libraries have incorporated social media alongside their more traditional services. However, libraries are faced with the challenging task of determining how to successfully engage with their users through social media. This chapter examines research literature from both social media and information studies to explore evidence-based results on providing popular information services and resources for adult and young adult users in social spaces. Key elements of social media use by libraries identified in this review include promotion of information resources and services, participation and engagement, social care, pastoral care, outreach, cocreation and motivation of users, advocacy and crowdsourcing, and measurement and assessment. Based on results from current research, best practices and assessment methods for social media are discussed which offer practical considerations for selecting social media platforms appropriate to a library’s mission, goals, and objectives, with examples relevant to a variety of social media platforms. The chapter also offers a review of social media platforms, practices, and assessment designed to inform librarians and library managers in decision-making about library social media efforts.

To report on the process of redesigning a previously inaccessible room in the center of Emerson College’s Iwasaki Library for student use.

Library staff solicited input from multiple stakeholders through informal suggestion boards; conversations with staff and faculty; a 3-hour Participatory Design Workshop (PDW) with students, both undergraduates and graduates from multiple departments; and a month-long collaboration with a Business Studies class. A particular emphasis was placed on student input in the design process because of their status as the library’s primary users.

It was not possible to incorporate all of the students’ suggestions into the final design: particularly the requests for a homey, “living room” feel. However, through repeated inquiry, the library was able to find a match between some of the things students wanted and what the library could provide, namely a flexible event and study space.

Although libraries do not often have the opportunity to “expand” with their existing footprints, this chapter will be of use to other libraries planning an expansion or renovation. Library expansion is often dependent on well-documented need and student voices can have a high impact and, therefore, should play a critical role in the design process.

Utilizing creative campus partnerships, alliances, and mergers, libraries can move from a traditional support role to a more participatory role that actively engages a university’s academic mission. Libraries, as centralizing, politically neutral hubs for information, can serve as catalysts for collaborative planning that paves the way for creating innovative campus spaces and services in conjunction with other academic or general campus units. By forging alliances and merging services and resources with campus partners, such as Information Technology (IT) and the English and Communication departments, the library can address student need and initiate transformational changes—changes that are broader in scope than those within traditional library functions. The case study in this chapter provides an exploration of the merging of library services with a writing center, an effort which was enhanced by adding an oral communication support service. It provides examples of what can be accomplished through visionary leadership and teamwork in 21st-century academic libraries, focusing on how student need and library use prompted institutional change at a mid-sized regional comprehensive university. The authors highlight the essential structural and operational mergers and alliances involved in integrating existing and developing library and campus initiatives to create a unique integrated service point for research, writing, and oral communication in the heart of the university’s main library. The case study also identifies continued partnership and collaboration, and briefly outlines methods through which libraries might initiate similar transformational changes and mergers at their own institutions, serving as a model for similar alliances in other settings.

Adults in the United States have low health literacy skills which puts them at high risk for serious health consequences. Libraries have traditionally provided programming on a variety of topics for patrons but barriers such as technology and transportation access may prevent potential patrons from attending. Librarians can help increase the health literacy skills of community members by providing health outreach programming to the communities they serve. This chapter examines strategies and specific examples that library managers can implement to facilitate technology and health literacy skills through programming in communities.

In Virginia, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder accused the state’s library agency of racism for “its slow pace in processing and publicly presenting records from his tenure as the nation’s first elected Black governor” (Associated Press, 2020). The State Librarian responded that this was just a lapse in protocols and framed it as a budget issue and staff turnover. However, “Library of Virginia has been processing papers from his gubernatorial successors before finishing work on his” (Associated Press, 2020). Recently, the Alabama State Department of Archives and History acknowledged their participation in systemic racism, epistemicide, and their history of privileging White voices over those of Alabama African-Americans.

Epistemicide is the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a way of knowing (Patin, Sebastian, Yeon, & Bertolini, 2020). Conceptualization and analytic application of epistemicide has an established tradition in a number of social science fields, but information scientists have only recently acknowledged epistemicide (Oliphant, 2021; Patin et al., 2020; Patin, Sebastian, Yeon, Bertolini, & Grimm, 2021). Building from our recent identification of the existence of epistemicide within the IS field (Patin et al., 2020), this work challenges the information field to become an epistemologically just space working to correct the systemic silencing of certain ways of knowing.

This chapter examines the four types of epistemic injustices—testimonial, hermeneutical, participatory, and curricular—occurring within libraries and archives and argues for a path forward to address these injustices within our programs, services, and curricula. It looks to digital humanities and to reevaluations of professional standards and LIS education to stop epistemicide and its harms. This chapter demonstrates how to affirm the power and experience of Black lives and highlight their experiences through the careful acquisition, collection, documentation, and publishing of relevant historical materials. Addressing epistemicide is critical for information professionals because we task ourselves with handling knowledge from every field. There has to be a reckoning before the paradigm can truly shift; if there is no acknowledgment of injustice, there is no room for justice.

In its simplest form, community engagement is a process whereby an organization works with the groups and individuals it serves to transform a shared vision into actions that ultimately benefit them. This chapter presents a framework to assist library managers and administrators in reimagining their outreach efforts from a community engagement perspective where users actively shape their shared experiences with the library. Although there are resources that discuss how libraries can structure these initiatives through the ACRL Library Marketing and Outreach Interest Group, the Public Library Association, and publications such as Marketing Libraries Journal, some of the literature surrounding community-based work is not as directly tied to outreach. By reading this chapter, libraries will find information related to defining their role within their communities, outlining strategies for collaboration, conducting needs assessment, gap analysis, asset mapping, and identifying a variety of outreach activities and their accompanying assessment strategies.

InfoMe is an innovative research program that explores and facilitates how ethnic minority youth help members of their social networks, especially elders, with everyday life situations through information and technology.

The project employs mixed methods, iteratively using Teen Design Days and a stratified random, classroom-based survey (n = 500) in six schools, with multiple community partners in King County, WA.

InfoMe inductively demonstrates how ethnic minority youth help others with situations of daily living through information and technology.

The findings are being used to develop InfoMe applications with the youth and InfoMe Train-the-Trainer workshops for professionals who work with youth.

The research is developing a model of how ethnic minority youth engage as information mediaries in different community settings, how individuals and communities benefit; and it is contributing to our general understanding of specific concepts related to the human information experience.