By Lauren Brown

Students work together in Footnotes, the café in McKeldin. Soon, they will be able to collaborate in similar open spaces on the library’s second floor. Photo by John T. Consoli

The second floor of McKeldin Library this summer is quietly undergoing an extreme makeover—from staid book warehouse to vibrant, comfortable space that encourages collaborative, multimedia learning.

University Libraries is overseeing a renovation of 16,000 square feet of the floor, removing book collections and most of the staff, putting in new carpet and paint, installing more desktop computers and many more electrical outlets for laptop computers and adding a large array of sofas and café-style tables.

This first phase of the new Terrapin Learning Commons, says Dean Patricia Steele, is just the start of a long-term rethinking of how the university’s premier library needs to best serve its patrons.

“I hope it will add comfort, since we aren’t going to be able to do everything right away in the space. It will show things are changing and will change more,” Steele says. “We need to engage students in what will be the solutions. Information commons have to change all the time to respond to students’ expectations.”

Steele came to Maryland a year ago from Indiana University, where she also created an information commons with same elements the staff at Maryland was just starting to implement.

McKeldin Library. Photo by Selin Balci.

“It turned into the liveliest place in town,” she recalls. Soon, Indiana made space there for information technology staffers, who brought services to students, like help with password glitches, computer problems and support at a shared information desk. “And that was so successful, that students asked for quiet computing, and we renovated a space for that. Then we made another for shared space.”

All that is part of the full plan for the Terrapin Learning Commons. Tanner Wray, director of public services at the Libraries, says he’s focused in July and August—when McKeldin’s second floor is closed to the public—with getting the first wave of technology, furniture and electrical outlets installed. He says a Libraries’ informal survey one day at the end of the spring semester counted 270 people using laptop computers on first and second floors of McKeldin.

“Patrons have been going crazy. They have no place to plug in and they’re very frustrated,” he says. “So we’re trying to solve that problem.”

Jane Williams, the Libraries’ director of planning and administrative services who is supervising the construction, says the cozier setup and inviting bright colors will result in “what looks and feels like a very different place than what McKeldin looks and feels like now.

“Students are accustomed to working much more collaboratively in small groups,” she says. “This will make it easier or them to work independently or together.”

It will also be easy to access, she says. The first and second floors of McKeldin are open around the clock Sunday through Thursday nights during the academic year.

The second phase, which will be scheduled when funding becomes available, calls for introducing more technology, including a self-service scanning area and multimedia workstations where students can put together video and audio presentations. Wray says a secure station for recharging cell phones and laptops is also on the way.

The Libraries’ administration is also considering longer-term additions such as creating designated spaces for graduate students and faculty, and for the Office of Information Technology to be on site.

The Writing Center and the Center for Undergraduate Research already make their homes on the second floor, but the Libraries are in talks to bring in other partners, such as the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Williams says staffing would also be welcome, as all public staffing at McKeldin is currently on the first floor and at access services, like the circulation desk. “We want eventually to have staff on site to give help, to do electronic reference work, chat or text reference, to offer research help so patrons would not have to leave the second floor.”

Steele says the coming academic year will be an opportunity to see what does and doesn’t work in the commons, and to engage students in thinking about how they want to use the floor and building, which nets 1.1 million visits a year.

“The learning commons installation will make the use go way up,” she says. And that offers a welcome challenge: figuring out how to accommodate even more patrons and give them more of what they want.