Post occupancy evaluation of academic library spaces: Key considerations and major challenges

The past decade has witnessed major developments in many university libraries around the world. Innovative pedagogies, the knowledge about how the new generation of students learns and Information and Communication Technologies have faced academic libraries with the challenge of providing a variety of learning, social, and informal spaces. This brought to the fore the need to better understand space utilisation in academic libraries, examine the effectiveness of these spaces, and assess their impacts on learning and teaching in higher education as well as students’ experiences of university life. This paper examines the major challenges involved in the processes of evaluating physical spaces in academic libraries. It draws upon a literature review of existing post-occupancy evaluation studies of library spaces and the lessons learned from evaluation studies of academic library spaces of three Australian Universities (2011-2015). The paper concludes with a checklist of key factors to be considered by designers, librarians or anyone who aims to carry out or lead evaluation studies of library spaces. This checklist addresses four sections on (1) how to establish the grounds for an evaluation study of library spaces i.e. preparation and collecting documentary data related to the backgrounds and context of the library under study; (2) what methodology to adopt i.e. participation of students and staff, data collection methods and analysis; (3) how to carry out or lead the evaluation processes; and (4) how to use the findings of the evaluation to inform future decision-making in relation to space development.