Changes on the third floor

by Miriam Posner, Brian Croxall, and Stewart Varner

If you've been to the third floor of the Woodruff Library lately, you've noticed that changes are afoot. Behind a temporary wall, workers are banging away at a new space called the Research Commons, with an opening date set for fall break.

The Research Commons space, pre-construction

The Research Commons is a new kind of space for us. It's designed to promote collaboration, with a focus on getting advanced students and faculty members to work with each other and with librarians. When the Research Commons opens, you'll find technology, events, and staff dedicated to advanced research.

The Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) will be the Research Commons's inaugural tenant. We can't wait to be in a public-facing space so our colleagues can find us! We specifically asked not to have offices, so scholars will always be able to see us easily.

It was an exciting challenge to figure out what a new collaborative space might look like. We tossed around a lot of metaphors, from "war rooms" to "playgrounds" to "parkland." We visited other spaces, talked to patrons, and sought advice. In the end, we decided to keep the space as open and flexible as possible, with a minimum of interior walls — at least for this first phase of construction. There will be a screening and conference room, presentation space, and computer workstations. The rest of the space will be defined mainly by furniture.

We're hoping that construction in future phases will be determined by how our patrons actually use the space. We'll know what we're missing when scholars tell us.

So we hope you'll join us on the third floor. Barring construction delays, the Research Commons will open in October, and we can't wait to hear what you have to say about it!