What We’ve Been Up To: Seating Edition

You’ve probably noticed a number of changes to the seating in the library over the past few months! This spring, we spent a lot of time looking at how you use our space and thinking about what we can do to improve it. Overall, two main goals emerged:  to add more standing work spaces and more individual study spaces.

Here’s a floor-by-floor update on everything we’ve done:

4^th floor

We transformed unused journal shelves into a standing height counter and bought some high stools to make the space flexible. We added extra power outlets to the walls and you’ll also find a new device charging station with cords for all your devices at the far left edge of the counter. And if the seating area now looks a bit empty, it’s because we have a bunch of chairs out getting reupholstered! They’ll be back soon.

5^th floor

Continuing with our quest to add standing workspaces, we built a counter on the 5^th floor and put two of our public computers on it. There are outlets at counter-height so you can charge your devices while you work. We also added a standing desk like the ones on the 6^th and 7^th floors.

6^th floor

There weren’t any major changes to the 6^th floor, but we rearranged the furniture a bit and added a second standing desk as well as 8 new study carrels!

7^th floor

Since the 7^th floor is a quiet study floor, it made sense to replace a number of the tables in the open study area with carrels for individual study. We added 40 new carrels total. 12 of them replaced older style carrels and the rest are brand new study spots. And we purchased new chairs to go with all of them!

We also undertook a redistribution of furniture in the study rooms. We systematically went through every room and tried to rearrange the furniture in a way that made most sense—this mostly boiled down to making sure that each room had an appropriate number of chairs.

Let us know what you think! We always want to hear your ideas.