Library Needs Assessment for Space, Services, and Collections
Developing a lifelong learning strategy for a library requires more than a facilities upgrade or a digital subscription package. It demands a modernizing plan and framework that aligns physical space, service programming, and collection development into a single, adaptive system.
The following concept draws on the planning principles and case studies that have shaped library development across academic institutions in the United States, Ireland, UK, UAE, SA and internationally. It is organized around four interdependent pillars:
- Space
- Services
- Digital collections
- Physical collections
Start With a Needs Assessment, Not a Wish List
Every library strategy begins with an honest analysis of the current conditions. Before you start to redesign your library or analyze the library collection subscriptions, the leadership team should conduct a library needs assessment that captures how the library is actually used — and by whom.
This means working with professionals who can employ multiple data-gathering methods:
- Surveys
- Roundtable focus groups
- Observational assessments
- Analysis of community and service data
Observational assessments including walkthroughs (what Aaron Cohen Associates, LTD calls the Visual Scan). From a quantitative point of view, analysis of collections, circulation, visitor and usage statistics. The visual scan is particularly valuable. Touring the library through the eyes of a user reveals what no spreadsheet will: it tells you what seating areas are perpetually occupied, which aisles are maze-like, where the light fails, and where the noise accumulates. These observations are the raw qualitative material of a functional library program.
The library needs assessment should produce three outputs: a clear picture of current space utilization, a profile of the user needs and modern learning behaviors, and a set of library services. Sometimes we call these GAPS that the institution has the capacity to close or update. Without this library planning work, any collection strategy for improvement may be misguided.
Design for Modern Learning
The three foundational variables in library space planning are seating, collections, and staff operations. Every space decision flows from the balance among these three. The challenge of library community and/or learning strategy is that this balance must accommodate not a single user type but a diversity of users. For example, the first-year undergraduate who needs a quiet carrel, the graduate researcher who requires a dedicated scholarly workspace, and the faculty member seeking a consultation room, and the returning alumnus who simply needs reliable Wi-Fi and a table.
Effective space planning addresses this diversity through differentiation. A well-programmed library provides:
- Quiet individual study — carrels of 30–40 net assignable square feet, located away from noisy zones, equipped with task lighting, WiFi and power
- Collaborative workspaces — adaptable zones with movable furniture, writable surfaces, and display screens, sized at 600–800 square feet for larger groups
- Learning commons — the central space of the modern academic library, ranging from 15,000 to 250,000 square feet depending on institutional scale, integrating technology, informal seating, research, special collections and academic support services
- Specialized research environments — purpose built graduate study areas, program / classrooms, and open collaboration spaces that support scholarly work
The key design principle is diversity. Modular furniture, demountable walls, analysis of floors for technology, infrastructure, and open workspace plans that allow the library to reconfigure itself as institutional needs shift. A library built for today’s curriculum but incapable of accommodating tomorrow’s life-long learning community.
Poor HVAC performance, inadequate natural light, and outdated acoustics degrade the cognitive library environment. These are not aesthetic concerns; they directly affect whether research work can thrive i.e. sustain the kind of focused work that academic success requires.
Build an Open Collaborative Space
The modern library service model we expect will include lifelong learning / community activities, daily scholarly work and the completion of coursework. This type of modern library is not organized around transactions — checkouts, reference queries, interlibrary loans. It is organized around open collaboration and individual work: a set of user spaces, programs and support structures that meet users where they are in their academic development. A modern library that draws in the community, progressively delivering scholarly opportunities to participate in the institution’s intellectual life.
This means integrating the library’s service program with the broader academic mission. At Le Moyne College, for example, a quantitative reasoning center was co-located with the learning commons, creating a direct adjacency between research support and academic skills development. At DePaul University, the reorganization of study seating and collaborative areas was paired with the integration of university archives and preservation services. In both cases, the library became a research center. The libraries are a network of services rather than a standalone app or service.
A modern service strategy should include:
- Information literacy programming tied directly to course curricula, not offered as optional workshops
- Research consultation services differentiated by academic level — undergraduate, graduate, faculty
- Academic skills partnerships with writing centers, quantitative center, tutoring programs, and disability services
- Outreach and engagement programs that create loyalty and repeated use, including library card initiatives, student worker programs, and alumni access policies
The third-place concept is relevant here. Ray Oldenburg’s formulation — the library as neither home nor workplace but a third space of an academic community. Oldenburg describes what the best academic libraries already are. The third place strategy includes a design to support a student when they are not in class, or in the dorm or in the student union. The library is a third place and a place that supports student success.
Access is Library Service
Contrary to the news, the digital collection is not a supplement to the physical library. For many students, it is the library. A modern library strategy must treat digital access as a primary service obligation, not a secondary convenience. There must be spaces that support digital marketing, touch screen access and QR codes to support discovery.
This discovery space requires three things: a curated collection of database links using QR codes, e-books, and e-journals rotating on screens that are aligned with the institution’s academic programs. The library needs assessment includes a discovery layer. This is both physical set ups and digitals apps that makes those resources findable without specialized training. And a library service infrastructure that supports users who do not know how to navigate what they have access to.
The last point is underappreciated. Students who have grown up with Google and Netflix do not automatically know how to use academic databases or access digital streaming services (e.g. Kanopy, Proquest, etc.). The learning curve is real and must be built into the library service program. Information literacy instruction, research guides, and embedded librarian programs are enhancements by which digital collections generate actual academic value, relating to student success and retention.
Certainly, digital strategy requires attention to preservation. In our experience, institutional repositories, digital archives, and metadata standards are not glamorous investments, but they are the infrastructure on which the library’s long-term intellectual contribution depends. For example, the Smithsonian Libraries’ development of shared digital collections is an instructive model: resources built by librarians who understood that accessibility and preservation are not competing values but complementary ones.
Physical Collections
The physical collection remains a strategic asset, but it requires active management. The modern library does not attempt to house everything; it houses what its users need and what its mission requires it to preserve.
This means regular library collection review — weeding outdated materials, identifying high-use items for prominent placement, and making deliberate decisions about what belongs in collections. Aaron Cohen’s planning standard of ten volumes per square foot provides a useful baseline for calculating collection space requirements, but the more important calculation is the ratio of collection space to user space. In most academic libraries, that ratio was tilted too far toward collections at the expense of the library. There are many libraries that need space for those to work. Modernizing a library is a way to improve the effectiveness and functional quality of the library.
Note, the special collections and archives need a strategic plan too. Rare and unique materials demand environmental controls — temperature, humidity, light exposure — as well as security protocols and access policies that balance preservation with scholarly use. The unique collections are not merely historical artifacts; they are active research resources. When properly stewarded these significant institutional assets can be leveraged into deep learning. The archives value is not only intellectual but financial, and an archival evaluation enables the institution to validate research collections, make condition assessments, benchmark against other libraries. A comprehensive collections strategy includes all types of collections and storage options.
High-density storage systems, including automated retrieval technologies, offer a practical path forward for institutions whose open-stack space has been exhausted. The University of Galway is developing a new type of automated storage system. Its autostore retrieval system will be installed into a new type of modern library.
Compounding Investment
A modern library strategy is a long and short term planning report. It is an investment in the institution’s capacity to educate, modernize and expand services physically and virtually. The library that conducts a user needs assessments, tests new designs, experiments with spaces will succeed. That’s because it will serve the full range of learners, build library education programs tied to the academic mission. Certainly, it will help manage digital and physical collections access and build value over time.
The institutions that understand this — that the library is not a cost center but a retention tool, a research space and infrastructure, and a community anchor. In fact, they will be the ones that remain genuinely indispensable. The ones that do not will find themselves with a broken buildings or one that is too small, or a collections that is out of date, or a place that is under utilized.
