College Library
Design Consultants
What to Look for

Before You Sign an Engagement

College library design consultants serve a fundamentally different function from architects: they translate service aspirations into a precise, buildable program before the architect lifts a pencil.

The right firm brings a tested methodology for observing actual patron behavior, a disciplined programming process, and the institutional credibility to advance decisions that internal voices cannot.

Evaluating candidates on portfolio depth, programming approach, observational tools, and reference calls will distinguish firms that protect the institution from those that simply produce reports.

Three Functions Distinct from Architectural Design

The confusion that leads institutions to skip the planning consultant almost always begins with a reasonable assumption: a skilled architect with library experience ought to be sufficient. The assumption is understandable, but it is wrong. As Fred Schlipf, one of the most cited voices in library building literature, writes plainly: an architect is not a substitute for a library building consultant. No matter how extensive an architect's library portfolio, architects are not librarians, they do not work inside libraries, and their professional priorities are different from those of an institution trying to build a facility that will serve its community well for a century or more.

The work that college library design consultants perform falls into three overlapping functions, each distinct from architectural design. The first is diagnostic: mapping how people actually use the existing building, where they cluster, what they avoid, and what institutional habits have calcified into spatial assumptions that no longer serve anyone well. The second is strategic: translating what the library needs to do, expressed in terms of services and user behaviors, into the precise square footage allocations, adjacency requirements, and functional specifications that constitute an architectural program. The third is political: providing the independent professional credibility that allows an institution to make difficult decisions, resolve internal disagreements, and present evidence to boards and capital campaign stakeholders in a form that internal advocacy alone cannot achieve. As the partners of this firm noted in Computers in Libraries, the consultant functions simultaneously as technical expediter and political activist.

These three functions are described in greater depth in our guide to what a library consultant does, but the essential point for anyone selecting a firm is this: when you evaluate a candidate, you are not primarily evaluating design sensibility. You are evaluating analytical method, programming discipline, and institutional judgment. Those qualities require a different set of questions than you would bring to an architectural selection committee.

The Most Important Deliverable

The single most important deliverable that college library design consultants produce is the building program, and understanding what a genuine program contains is the clearest test available for evaluating candidates before you hire them. A building program is not a vision statement, a space inventory, or a renovation wish list. It is an extremely detailed description of every space the library needs to meet its long-term service goals, including the purpose, square footage, physical character, furniture requirements, environmental specifications, and required adjacencies of each space. As Schlipf writes, a good program begins with services, moves from there to contents and spaces, and only then to building size.

This sequencing is diagnostic. A consultant who starts from square footage is working backward from assumptions. A consultant who starts from services is working forward from evidence. When you interview candidates, ask them to walk you through their programming process from first institutional meeting to final document. The answer will tell you immediately whether the firm treats programming as a research activity or as a formatting exercise. The Association of College and Research Libraries and Core, in their joint guide to academic library building design, place the library needs assessment and the institutional strategic plan at the foundation of any planning process. A candidate who cannot explain how those documents connect to the room-by-room specifications in the final program has not understood the assignment.

One of the most consequential findings from a 2016 Project Information Literacy study of 49 stakeholders across 22 academic library projects in the United States and Canada was that fewer than one in three participants reported using formal methods to systematically collect user data as part of the planning process. That finding reflects what happens when institutions rely on design intuition rather than programmatic evidence. A building shaped by assumption tends to replicate the existing facility's failures in a more expensive shell. The building program is what prevents that outcome, and the quality of your candidate's programming methodology is the most direct indicator of whether your project will succeed.

For institutions approaching a library master planning process rather than a single renovation, the program document must hold up not just against today's service model but against the enrollment, pedagogical, and technological changes the institution can reasonably anticipate over the next two to three decades. Ask every candidate this question before you sign: what does your program account for that the institution does not yet know it needs?

What Surveys Cannot Tell You

The 2016 Project Information Literacy research found that fewer than one in three stakeholders across twenty-two campus library projects used formal methods to systematically collect user data before making design decisions. That gap matters enormously in practice. Surveys and focus groups produce self-reported preferences, which are useful but incomplete: people describe how they think they use a space, or how they wish they used it, not necessarily how they behave under actual conditions. The most reliable observational tools are structured, facilitated walkthroughs conducted with library staff and community members together, in which trained observers map patron movement, cluster formation, avoided zones, and the behavioral patterns that the existing building either supports or frustrates.

This methodology, described in detail in our Visual Scan guide, generates an observational record that becomes the foundation for every spatial recommendation that follows. When you interview candidates, ask what specific field method they use to document how patrons currently use the building. If the answer is surveys and focus groups only, ask a follow-up: at what point in your process do you actually observe behavior in the space? The question is not hostile. It is the clearest way to determine whether a firm will program your specific library or a generalized version of one.

Research from Ithaka S+R underscores why institution-specific observation matters so much. As Nancy Fried Foster noted in her work on evidence-based academic library design, the role of the library varies significantly from one college or university to another; academic libraries no longer share a mission in any way like they did as recently as thirty or forty years ago. A firm that relies on what worked at comparable institutions, rather than on what your specific users actually do in your specific building, is not programming your library. It is applying a template. Templates save time in the short run and cost money in the long one.

What Portfolio Review Actually Reveals

Every credible request for proposals for library planning services asks candidates to provide examples of similar projects, with contact information for the institutional representative on each. This standard is not bureaucratic formality. It reflects a genuine need to understand whether a firm has encountered the specific challenges your project will present. A four-year residential college library faces different conditions than a community college learning resource center, an urban research university, or a specialized health sciences facility. When you review a portfolio, look for institutional type, scale, and service complexity that approximates your situation. Prestigious names and large footprints are not the right criteria.

Portfolio review should also examine staying power. As Schlipf has written, library building consultants should be expected to remain with projects from programming through bid, reviewing construction documents for alignment with the program and participating in punch list at project completion. The most experienced firms earn a significant share of their value in these later phases, when lighting and acoustic specifications are checked against program requirements and when the institution still holds contractual leverage over the contractor to require corrections. A firm whose engagement ends at the program document has handed off its institutional knowledge at the moment it is most needed.

The 2016 PIL research revealed another dimension of this problem: in many projects studied, provosts and senior administrators made early decisions about shared spaces and campus partnerships without adequate input from library staff. The result, according to the librarians interviewed, was clashes over mission, culture, and space allocation that proved difficult to resolve once design had advanced. The right consultant prevents this outcome by establishing clear programmatic requirements before design can commit the institution to decisions no one has examined carefully. This is not incidental to the planning engagement. It is the engagement.

Reference calls are where this institutional history becomes legible. When you contact past clients, ask specifically whether the building program was complete before design began, whether the consultant remained engaged through construction document review, and how the firm handled moments when architectural preferences and library service requirements conflicted. The answers reveal whether the firm functions as a genuine institutional advocate or as a report generator. That distinction will matter more than any line item in the fee proposal.

Applied in This Sequence

Applied in this sequence, these steps protect the institution from the two most common selection errors in academic library capital projects: choosing an architect who performs programming as a secondary service, and choosing a planning firm that programs in the abstract rather than from observed behavioral evidence.

Step 1: Define the engagement scope before you advertise. Decide whether you need programming only, programming plus master planning, or a full engagement from program through construction document review and punch list. These are distinct scopes requiring different fee structures, timelines, and professional qualifications. A candidate who proposes the same process regardless of your scope has not heard your situation carefully.

Step 2: Separate the consultant's contract from the architect's. Issue separate contracts for planning and architecture, with the program document as the deliverable that must exist before the architect begins schematic design. If your institution has already retained an architect, establish in writing for both parties that the consultant's program takes precedence over any preliminary sketches already in circulation.

Step 3: Test the programming methodology in the interview. Ask candidates to describe their programming process from first institutional meeting to final document. Listen for whether they begin from services, users, and institutional mission, or from square footage benchmarks and comparable-project data. The right starting point is what the library must do and for whom. Building size follows from that answer; it does not precede it.

Step 4: Probe the behavioral and observational toolkit. Ask what specific method the firm uses to observe how patrons currently use the existing building before making any recommendations. Candidates should describe a structured, facilitated field observation protocol involving library staff and community members. If the answer is surveys and focus groups only, ask the follow-up: at what point do you actually observe behavior in the building? The gap between self-report and observed behavior is where most programming errors originate.

Step 5: Evaluate the portfolio by institutional type, scale, and recency. Request a full list of completed library projects from the past ten years with active contact information for the institutional representative on each. Within that list, look for at least three projects comparable to yours in type, scale, and service complexity. For renovation projects, ask specifically about experience assessing existing structures for functional strengths and problems, not only for designing new space.

Step 6: Conduct reference calls focused on institutional outcomes, not deliverables. Ask past clients these questions: Was the building program complete before design began? Did the consultant remain engaged through construction document review and punch list? Were there significant design changes after the program was finalized, and how were they handled? How did the firm navigate disagreements between its recommendations and the architect's design preferences? The answers distinguish consultants who protect institutions from those who serve them at a comfortable distance.

The Most Costly Selection Errors

Allowing design sketches to precede the building program, regardless of pressure from the architect or the construction schedule, is the single most common and most expensive error in academic library capital projects. Once a design has committed the building to a spatial logic, reversing course costs time and money the institution does not have.

Selecting a consultant primarily on fee is the second most common error. The cost of a planning error in a capital library project almost always exceeds the consulting fee by a significant multiple. A program that misallocates 2,000 square feet of a $40 million renovation is not a small mistake.

Accepting a claim of library experience without reviewing completed program documents and speaking to the institutional representatives who commissioned them leaves the institution without the evidence it needs to distinguish genuine expertise from portfolio marketing. Assuming the architect's internal programming service is equivalent to independent library planning consultation is a related error that produces the same outcome.

Excluding the planning consultant from conversations about institutional technology strategy, digital collections, and service model evolution is a structural mistake, since these decisions shape space requirements directly. A service point planning engagement that does not account for digital infrastructure will produce a program that is obsolete before the building opens.

Treating the engagement as a one-directional reporting relationship is the final error on this list and the hardest to correct once it has taken hold. The most valuable planning work surfaces disagreements early enough to resolve them before they become construction change orders. A consultant who only reports and never challenges is not protecting the institution's investment.

Pages in This Collection

What Does a Library Consultant Do? Roles, Methods, and When to Hire One — The foundational guide to understanding the consultant's role before any engagement begins.

Academic Library Planner: From Enrollment Data to a Defensible Space Program — How enrollment projections, usage statistics, and behavioral observation combine into a space program that survives board scrutiny.

How Do Library Consultants Assess Library Performance? The Visual Scan in Practice — The structured walkthrough methodology that turns observable patron behavior into actionable spatial recommendations.

Library Master Planning: Aligning Space, Services, and Institutional Mission Over Time — For institutions planning beyond a single renovation cycle.