students, workers become better workers, citizens better citizens, and all of humanity benefits. Taken to their limits, notions of the library as place are attempts to more nearly realize the potential portrayed in this theory.
technologies prevalent in the early 1980s (Meyrowitz, 1985). A quarter cen- tury later, the situation he described has changed only to be intensified, especially within the microcosm of the library as it begins to assume the features of many other business settings. Scott Bennett surely is correct in his assertion that ‘‘in designing library space we attend too exclusively to library operations and pay too little attention to student learning’’ (Bennett, 2005, p. 21), but the disconnect goes well beyond the academic setting and purpose he describes.
Part of the problem resides in the fact that planning place is a much more complex enterprise than planning operations, for place is a much more elusive kind of entity. It is unlike most other things we do for place, after all, is a perception drawn from individual experience, a perception that may then be transformed into a concept that informs the design of space. Place identity ‘‘is a complex cognitive structure which is characterized by a host of attitudes, values, thoughts, beliefs, meanings and behavior tendencies that go well beyond just emotional attachments and belonging to particular places’’ (Proshansky et al., 1983, p. 62).
But, regardless of its complex, even ethereal, nature, the sense of place is real.27Political philosopher Hannah Arendt reasons that, in addition to the conditions of life presented to humankind, humans create their own con- ditions, which ‘‘possess the same conditioning power as natural things.
Whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence’’
(Arendt, 1958, p. 9). Stated otherwise, place creation is about feelings, but about feelings that can be conveyed to the understanding of others; it is about connecting feelings to the intellect.28 Because this perception or
‘‘conditioning power,’’ as Arendt calls it, is so well rooted, so intimately embedded in being, it should be no surprise that when it is disturbed, threatened, or lost, that disruption, threat or loss carries a weighty negative impact,29 even if subconsciously. Whatever is done with the space called library, surely we do not want it to become a space that offers so incon- sequential an experience that it conveys insufficient essence even to evoke a sense of threat at the thought of it being taken away. Marc Auge´, anthro- pologist and president of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, issues the sobering admonition that ‘‘The possibility of non-place is never absent from any place’’ (Auge´, 1995, p. 107).
Much as librarianship tries to design its services according to the inferred predilections and motivations of both the individual and society, trying to create place for both presents an even greater ambiguity for the designers.
But failure to address this challenge conscientiously would be no less an
abdication of responsibility than failure to deliver any other fundamental library service.30 ‘‘To design a place is therefore to try to design meaning and value’’ (Relf, 1996, p. 919). And in the end it must be a design whose presence is sufficiently strong that it can readily be sensed (grasped) by those for whom it is intended.
Values both inspirational and practical merge in the library place.
‘‘Memory and imagination, crucial elements in the quality of a place y shape what is called the spirit of a place’’ (Walter, 1988, p. 118). It is largely a question of knowing the most essential characteristics of likely users, and selecting the values to determine the ‘‘experiences that ‘should’ happen there’’ (Steele, 1981, p. 18). This is not a simple assignment. Occasionally throughout this paper, there has been allusion to art, while science always is more overtly implied in the melding of art into functional design. But there is more to making place than the combining of art and science. What remains is a third dimension made up of values and, still more subjectively, feelings. A librarian–architect team describes the process as follows:
Place-making involves the art and science of crafting spaces in ways that transcend their physical attributes. The successful library building, with its programs and its staff, cre- ates a sense of connection to the values, traditions, and intellectual life of the commu- nity, and helps the patron participate in building its future. (Demas & Scherer, p. 65)
They elaborate on this explanation by describing a transcendent/transportive coexistence that distinguishes the library as place31and recalls the description of place articulated by Yi-fu Tuan, that place ‘‘is the past and the present, stability and achievementyIt is the human home in the cosmic scheme of things y Place is created by human beings for human purposes’’ (Tuan, 1975, p. 165), meaning purposes peculiar to the condition of being human.
David M. Levy speculates on the reasons behind the recent boom in new library construction in the midst of emphasis that concurrently is being placed on the virtual nature of cyberspace. He suggests that it may be because
people want the advantages of the online world, but not at the expense of the physical, the material side of life. People recognize the value of shared, communal spaces where they can meet and greet or where they can work by themselves while surrounded by others. Libraries may be the only institution currently capable of creating and main- taining trusted, nonpartisan spaces of this kind. It may also be that physical libraries serve as symbols of certain shared, sacred values.(Levy, 2006, p. 250)
This still leaves the goal of establishing and sustaining the library as place a rather less clear goal than normally is employed in planning. But the concept of place is not unique in that regard. The concept of corporate culture,32 which in recent decades has claimed a significant position in the literature of
library management, also has in common with ‘‘place’’ a high degree of intangibility to which we are becoming rather accustomed in library man- agement. In fact, occupying a key point between the services offered in the library and the place in which we wish the clientele to experience them is the experience that is generated daily by the library employees. Through the application of a predetermined quality of interpersonal and interdepart- mental communication, they have much to do with the environment;
they have the potential to make or break the perceptions we may try to bring about through architecture and interior design. Library employees can be either thoughtful interpreters of the intended sense of place or they can be impediments to the communication of that experience. The culture and the physical space as place function symbiotically in creating the library experience.33
As asserted earlier, this essay is not about the functions that should or should not take place in the library or even about how they should be laid out. Nor is it about furnishings or lighting or acoustics or staffing respon- sibilities or whether the library should be digital or print or even the proper proportions thereof. It has nothing specific to do with the architecture or interior design of the library. All these considerations will vary from one type of library to another and are dependent on institutional mission and other local matters. There is no ‘‘how to’’‘‘manual for library place creation, for it is neither a simple mechanism nor a step-by-step process. Yet, on another plane, place does have everything to do with all of the aforemen- tioned: ‘‘If places are indeed a fundamental aspect of man’s existence in the world, if they are sources of security and identity for individuals and for groups of people, then it is important that the means of experiencing, cre- ating, and maintaining significant places are not lost’’ (Relph, 1976, p. 6).
Though the differentiation of place is highly individualized, there ev- idently is something about the values assigned by the perceiving individual to the library that is widely shared. These are the qualities that are essential to being human. Because of the great range of conditions surrounding the life of each individual, these values have been cultivated in some individuals more than in others; their residence is buried deeper in the self of some than in the self of others, but they are there to be aroused. Creating or sustaining the library place does not mean maintaining the tradition in toto and with no further accommodation any more than it means replacing whatever may be considered the traditional experience with something entirely new or opposite. It does mean, above all, achieving an understanding of the total library essence and ultimately employing that understanding as a context to inform local planning and management decisions, just as do other
environmental considerations and anything else that influences the quality of library service. Toward the close of his penetrating study of the place concept, psychologist David Canter states that ‘‘If the reader is looking for a key to unlock the practical, day-to-day implications of the research with which I have been dealing, then I would suggest the slogan: The Goal of Environmental Design is the Creation of Places’’ (Canter, 1977, p. 157). If spaces can be designed for political and commercial purposes, surely they can be designed specifically for purposes of the library. Because the library is a place with a latent essence that is rich in potential for experience, there may not be a right way or wrong way to accomplish this. But there may be better ways of strengthening, emphasizing, and drawing upon the potential.
However subtle and complex they may be, concepts of place have an es- sential function in making the library successful in its community.