Graduate student and faculty spaces and services, spec kit 308
Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Graduate Student and Faculty Spaces and Services, SPEC Kit 308, which explores the variety of resources and services being delivered to or envisioned for these users by ARL member libraries.
Recently, ARL libraries have begun to experiment with an enriched set of spaces and services to meet the complex teaching, learning, and research needs of graduate students and faculty. Some libraries have introduced small sanctuaries (study rooms or lounges) for graduate students and faculty as distinctly separate from undergraduate spaces. Others are providing new suites of services, such as dissertation support, curriculum design, and learning-object design. In some cases, the services are offered in collaboration with other campus units—perhaps the Faculty Development Office, the Learning Technology Office, or Campus Computing. The new services and spaces may be localized in a discrete area (sometimes called a “Research Commons” or “Faculty Commons”) or opportunistically distributed across the library system.
This SPEC survey was distributed via the Web to the 123 ARL member libraries in March 2008. Of those 123 libraries, 65 completed the survey by the deadline of April 28 for a 53% response rate. Of the 65 respondents, 48 (74%) indicated that they provide or plan to provide services or spaces specifically designed for graduate students or faculty. Most are providing or designing spaces / services to meet the needs of both groups, with only seven reporting services / spaces exclusively for graduate students and two locations committed to providing service / space exclusively to faculty. Thirteen respondents target discipline-specific graduate students; eight of these also target a specific group of faculty. In most cases, the targeted groups tend to be in humanities or social sciences. …
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