Changing Services and Space at an Academic Library

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how an academic library managed changes in services and space to meet customer needs for streamlined services, increasing efficiency for students, faculty and staff in finding, analyzing, sharing, and producing knowledge. The Ohio State University's John A. Prior Health Sciences Library (PHSL) has merged its circulation and reference desks into one service point, added technology-based services, updated software and hardware on public workstations, and placed more emphasis on a variety of educational offerings. These changes save customers' time and effort by minimizing the need to obtain assistance at multiple service points. This paper provides a review of resulting improvements and customers' use of services and spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Space utilization
• information commons
• public services