Welcome to Dri Ralph, who comes to us as the facilities design coordinator at the King county library system here in Washington. 
And also, Kendra Morgan, my colleague here at OCLC, who is bringing a wealth of experience and information, as well, on the topic. 
I'm going to pass it on over to Kendra to get us started. 
>> Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you all so much for joining us today. 
We're really excited to kick off the new year with one of our first Webinars, and glad that you are all able to join us. 
Today's session is, is titled Flexible Spaces -- Flexible Futures. 
I am pleased that Dri Ralph was able to join us today as my co-presenter. 
And I want to start by talking a bit today about what brought us to the focus of today's Webinar. 
And what started the process was just about two years ago we applied -- Webjunction applied for a grant from the Paul G. Allen family foundation, which is a foundation located here in Seattle, Washington. 
We proposed exploring the topic of innovative spaces, which can lead to community engagement. 
And we were awarded that grant, and work began on this project in January of 2013. 
Thanks to the support of the, the Allen family foundation. 
And we've been working for the last year on this project. 
Through this grant, we're, actually, working with two libraries here in Washington state. 
The Bellingham public library and the watcom library center, which are not Northwest corner of Washington state. 
They are doing community needs assessments, and also in the process of rearranging space and creating new opportunities for community engagement in their libraries. 
And later this year, we're looking forward to being able to share more information with you about their projects, how they approached taking these on in their libraries, and with their communities, and more about the findings from that work. 
As another part of this grant, we also held two focus groups in the fall to explore the ideas of community engagement and innovative spaces, with Washington State library staff. 
These focus groups provided us with an opportunity to learn more about these topics and with the guidance of this, these staff and the input that we received from them, we're looking to, to begin the process of creating a resource guide that's going to be available for all libraries on these topics, and we're looking forward to publishing that in the middle of the year, and we have just about 
another six months on this project, and working on this pilot with these libraries, and we're looking forward to being able to share those findings with you, as well as the resource guide that's going to result. 
One of the things that we did in these focus groups, were to look at the two major themes. 
Innovative spaces and community engagement. 
Essentially, how do we create spaces that are innovative and that allow for community engagement? 
There is so much activity in libraries around technology, and in some cases, we have a bit more space because we have some, some reduction in collection, moves to online materials. 
And it's not that these things have to happen together, but how can we look at opportunities that come through space and to allow for community engagement. 
So these focus groups explore the ideas of what these terms mean, and what resources would be especially helpful for libraries as they look to accomplish both of these things in their communities. 
So, I want to spend a bit of time engaging you, all of the participants in today's Webinar, in a similar activity to what we did with the focus group participants. 
So, looking at the term, innovative spaces, what I would like you to do is in the chat box, which you will find in the lower right hand corner, go ahead and enter what comes to mind for you when you think of innovative spaces. 
So, this could be key words am sentences. 
Whatever works for you. 
I would love to see a bit of thought about what comes to mind when you think about your library, your community, and innovative spaces. 
This was a great way for us to kick off our focus groups to talk about what it is that we want from innovative spaces. 
So, I'm seeing all of your responses come through. 
This is great. 
So, a place for creating, collaboration, group work, hands-on, flexible. 
I see a lot of flexible here. 
Group spaces for studying, quiet and collaborative spaces. 
A bit of both. 
Welcoming barrier-free, more hours of accessibility, the ability for experimentation, which is  great. 
Budget-friendly. 
That's great. 
We know that that is a major concern with a lot of libraries, is that there is not always the budget to do many renovations. 
I'm going to put up an example of a tag cloud, and this is what came out of the groups we held here in Washington. 
The key word that came out, and which led to, to the focus of today's Webinar, is the term,  flexible. 
And that was, by far, the strongest theme that people found in terms of the innovative spaces. 
What was interesting was that we, we wondered if people would automatically go to technology as the solution for innovation, and they did not. 
It was one of the themes. 
But, flexibility and being able to move space around and adapt to the needs of the community was, by far, one of the strongest themes. 
And what you will hear from Dri later in her presentation is some of the ways that they have approached flexibility at the King county library system in order to create space that evolves with the needs of the library on any particular day and the needs of the community. 
Thank you all for sharing that feedback. 
I think you will see some of the other things that are really interesting, too, and it's very similar to what you shared with us. 
Creativity. 
Change. 
Community focus. 
Adaptability. 
A lot of times if we design space to be flexible, it allows us this ongoing ability to keep meeting the needs of our community. 
So, the next term, remember we talked about two of these, is community engagement. 
So, the same activity, go ahead and post for us what comes to mind when you think about community engagement. 
So, we see great outreach collaboration. 
Sharing talent skills and stories. 
I really like that. 
The great thing is, I know a lot of the chat is going by really quickly, and I appreciate you all entering your thoughts in here. 
Remember, that the chat will be archived and available, so you will be able to go back and review these points and the things that came up. 
Collaboration is a big one that a lot of you are mentioning. 
The discussion of issues among patrons, what's relevant in your community at the time, and a meeting place. 
Development of relationships. 
A social place, bringing people together. 
So, what we found when we talked to the focus groups here, is that there are two types of themes that people focused on, and one is the kind of community engagement that, that comes from involving the community and planning, and the type that, that a library wants to, to ask the community what do you want your library to be? 
And the second was designing the space that, that allowed people to participate in that, in activities and be creative or productive, and that encourages participation, and that the library is really a place where that can happen. 
And it's a unique community space that is open to everyone and really does it, afford the opportunity for people to learn from each other. 
So, by far, one of the biggest themes that we saw here was the theme of community and bringing the community together to use the library space. 
So, one of the things that we like to look at is research and work that's happening in the library field, and at the end of 2013, the Pew internet in American life project released their latest study about public libraries in America, and one of the statistics that they shared is that 94% of people say that having a public library improve the quality of life in a community. 
Which is an amazing statistic because to get 94% of people to agree on anything is pretty challenging. 
But 94% of people think that communities are important to the value of the community. 
So now, we're faced with the challenge of making sure that our libraries continue to meet the expectations of our public, and continue to, to meet the evolving needs of our libraries, and make the community aware of just how much the library has to offer. 
So, with that, I am going to turn it over to Dri, who is going to share about the King county library system's experience with a large bond project that they have that is running a total of ten years, which is amazing. 
And some of the decisions that she has been able to help lead the community on in terms of setting up spaces that are going to be sustainable and that will evolve with the community as they grow. 
Welcome, Dri. 
>> Thanks, Kendra. 
This is kind of amazing. 
I'm watching this participant number increase and getting a little more nervous with every person that joins. 
So if everyone can be a little patient with me, that would be great. 
This is my first Webinar with OCLC, so I am so fascinated by your responses to the questions that Kendra threw out initially. 
Some of the your responses, I will be able to talk about today, if you have additional questions, I encourage you to put them in chat. 
We will have a couple of spaces through my slides that, that I can respond to questions. 
So, you all talked about flexibility a lot. 
Our focus groups talked about flexibility a lot. 
So, I'm going to talk about flexibility a lot. 
The King county library system is, is in the Seattle area. 
Let me see if I can get my slides moving higher. 
There we go. 
This is a screen grab of our capital bond page. 
We, actually, have a new website, so it looks new and fresh to me. 
But, we are one of the largest library systems in the country, which means we get a lot of project. 
We passed 172 million bond in 2004. 
We're, actually, in the ninth year of this bond process, and you could see that we finished about, about 30 projects, the started and completed projects. 
Through this process, we have definitely -- we have definitely learned a lot, and I want to share some of our initial thought processes with you, and then how things have evolved over time. 
So, I'm going to start off with a question to the, to, like, Kendra did, that I think is, is, will be interesting, interesting for you to think about. 
The first is what you think the number one thing that you need to do to get people into the library is. 
The number one issue is to help people get into the library. 
Ok. 
I see outreach. 
Any other ideas? 
Marketing. 
Free stuff. 
All hours. 
All really good comments. 
Nice buildings. 
Friends. 
These are all good things, but before I started with the library system, they really studied this out and looked at all of their locations. 
They found that the number one thing that, that influenced how many people came into the library every day was, actually, the location of the library. 
So, when we were looking at where we were going to place our libraries, we really thought -- we set up a site selection criteria, and that location and accessibility was the number one thing that we looked at. 
So, the building that you just saw a picture of Newcastle, which is a picture I will use throughout the day. 
This is a picture of where Newcastle is, so in the city of Newcastle, this is their prime intersection. 
And you could see right where the library system is. 
You could see it from both major roads. 
So, as in all thing with real estate, location, location, location. 
I know a lot of you are dealing with buildings or looking for buildings, but you already have established, and maybe they are not the, in the very best locations, and that's ok. 
Like the other things that you have talked about, do help with getting people in, especially if you can get it in the door once. 
If you do have the friendly staff, and that's where the outreach comes in and other things. 
They will likely come back, but we found if you can, you can let people see the library every day, it becomes its own best advertisement. 
So, another thing that we have learned through our process is it's really important to, to build libraries that have a lot of natural light, and that are, also, the right architecture for the community. 
So, I put up this lovely image of our black diamond library because it was part of a design-build project where we had five buildings, built at the same time, and there are all five or, there are 5,000 or 6,000 square feet built by the same architects and contractors. 
And, and as we were going through the community meetings, Etc., we really came to, to understand that the number one thing that people ask for was natural light, and its true. 
Somebody talked about the importance of light in the Northwest, and that's very true. 
But, we also found that these communities really wanted the building to reflect their history, their heritage, or just a personality, in some cases. 
So, black diamond. 
A little more rural community. 
We built them, what I like to term, our modern barn. 
And then Burien, to contrast that, this is a much larger building. 
30,000 square feet. 
It, actually, has a city hall on that third floor. 
Right here. 
Is city hall, and the library is these two floors. 
And again, you could see the importance of natural light, but you could see that the feel of this building is really different. 
So, working with our -- the right architects, selecting the right architects. 
Having community involved in the architect selection process to a certain extent, can really help the project. 
All right. 
The big topic of the day -- flexibility. 
So, I'm going to talk about these items. 
First infrastructure, and this is, mainly, focused on those of you who are either starting new projects or doing major remodels. 
Next, the patron path, and this is for everyone, for every size of library. 
Sometimes you can do it with low budget implications. 
But, I think one of the most helpful things that you can do once you get your patrons in your building. 
Next, some of the low-tech solutions, which I think are really great when it comes to flexibility. 
After that, we're going to talk about our multi-purpose room spaces. 
I saw some of you mention that after Kendra's question. 
And finally, a new experiment we're trying looking at flexibility, even when it comes to our shelving and our display. 
Kenmore, our beautiful Kenmore library. 
This is a really perfect example. 
We found kind of the sweet spot for the size of our building, 10,000 square feet, because at 10,000 square feet, you can really build a building that has no columns in it. 
If you look at this, you could see that the columns are along the edges, but we worked really hard to get those trusses at the top to do the job of stabilizing the building and really taking care of the infrastructure piece so that all we needed to do in the building was focus on the patrons and how they moved through the space. 
The other thing that you will notice about this building is that it's a simple shape. 
Every once in a while, you might find an architect who wants to do something a little crazy. 
And sometimes, if you are in a really big building, and you have one curved wall that's a real same, that's a great thing. 
But, if you are in a smaller building, I really encourage you to keep your shapes simple with the architects because it really provides for a long-term flexibility in the space, which I think is imperative as some of you have demonstrated. 
Your comments. 
>>> Next, I want to talk about the patron path. 
For those of you who heard me talk about, bear with me, but this is my favorite example of our patron path. 
This is our Sammamish library. 
It's a bit larger. 
It's 20,000 square feet. 
It was -- the library journal, it was one of the libraries of the year, which was great, after it was built. 
This is the before picture of the library. 
Before the, the new building. 
So, as you could see, I'm going to try and point here. 
This was the meeting room. 
Is everyone able to see my arrow that I'm pointing with? 
>> Yes, we can. 
Thank you. 
>> Awesome. 
Thank you. 
>>> So this is the meeting room, and this is a standard setup. 
You can have -- you've been, you can use the meeting room off-hours. 
But when you walk in the door of this library, you have this kind of big desk, and then you have what looks like a warehouse for books, right. 
A lot of, a lot of books. 
If you look at this, and you did a count, outside of computers, you have about 24 spaces for, for patrons. 
And when I went to this library, they were telling me how -- and I should mention this library is in a suburb of, of Seattle, that's, that's really well educated. 
80% of the population has masters degrees or higher. 
They are very nice people who live in Sammamish. 
The staff were telling me how people would get into fights over chairs in the library. 
And they just couldn't figure it out. 
We really needed a bigger building. 
And say kind of was amused, but I'm like, I think that you are right. 
You do need a bigger building, but what you really need is a few more chairs for people with, with 10,000, with a 10,000 square foot building, it seems like a few more than 24 chairs is in order. 
And then also, if you look at this, how are patrons really supposed to find where they can be? 
It's a bit like a maze getting around this building. 
So, when we built the new building, this is their new floor plan. 
As you could see, we made a big change in our building program. 
We moved the meeting rooms in, inboard. 
So here's the meeting room in the new Sammamish library. 
As people walk in, we have these generous walk spaces so that people can see exactly where they are supposed to go, and they can walk around the entire building. 
And on that path, they can discover whatever they are looking for that day. 
In one of our surveys, we found that while a lot of people liked the staff, they did not like to ask the staff for, for basic questions. 
They really wanted to discover the library and their materials for themselves. 
So, we really have worked hard to develop this patron path through the libraries so that it's really clear, and it's welcoming, and it's inviting, and people don't feel like they need to ask where they should be for, to find a book or for a study room or for quiet areas, that they are going to run into it as they, naturally, navigate through the building. 
So, a big, huge difference. 
We went from 24 feet to about 240 feet in this library. 
And we also went from a six-person library table to these lovely two or four-person tables. 
And that, again, is just a super low-tech solution to coming up with a way that it can be flexible. 
As your students are doing more group homework, as they are working together, this gives people a chance to either separate or to come together. 
Somebody asked if we use a link finding to support our patron path. 
And I would say that we have a way for our libraries, but it does not specifically address the patron path, but it lets them have queues as they go along. 
So, at the end of every stack, we have -- these are the stacks in the library, so they all have fiction signs, and they are all blue. 
So in all our libraries all our fiction signs are blue. 
All the non fiction signs, which are right here, are green. 
So there is that level of, of consistency that, that, that we have. 
So, it's really, it really has been amazing to see how this space is used. 
It's across the street from, from three high schools, so after high school, I was seeking a tour, actually, from those of you from St. Louis, folks from St. Louis, and this is how that flexible  seating area was being used. 
I have to tell you, I was so happy. 
I used this, I use this image all the time, and it's really not a great image. 
I just took it with my cell phone, but I was so thrilled to see every table being used, every -- the group kind of forming as they needed, the students really interacting with each other, and it was just really cool to see how a flexible space can be used on a normal Thursday afternoon. 
Somebody asked an important question here. 
They asked, how much did you reduce the size of the print collection. 
In Sammamish, we doubled the square footage, so we did not reduce the size of the collection at all in Sammamish. 
But, we also did not add to the size of the collection. 
With a couple of exceptions. 
We looked at some of their -- we added a little collection in fiction, but really, the, the size stayed the same. 
We really focused on the people space. 
Newcastle, this is one I showed a little bit earlier, and I want us to walk through the low-tech kind of furniture solutions to flexibility, especially if you have smaller spaces. 
So this is the floor plan for Newcastle. 
Where we're going to look, we're first going to look at this space right here. 
Then we're going to look at this space. 
Move to this one. 
End up here in our teen area. 
So, those are the images that are to come. 
All right. 
So, I like to have a diversity of furniture options in our building. 
Outside the building, is that, that everyone hold with me, I will move back. 
You could see that we have these, these red cubes that are the, the seats outside. 
So, we took a queue from that, and we moved -- we found the fun, red chairs that kind of mirror the Hugh for the inside. 
I really like this image of the girl reading her book with her feet up, and she feels really comfortable, and this furniture has a ten-year warranty and is, actually, all non breathable fabric, so you can easily wash it and maintain it, so it can handle a little foot traffic. 
These are the tables in that area. 
This is, this was opening day, a group of friends looking at the material that they found. 
But again, it's a type of furniture that's comfortable for some of our younger patrons. 
We have along the window here, you could see what we like to call a Cyber bar, which is a really efficient counter space that you can put a nice chair up to and, and it's a way to get great table space and great flexibility without as much square footage. 
And the red chairs are, actually, from nole, is the manufacturer of the red chairs. 
Somebody has asked how we secure our collections, and I will just say we do not secure our collections. 
We circulate about 23 million items a year, and the average age of any item in our collection is about four years old. 
So, we have done the cost analysis, and it's really much cheaper for us to experience some loss, but not, not have to secure every item. 
It's much more expensive to get the items secured than it is to, to have some amount of loss in our collection. 
So, this is the next area. 
And this was -- you could see a really different type of furniture, and I think that it's funny these slides are from opening day. 
The areas of furniture are being used perfectly. 
I like to, to put in our buildings, furniture that has a little higher seat, like you see here, with caps on, and it makes it easier for the older patrons to get in and out of. 
And an area like this, is a little less flexible than the area that you follow with the red couches. 
That's kind of more of a set up for people to move them around and interact with each other. 
Whereas this is a little more -- we put the chair there, and this is how we experience the space. 
And then as we move from that, this is another thing that we really like to do. 
Again, people say the number one thing they love about the library and want to see in the library is that natural light. 
And I was giving people a tour from Los Angeles yesterday and asked them what their favorite branch in their community was, and somebody started to talk about this branch that they loved, and they are like the light is just so pretty. 
So, I thought it was kind of fun. 
Not only in the Northwest. 
Even in Los Angeles, they care about the light quality in their buildings. 
So, with that, I like to capitalize on the perimeter seating by the windows. 
So in this case, we put a nice bench, and then we have tables that you can slide up to it. 
I love the image of this family right here. 
They are using the space really perfectly. 
You have got the son on his computer. 
The daughter on her tablet. 
The parents reading the magazine, and they can kind of spread out or contract as, as they feel comfortable in the space. 
We do not have closed captioned televisions. 
We have no cameras in our libraries for the person who had asked that question. 
This is the final slide that I wanted to show. 
This is the teen area. 
One of the things that I really like to do in the process is I like to take ideas about furniture out to the teens and get their input about what they like. 
One of the things that I was surprised at in the, and the first time I did this, was that a large library in Federal way -- we had 80 teens show up to give their input about the new library. 
Some of them had thought really hard about what they wanted to say and, and ones had come up with a written comment that was about a page and a half long, and it was really fun to hear their input. 
But, I had shown some really funky, cool, retro, new, modern, all different kinds of furniture that I thought would really engage the team, and the number one, number one chair that they picked was a super additional wing-backed chair. 
I am like, are you serious? 
This is what you want as your favorite chair of all these great chairs? 
But they were adamant about it. 
And so, in a lot of teen areas now, you will see that I really look for a chair that seems a little more traditional. 
I cover it in some fun fabric on the seat, and then super durable fabric on the rest of the chair. 
That is actually like a plether kind of material. 
So it's fun. 
It's shiny, but it's super durable. 
And the other thing that they said, and I have the pictures with these stools that actually moved and were really interesting, and they are like, we need a back. 
We need back support for our chairs. 
So, I learned my lesson, and even in the teen area, I will find a cool chair, but I always try and, and get some back support because it was important to them. 
And again, on opening day of the library, that's where this image comes from, and I talked to this teen for a while who loved the chairs. 
She's like, you listened to us so well, and you did our first choice chair. 
But the other thing to note in this image when you are thinking about designing spaces for your patrons, a good way to give people an indication of where they are is also that lighting level. 
So, over various spaces in our buildings, I really like to change up the lighting. 
And in this case, are the people we talked about before, this is one that's Orange, which is the color for our teen area. 
We neared that color in the light fixtures, so another indication includes your patrons about their path and where to find what they are looking for. 
All right. 
Into a huge flexibility conversation. 
This is Covington. 
It was one of our first libraries that we did. 
It's an expansion. 
We added 5,000 square feet to this building. 
So, they really wanted to reimagine the front of the building, which is the image that you see here. 
But, when you look at the floor plan, where we added was -- so this is the front door that you saw, and the meeting room you saw along the front. 
Where we added all of the square footage was, actually, this l shape right here. 
The rest of the library we kept exactly how it was, and it was nice. 
There is a big barrel ceiling here, so there is no columns. 
But, this community is fairly isolated. 
They don't have a lot of meeting room options. 
When I met with the community, they are like, we want 400 people to be able to sit in our meeting room, and really, if we were going to do a meeting room that would hold 400 people of course it would have been way too many square feet in the building. 
So, instead, what we did, is we, we efficiently put in the collection. 
You could see it here, and here. 
And then we really left this open area in the middle that we call the great hall space. 
What that looks like in person is this. 
So, all of the furniture that's in here -- see -- yeah. 
So, all of the furniture that's in this space is, actually, on casters so that it can easily be moved aside, and one of the great things about the space now is we'll have really large author events. 
We have had up to four, I think even 500 people in the library, and if you go back to the floor plan for the people who don't want to be involved with that, we have a quiet study room, and the meeting room up here in front. 
So, it gives us the flexibility to still have a space for people who aren't interested in whatever program is going on in the middle of the library. 
But, it enables us to do large programs in this part of the county that they really wanted that to be available to them. 
And as you could see, people of all sizes and shapes can use the library, and they even have some interesting furniture. 
This is, actually, our opening day, and we had some fun performers come that day with their stilts and all. 
All right, on we're going to move to our decision to move our meeting rooms inside the library. 
We felt like the square footage in letting our patrons experience everything that we offer in the library, it was important that we use every square footage every minute of the day. 
So, when a meeting is not scheduled, we wanted our meeting rooms to be part of the library so that we could open them up to being used for either quiet study or just regular study, after-school programs, Etc. 
So, I love this image. 
This was in our Snoqualmie library, and this is -- you could see that meeting room opens up into the rest of the library. 
If you have a really big program, that's what this meeting room can look like. 
You can, actually, raise this glass panel, which is, in this case, a garage door that moves up and really incorporate a lot of people into a program. 
This is another example of a meeting room, and again, making it so that you can use -- let's see if I can get my arrow back here. 
Yep. 
So, making it so that you can use the meeting room, and it's, when it's not being used for a  meeting. 
These tables are all on casters. 
You just flip them up. 
The chairs are super, super light. 
So, they are really easy to move, and then the soft seats have casters on the back. 
So, again, really trying to make those rooms multi-purpose, and it's just a really low-tech solution to incorporating flexibility over time. 
And then the scheme of the day that we're trying to figure out how to make work. 
As many of you, I'm sure, are experiencing the rise of our electronic collections. 
And some of you have probably had an experience that, that I had, which is, I'll be on a plane, and someone will talk about, about what they downloaded, and I will say, did you know that you can download that from the library for free? 
And they will be so surprised, or they will have their kindle out or whatever, and I will talk about the electronic services of the library, and people will say I didn't know that you could get that from the library. 
So, one of the great things that we want to be able to do is incorporate our electronic collections into our collections. 
So, to do that, we have really tried to work on our shelving system to enable us to have touch screens in the collection so that our electronic collections can advertise our print collection, and the print collection can advertise the electronic collection, and the patron can have the material in whichever format that they desire. 
But, really, just giving that electronic collection a voice in the library. 
So, we designed the shelving so you can manipulate it on the front and send power and data through the shelves, so it's easy to put more screens in, and take screens out. 
Whatever. 
And we've installed this in one library. 
This was the children's area. 
We also included some displays, spaces that you see here, and we have some seats, like you might see in a shoe store, in case you wanted to try on a piece of material. 
So this is, actually, just one of our catalog stations that we put into the shelving. 
But we also are doing a prototype with overdrive to have the electronic collection shown in the adult fiction area. 
So, we'll, we're working on getting it -- there is, I think, next generations that are coming to see if we can really take more advantage, even, of the flexibility of the shelving. 
All right. 
Do we have questions about flexibility that, that we might want to answer now before we move on to the public input? 
>> One of the biggest things that came up was a lot of interest in noise in your spaces, particularly, with your open floor plans. 
Can you talk a little bit about how your library addresses that concern? 
>> Yes. 
So, there is three complaints in libraries. 
One is, from a facilities' perspective, one is noise. 
One is light. 
And the other is temperature. 
So, on our buildings that are 15,000 square feet or above, we generally try to put a quiet study area in our buildings, so if people want a really quiet environment, they can go there. 
For our smaller buildings, we work on -- we do work on kind of zoning -- I call it the trifecta of noise. 
We have the children's area, the teen area, and the computers. 
So, I really try and separate the children's area from the computers and teens. 
Sometimes, the computers and teens can be a closer adjacentsy, so we really look at those  adjacentsies, but we also really work with our architects and our acoustics people, so that we will regularly treat our ceilings, treat our materials that we use to really take care of the noise as much as possible. 
That is one of the drawbacks to using a lot of glass. 
It's not a great absorbive surface for noise, so you have to be careful where you put it, how you put your patrons next to it, and what is next to them. 
Books, in other words, are a great noise barrier. 
So a lot of times I will, actually, use a non fiction section close to a teen area because the teens -- it really helps with the noise absorption. 
So, we're really conscious of it, and every project is a little bit different when it comes to the noise. 
>> Great. 
And with regards to the furniture, how do you feel about people moving the tables and chairs around themselves and how does the staff -- and when does the staff reset the room? 
>> I feel great about people moving the furniture. 
Really, really great. 
Do it as much as you want. 
The thing you will quickly notice is people move the furniture to go with the group. 
So we worked hard on where we put our electric so they are not moving for that reason. 
We want them to have the infrastructure that they need where the tables go, but if they are working on group projects or other thing, we really want them to be able to flex the space as they need it. 
As far as the reset question, I do like to have the furniture reset either every night or week, depending on the amount of movement. 
The main reason is that patron path, we talked about before. 
Sometimes if the furniture moves in an extreme way, the next patron comes through, they don't have the same experience as, as, I mean, maybe it works for whatever group, the night before, but then  it, actually, hinders the next set of patrons coming through the next morning. 
So, keeping that in mind. 
I really try and make the furniture that is planned to be movable, comfortable and easy to move. 
I want to make it light enough, so the smaller tables are really easy to move. 
Chairs are really easy to move. 
And then for those areas like we saw with the periodical area in Newcastle that aren't so easy to move, the furniture is much more solid and much more heavy and not as prone to moving. 
>> We'll let you pick back up. 
We'll ask a few more questions at the end am we don't, if we don't get to specific things, we'll follow up with Dri and include any responses we don't get to in the archive page for the Webinar. 
So, you can go ahead and continue. 
Thank you. 
>> Absolutely. 
So, this is the last section, and it's really brief. 
This is, as opposed to that community building question that Kendra started with, this is where will related to facility-specific public input where, where in my mind it makes sense to get the most from your patrons to let them feel like they are part and have them be part of the process. 
We do two public meetings for our building programs. 
One early on, and one a little later in the design process. 
And, and at the early meeting, a lot of times we show conceptual designs of the exterior and get people feedback but, we'll also show the bubble diagrams. 
The thing that I would really encourage you to do is that you are the library professionals, so really think about your work space and what it needs to do to meet the needs of the librarians, the staff, but also, the whole patrons. 
Not the one patron that's making the comment. 
But the whole patrons. 
So, with that said, we make these double diagrams that have things that are like the workroom here, and that's going to stay there no matter what. 
This is a renovation project. 
I'm not going to show that moving because it's where it needs to be for book return, and frankly, it will be way too expensive of a project if we try and move the infrastructure of the building. 
So, we'll have scheme a, and you will see that workroom there, and scheme A, and then scheme B, you will see the workroom stays in the same place. 
But other things, for the children's areas, where the multi-purpose room is, all of those things move, so getting -- giving people something to respond to, generally, really Representatives helps. 
This is the way it's fun to see a meeting where people start talking to each other, and start really building a community as they are giving input about a space that they care a lot about, so, that's kind of the most input from patrons that we love. 
Other things that we want patron input in, but a little more limited way, is our art selection process. 
If you have the entire community weighing in on art, I can almost guarantee you it will not be great art at the end. 
So, getting the right artists for the right community is important, and we'll do a smaller committee with that and invite somebody from the art community, someone from the friends group, and another patron to be part of that. 
But, a much smaller group when it's coming to, to really subjective things like art. 
So, this is a few examples of the vastly different types of art that have ended up in our buildings. 
This library had a lot of natural wood in it, and they chose to kind of maintain that in the arts. 
And then finally, where you might want less public input, so I mentioned that I often take different types of furniture out to the teens and let them put stickers on their favorite type of furniture, and that's great for the chairs, but where I really, really caution you about getting community input is the pallet of your library, which is the specific colors, and Etc. 
Some persons love Orange, some person hates Orange, and you are never going to get a consensus about a color palette, so I would invite you to think about where the patrons can have the most impact. 
If you ask someone to show up to a public meeting and they are so vehement that they hate Orange, and then you end up with an Orange chair in your building, they feel kind of disgruntled about it. 
Whereas if you say, this chair, or this chair, and you end up with the community preference chair, and you put whatever color is correct, everyone has a little better experience. 
So, our design things, location is most important. 
Natural light, the right architect for the community, flexibility, look at your infrastructure, if you have a new building project, your shape of the building, the columns. 
Every building can look at the patron path. 
Every building can look at those low-tech furniture solutions. 
Consider repurposing your meeting rooms. 
We, actually, have some of those old traditional meeting rooms that we put glass, a glass wall in to repurpose -- to make them multi-purpose rooms in some of our older buildings. 
And then I'll let you know how the shelving goes. 
and finally, public input, great for floor plans, limited for art, and really think about how you want to get public input and engagement for the interiors. 
That's it. 
You can get this lovely brochure that has pictures of all our buildings and the art that goes with them at our website. 
I think that Jennifer just posted the pdf link there, and that's all that I have. 
>> Thank you, thank you very much, Dri, and I will have a few questions at the end, and as a reminder for folks, for some of the specifics, if we don't get to, I will go ahead and add those to the archive, and we'll follow-up with Dri specifically on some of your questions. 
>>> So we wanted to talk a bit in the final minutes about projects of all sizes, and one of the biggest things that we took say way from the focus group sessions in that we had, that we had was the vast, vast majority of libraries are looking at working with their existing space. 
We're not talking about new buildings. 
And we are looking at, at projects of a much smaller scale. 
But, everything needs a starting point, and sometimes, that starting point is the hardest place to begin. 
A good place is to just sketch out what you want to accomplish with your efforts. 
This could be convening a staff group for a conversation, if you are very small, a small library, talking with your board, talking with patrons or particular groups of users, and come up with a list of potential projects that the library could tackle. 
Maybe with different potential costs or planned outcomes, but start the conversation. 
And these are just a few images of the types of things that people are doing in their library space from children, from children a events to knitting sessions. 
They are bringing community together. 
The second thing, and this is a tip that is low-cost, and that is getting a fresh perspective. 
When you are really familiar with your space, it can be difficult to look at it with fresh eyes, so engage someone that you trust to provide feedback. 
This is a great suggestion that came out of the focus groups. 
And, and it's inviting the director of another library or if you work with state library  consultants, invite someone in to have a fresh perspective and walk through your building. 
You can do it with two or three people, and gather that feedback. 
But, what are their first impressions when they come through the building? 
It could be as simple as you have too many signs. 
It's too much clutter. 
And we have also heard that local interior designers and even architects are often willing to donate an hour or two of their time to provide a few recommendations. 
In those cases, it is important to emphasize that you need low to no-cost budget suggestions so that the library can make the most of what it has, especially if you don't have the options for making new investments. 
And another item, and this is something that Dri touched on a lot, was being able to move your collection around. 
Being able to move your tables. 
Even in the smallest libraries, and we saw several of you comment on 800, 700 square feet, if you provide yourself with some flexibility by putting things on casters that can be locked and put into position, you allow yourself a bit more flexibility in the room, and you will see in the upper right hand corner that picture, it's a book display that is on wheels. 
So, there are lots of options for being able to do this both with existing materials in your library or with new purchases. 
The next one is making room. 
And this one is a tough one because in a lot of, especially smaller libraries, libraries of all  sizes, really, every square inch can make a difference. 
And you heard Dri talk about the fact that they have really reduced the size of their collection per square foot. 
And I believe that it's, it's five items per square foot. 
Dri, you will have to correct me if I am wrong me if that's wrong. 
>> Nope, that's right. 
>> And sometimes, weeding comes into that. 
As we look at increases in reference materials, for example, online, can you depend on that collection and, perhaps, deselect some of the items that are currently on the shelves and not getting as much use. 
The association for rural and small libraries has great declutter and weeding tips that you can take advantage of, and again, this is important for libraries of all sizes to make the most of the space that they have. 
And here's another really important one. 
It's not all or nothing. 
The King county library system was in a great position through their bond to do some very major projects, but as I mentioned at the beginning, we're really going to be spending time focusing on what libraries of all sizes can do with the little to no budget. 
Sometimes, those things declutterring, taking things down, putting up a fresh coat of paint really can make a very big difference in how, how people feel when they walk into your library and how they feel staying and engaging. 
So, things on wheels, things, a new coat of paint. 
Think about the smaller things you can do that are going to make a difference. 
And I want to talk about one, one other thing that came out of that Pew internet and American life study I mentioned at the beginning. 
And that is how well informed the public feels about the different services that the public libraries offer. 
And almost 77% said that they only know some to nothing about what the libraries can do for them. 
And that's, that's something that we really can take advantage of, so as you look to your spaces and you look to engage your community, don't forget to talk about and share that story with the public. 
Reach out to different groups. 
A lot of you mentioned community engagement as outreach and letting people know about the services that you have, and that is true, that we have to continue to promote the importance of libraries and the value that they bring to communities. 
So, I have a time for just a few more questions, and I am going to ask Dri, one of the things, Dri, you mentioned was the way finding scheme and the patron path. 
As this, is this consistent across your library system? 
Is there something that you use everywhere? 
>> Yes. 
It is. 
It's taken several years for us to implement it, and any of you who start these projects, they can be rather spendy, so implementing it as you have the budget to. 
But, we found that most of our patrons use between five and seven branches, so with them going to so many places, we want it to feel familiar and let them, again, find what they need to find without the staff help, unless they want the staff help, then they can ask, but it should not be required for them to find what they are looking for. 
>> And when it comes to lighting in the library, I remember when we had the chance to be at the Federal way library, you have shades on all of the windows that can be lowered to account for those super bright days that we all look forward to here in the Pacific Northwest. 
>> Yeah. 
>> And that's something that you also build into the buildings, correct? 
>> Absolutely. 
I saw someone make a comment about being in Idaho and having super bright sun at certain times of the year, so we are careful to use high efficiency glass and up high, we do not generally shade it, but when it comes down to where the patron is, and letting them be comfortable, we try to give them options. 
We have done that through normal shades, through screens that they can move back and forth. 
We have done it a number of ways. 
But, we want all of that natural light, but sometimes, it can be tricky with the glare. 
>> Great. 
Thank you very much. 
So, just as we wrap up, all of these links will continue to be available on the Webinar archive. 
There are several questions that I'm going to follow up with Dri on, on specifics that some of you asked about her building. 
And one of the key things that we're working on, and again, this is through the support of the Paul Allen foundation, through this grant and the work we're doing is a resource guide that will be available for libraries to help on these topics, and we're really looking forward to being able to share that with you. 
A bit later this year, and we will also be documenting the work of our two pilot libraries in Bellingham and watcum county and sharing the processes and tools that they used in their communities and the results of their work. 
My sincere thanks to Dri. 
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with us and to Betha and Jennifer for today's Webinar. 
Thank you all for participating. 
It was great to see your questions and comments in chat, and we look forward to following up with you on the archive page moving forward. 
Thank you all so much, and have a great day.