New campus includes advanced library services designed for and by USF Polytechnic students, faculty

The library planned for the University of South Florida Polytechnic’s new campus will have the learning and research features common to many university libraries, but it will also incorporate the same advanced technology, services, and settings found in the some of the best universities in the country.

Poly faculty toured multiple campuses – including polytechnics – to cull the best offerings for students and faculty on the new campus. The result: a library befitting Florida’s first and only public polytechnic university, said Catherine Lavallée-Welch, library director at USF Polytechnic.

“We’re planning a library that will perfectly reflect the cross-discipline, applied learning approach so rooted at USF Polytechnic,” said Lavallée-Welch, who oversees the library design for the new campus. “And the design and services that we will offer will be an extension of all of us because they will be based on input from throughout Poly.”

Among the many aspects of the new library – from the design of the space to its technology – is that all the key library, information and research services will be in one place, unlike now where they are dispersed across multiple areas of the campus.

“Faculty and students will no longer have to run all over campus to get what they need,” Lavallée-Welch said. “Our plan is for a one-stop shop.”

According to Lavallée-Welch, “Today’s university libraries are vastly different than they were several decades ago, or even one decade ago. And while most are based on a model with ‘information’ common areas, the up-and-coming libraries feature ‘knowledge’ common areas, which are collateral, parallel services to students as well as faculty.”

For example, information common areas include research assistants, instructional services, and computer laboratories with information technology services. Knowledge common areas not only include these services but also integrate collaborative areas, writing centers, tutoring, and a more expanded instruction technology center with audio/visual equipment and support, a multi-media lab and a digital studio that offer a range of technology, such as recording booths, and support for campus-wide network functions, such as Blackboard and TLI.

All of these are planned for the new USF Poly library, Lavallée-Welch said.

It is part of an entirely new campus being built for USF Poly on a 530-acre site next to Interstate 4 at the eastern terminus of the Polk Parkway. Ground was broken in November and the first building will be complete in 2013, when USF Poly is scheduled to become a four-year institution. The majority of USF Poly’s current programs and people will then move from the space it has shared with Polk State College since opening in 1988.

The new library will be housed in the new campus’s Wellness Center, which totals 100,000 gross square feet and will also hold student services, classrooms, and labs. The project includes several phases, but the ultimate campus is expected to be completed several years from now, perhaps even a decade or more. A larger, dedicated building for the library falls in Phase II of the construction plan scheduled for an estimated 10 years from now.

“The overall goal in our new space is to have flexibility,” Lavallée-Welch said. “We don’t want rows of computers. Instead we want small common areas and small study rooms with chairs that can be moved around and moveable white boards that students can use at will. And quiet study space, too. The way I see it is it’s about how the students use the space.”

That space includes group study rooms that offer more privacy for practicing presentations.

“Today’s students are submitting projects and assignments in a variety of formats and need the resources to support them, including fully-equipped spaces that mirror a classroom so they can practice,” said Lavallée-Welch.

And, just as libraries have done for ages, the new USF Poly library will have a special collections room “where we can showcase the good stuff we have,” Lavallée-Welch said.

As they were planning the new space, Lavallée-Welch and fellow faculty visited libraries at more than a dozen colleges and universities, including Temple University, Drexel University, Georgia Tech, Southern Polytechnic State University, University of Wisconsin-Stout, and the University of Central Florida, which opened its new Knowledge Commons in the main library just last year. In addition, Lavallée-Welch will meet with fellow library administrators from numerous other universities at upcoming conferences, including one in Canada in May.

Along with researching libraries at other universities, Lavallée-Welch is looking inside USF Polytechnic for guidance and will conduct multiple student/faculty needs assessments and surveys to determine their priorities for useful library services and research and study environments.

“We will ask them if they’d prefer open or quiet areas and which support services would mean the most to their learning success,” she said.

“This new library will meet their current needs and offer the flexibility to meet their future needs.”

A native of Quebec, Lavallée-Welch earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a master’s degree in library and information science from the Université de Montréal. After serving as electronic resources and reference librarian at the University of Louisville, she joined USF Polytechnic in 2005.