Over the past eight years, there hasn’t been a single academic library that I’ve entered that didn’t have a bright and enticing Learning Commons. These large, open spaces have quickly become a modern staple in academic libraries looking to offer students with an aesthetically attractive ‘one-stop-shop’ for their research and study space, complete with fun technological equipment, various information service departments, and rearrangeable furniture & whiteboards. Comparisons between the group-oriented, supportive environment of Learning Commons and the “holistic, nurturing environment”1 that feminist librarians aim to facilitate are easy to make. But, how might the open interior design of Learning Commons hinder a supportive and secure environment for patrons when coming to reference desk spaces with personal or sensitive research? Additionally, how might library workers also be affected by the architectural choice to expose reference offices when considering “how organizational spaces are simultaneously gendered and gendering” environments through placement, visibility, and lighting?2 Using my experiences working with students in the reference offices at two separate academic libraries (labelled #1 & #2), I argue that applying Learning Commons design methods to reference assistance spaces can both worsen library anxiety, particularly for marginalized groups, and heighten a pressure for library workers to perform while serving patrons, particularly in a field when women work the majority of desk assistance positions.3 I finish by proposing how feminist ethics of care & empathy and theories of spatial gender-class work can be used to balance the needs for patrons to feel that a reference desk is findable, approachable, and a safe space to express their needs & research ideas.
Surveillance & Gendered space for Library Workers
While working at library #1, I saw a stark contrast between the architectural layouts of the reference and administrative spaces at the library. The reference office was brightly lit with two glass walls that allowed visitors to easily view the reference desk and the dual-screen reference assistance computer screens. This office was mainly staffed by cisgender women. The office was also placed in a high-traffic area on the first floor next to the computer lab and a small Learning Commons space to increase the amount of walk-in assistance4. In contrast, the administration office was on the second floor with enclosed walls and only two glass doors that provided a birds-eye view of the first floor. This space mainly contained the offices of library positions held by cisgender men.5 In their work on spatial gender dynamics and organizational aesthetics, Varda Wasserman and Michal Frenkel identify how sexist and classist hierarchies are reinforced by architectural design, such as only providing secluded office space for higher management positions more often held by men and using the openness of office spaces created for lower desk workers as an opportunity to surveil women workers’ adherence to dress code and procedure. In my experience working in this glass-walled reference office as a nonbinary person frequently perceived as a woman, I often felt pressured to perform a socialized stereotype of feminine customer service rather than authentic assistance when being viewed by the cisgender men in the highest library administration positions. It could also be argued that this type of surveillance and power dynamics could cause library workers to develop a sense of “detached professionalism” that lacks an ethics of care as discussed by Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor.6 In this way, the stark contrast and physically hierarchical spatial layout of the reference office and administrative office, along with the gender divide between the offices, reinforced patriarchal power dynamics in the reference office that can remove a sense of safety and care from a reference space.
Hypervisibility of Reference Offices & Library Anxiety
While the power dynamics between the reference and administration spaces can limit the amount of authentic care and attention a library worker can bring to reference assistance, the patron-to-patron visibility of open-concept reference offices can also heighten library anxiety for a patron. Openness and visibility is often boasted as the ideal for information desks in academic libraries but reference desk assistance can vastly differ from the impersonal directional or technical assistance requested at circulation desks, with patrons often looking for more in-depth consultation about their personal research or interests. In Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction, Maria Accardi discusses how library anxiety, anxiety that a patron has at approaching library workers for assistance, disproportionately affects patrons from marginalized groups such as women, people of color, and queer folk. In addition, Accardi explains how a patron’s “query will be filtered through that anxiety, which will make it difficult for the learner to express what they need and desire” (40).7 When seeing reference spaces that are completely exposed by transparent walls with large computer screens, I can’t help but be concerned with how marginalized patrons may feel with this lack of privacy. For instance, while working at academic library #2, a roughly 2.5ft x 4ft flat screen TV was used in lieu of a desktop screen (to make the screen easier for a patron to see) that unfortunately broadcasted a patron’s research topic to anyone walking past the office. When a freshman student came into the office looking for assistance finding sources on representations of gender dysphoria through art, I perceived their questions and responses becoming short & shorter as more people looked into or entered the desk space. From my experience, the publicity of this patron’s interests, in relation to their own self-proclaimed identity as gender queer, seemed to be the source of their anxiety. This interaction shows how the lack of private space around reference desks can particularly worsen barriers to comfortable library service for marginalized patrons.
Feminist Ethics-based Solutions
So, how can librarians and library designers balance the need of open learning space designs while also providing space for private consultation and care? One simple solution that a feminist librarian could pursue that wouldn’t involve costly renovations could be to apply semi-opaque window sticks to the glass walls in transparent offices.8 The glass covers could function as an additional layer of privacy around the reference desk while also being printed with additional signage for the reference desk, possibly making up for the loss of direct visibility of the desk. Along the suggestions of Varda and Frenkel, the glass covers could also be an opportunity to introduce more color and creativity into stark, institutional environments. This reconstruction of the office space through color and signage could also create a more inviting space that could visually build privacy and breakdown conventionally bland office spaces. Another feminist ethics/pedagogy approach is to work around large, hyper visible computer screens. This can be done in the initial reference interview by being upfront with the patron and asking if they would rather want to use their own laptop in order to keep their research topic private to patrons and librarians that may pass by the office. By prioritizing the privacy of the patron and the creation of a safe space for a patron to express their interests, a feminist librarian can better approach the patron through a lens of empathy without being confronted with concerns about administrative surveillance themselves.
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1. Maria Accardi, Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2013), pg. 54.
2. Wasserman, Varda, and Michal Frenkel. 2015. “Spatial Work in Between Glass Ceilings and Glass Walls: Gender-Class Intersectionality and Organizational Aesthetics.” Organization Studies 36 (11): pg. 1485–1505. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840615593583.
3. I choose not to include names of the specific libraries because this piece is not intended as attacks on these individual libraries. Issues with lack of patron privacy, library worker surveillance, and hierarchically gendered space is in no way specific to these libraries; these are just the cases that come to mind from my own experience.
4.
Library #1 Reference office
5.
Library #1 Administrative office
6. Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives,” Archivaria, 81 (Spring 2016): pg. 25.
7. Maria Accardi, Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2013), pg. 40.
8. These could be similar to the glass covers that some libraries already use to cover glass at the entrance of the building for event signage.
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