Every student knows the library can be a special place to study, gather with friends or just relax. Serving as a social hotspot before the pandemic, the library has remained the only open building at WSU Vancouver for over a year. As the library currently serves as a space for students to safely study with COVID-19 protocols, director of the library, Karen Diller, is currently researching physical spaces and how they impact students’ study habits.
As she sits in her own office space, Diller’s walls are accompanied by light blue paint and a large window decorated with hanging plants. When asked how she created such a unique space, Diller says her inspiration and passion for study space research comes from the idea of hospital recovery gardens.
“There was a lot of research starting to be done about how greenspaces or windows in hospital rooms can aid in recovery, and in the ability for people to concentrate on the important details that doctors are telling them to pay attention to. Those things are, in some ways, very similar to what you need when you study. You need to be able to concentrate and absorb new information and make the connections in your brain to what you already know. You need to de-stress because it is shown that stress can make studying and doing the deep work of critical thinking more difficult,” Diller said.
Keeping this in mind, Diller has designed the WSU Vancouver library as the ultimate study space. By placing many indoor plants that sit throughout the corners of the library, Diller says they improve air quality and make for a more pleasing environment. Other qualities of a great study space are the presence of large windows, and being surrounded by books. Additionally, Diller says students often enjoy seeing books when they study, even when they are not actively using them.
“They do not see those as maybe valuable research materials for their particular needs, but having the books there says something to them about being in a library. People say, ‘I know what I am supposed to do in this space, it helps me to impose some discipline on myself about studying because that is what I am supposed to be doing in this space,’” Diller said.
According to Diller, comfortable chairs and large tables are also a benefit to the study space too. Therefore, when all elements to making a great study space are combined, the library at WSU Vancouver shines as the perfect example. While at home, students might also want to integrate some of these study space elements to improve their own experience.
One of the employees working in the library, Sam Cousins, is currently a senior and digital technology and culture major, and works on campus four days a week. She says the university’s move to online instruction this past year has made the library a very different place than it was before.
“It is really weird having it all digital. … I feel a little bit bad for everybody who is just starting and did not get to experience what campus was like,” Cousins said. “You walk into the library and it is dead in there. That was never the case [before COVID]. When everybody was here, the library was constantly full, despite it being a library. There was a constant hum of life.”
Although the library works as a great space for Cousins to work, it is difficult to create a perfect place for everyone to complete homework, because all students have different needs and learn in different ways. Diller says some students require a quiet area, while others enjoy a more lively environment.
“People learn in different ways, then it is also dependent on what your activity is at the time, you know, what do you want to accomplish in that space today? The same person might need to learn by doing for one class, or for one activity, conversing when there is a group project. Then when someone is studying for an exam or is really starting to write that research paper, they need the quiet reflection space,” Diller said.
Before the switch to online instruction, Diller was working on adding more quiet study spaces to the library, which was lacking due to the limited amount of space to work with. Before the pandemic, roughly 30 students could use the quiet study room at one time, but now it is drastically less.
“My research agenda and my passion is the design of interior spaces in the library. Students don’t need to come to the library to get materials in many cases now, but undergraduate students continually tell us that they use the library, and we see that to be true. They’re using it in different ways, and so that was part of what got me interested. With the advent of the internet, the library has changed. We’re not the gatekeepers to the information anymore,” Diller said. “Students have families, they have children, they have home responsibilities. Students work a lot and so they really have to be able to most effectively use their time when they are ready to do their schoolwork. … What really gets me up in the morning is asking ‘how can we make this space in the library work for that?’”
While Diller continues to pursue her passion for forming the best possible study spaces for students, there is no question as to why the library is such a comfortable place to get work done. The large windows overlooking the campus and beyond, are proven to provide students with a wonderful environment to be in while they study in comfy chairs surrounded by a variety of lush indoor houseplants. The library is designed for success, and if you have not had much luck with studying at home lately, try paying it a visit sometime. It could be just what you need to ace that next exam.