A page for the Stanford Art Library Team

 

 

Design Journal

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April 22, 2008

First meeting with Peter Blank, the Head Librarian for the Department of Art & Art History

 

Background

The Department of Art & Art History is a multifaceted department that offers courses in art history, art practice (e.g. painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, digital art), film studies, and film and video production. In addition, students from the Product Design program as well as the d.school take classes within the department. The department is housed in the Nathan Cummings Art Building, which is located between the Hoover Tower and the History Corner of the Quad.

 

Peter’s ideas for redesigning the art library

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"Loud spaces" for meetings and for students whose work requires them to talk freely

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Seminar space (work space) with library kiosks

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Classroom with media tools (e.g. projectors and screen, lighting control, wireless internet connection)

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Hardwire connection for working with images

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Exhibition area to be visually interesting (visual culture in the environment)

 

Important issues

1. How should we co-arrange (or design) quiet space and public space in the library?
2. Graduate students’ working or reading area → should it be near stacks or separated from them?,
3. More media tools are needed in the “office like” laboratory space, how much space should be spared for graduate students, should it be stacks-based or small individual rooms?
4. Stacks → Better stacks for fitting different size of books and different formats of materials (the existing shelving system is not efficient for arraying books and compact shelving is problematic to browse).
5. Depth of stacks, organizing methods (e.g. Andy Warhola’s books are dispersed in stacks → Hard to browse).
6. Sit down area → no space for reading near stacks

 

 

 

Pictures from the Art Library:

 

The Front Door The First Floor

The Basement

 

 

The Blueprint

 

 

April 29, 2008

second meeting with Peter Blank, tour to the new library site next to Cantor Art center

 

Ideas for redesigning the Art Library:

 

1. The important learning spaces in the Art Library:

 

 

 

• Ease of finding "obscure" materials.
• Integration with the rest of Stanford's library system, especially the Media collection in Green    
• group spaces (talk and discussion/ share art collections/ view multimedia)    
• individual spaces (work/ study/ read/ view multimedia)    
• stack areas    
• exhibition spaces    
• periodicals/ reference collection areas    
• service points   
• course reservation? (not sure about this one) 

 

 

2. Copy stand: for copying stuff, light scanner, no flash photographing

 

3. Loud spaces: 

 

• <Open spaces> for individuals to discuss/ talk/ work together 
• <Closed spaces> 2 larger multi-purposes media rooms for viewing multimedia/ talking and discussion/ seminar/ classroom purposes:
  

One media room equipped with screens, TV, DVD players, projectors, cameras, internet etc. (refer to HP Room 201: a state-of-the-art media classroom); the other may consider merely equipped with wires, screen with wheels => users bring their own laptops, digital facilities  

• <Open spaces> individual quite areas: for individuals to view DVDs, online materials (using headsets) 
• <Closed spaces> multi-purposes media rooms (equipped with screens, TV, DVD players, projectors, cameras etc. as mentioned above): for group to view and share art collections (both physical and digital)/ classroom materials/ physical DVDs
  

5. Exhibition areas: art pieces are mainly from Cantor Arts Center and should be changed more frequently => also display students’ art works

 

6. Service points should not be far from the media/reading/working areas => in this way librarians can offer services to users constantly

 

 

Important issues about the new site:

 

1. The Art Library is designed for “Stanford”, NOT for certain art major students and faculty => considering diverse background users (e.g. undergraduate and graduate students in art history, film studies, zoology, and non-art majors students who take art classes, engineers etc.)

2. The new location is isolated from the center of campus => how to attract users to the new library?

3. Located near Cantor Arts Center => the Art Library needs to have welcoming environment. A destination for visitors to stop by? Transform to museum art library (e.g. increasing exhibition areas? holding exhibition from time to time? Showing students’ art? Etc.)

4. Improving studying atmosphere and attract more users => put Cafe or restaurant in the library?

 

Multimedia equipment on the first foor 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibition on the first floor

 

 

 

 

 

May 1st 2008 

 

Persona 1: Mark, Fine Arts Graduate Student (M.F.A.)

Mark is a graduate student studying M.F.A. at Stanford. This is his final year, and he is extremely busy preparing for the graduation exhibition held in June. He is currently a TA for the class called “Sound & Image”, and he also takes one class related to his work for the exhibition. He lives in a small apartment in Menlo Park, and he usually works on his art pieces at home. However, he needs to go to the school often these days to search for the materials and books that the professor shows to the “Sound & Image class, and to get ideas from other artists’ work for his own exhibition. He goes to the Art library and Green library to check out books to read. He prefers Green Library to the Art Library since because Green has more comfortable chairs, and he likes the bright, comfortable atmosphere of Green's Bing Wing. However, he still needs to use the Art Library's extensive collection of art books, which Green does not have. In case that he cannot find a book he needs in Green, he checks out the book from the art library and read it in Green since he is sensitive to the "cold and ugly" flourescent lighting in the Art Library. In addition, he enjoys coffee from Moonbeans Café, which is right next to the Green. Whenever he feels tired from reading books and making a sketch for his exhibition, he goes outside and has a cup of cappuccino under the sun.

 

Important design issues for Mark

 

Atmosphere – The Art Library has cold fluorescent lighting and concrete walls in the building. The fluorescent lighting is not good for looking at art books, and concrete walls make him feel he is in a bunker.

Chairs – Chairs in the Art library are not customizable at all. They are wooden chairs, which are very hard, without any adjustable grip.

Café – In the art library, there is no place for students to have a break from their reading.

 

Scenario

 

Mark is currently working on his art pieces for the graduation exhibition. Although Mark's main interest has been 19th-century artists, he has recently become interested in American pop art, and he is taking the class “American Modern Art” this quarter. Mark was quite impressed by the varied work of Andy Warhol, including his experimental underground films and music, and he wants to add a little sense of American modern art to one of his own pieces for the exhibition. Since he is not that familiar with Andy Warhol, he searches references about Andy Warhol’s art work on SULAIR, which is Stanford electronic database. He found a wide variety of Andy Warhol’s collection in the Art Library, and went there to read books and make snapshots of some images in the books. As he enters to the library, he notices that they replaced their exhibition in the lobby area with art pieces of fine art major- students. After he looked around the new exhibition of the library for about 30 minutes, he is looking for the books he needs to check out. He found four books in the lower level of the library and those books were all different in size and format. Especially two of them were extremely thick and big in size because they contain detailed images of Andy Warhol’s work. With the books, he takes a sit in his favorite place in the library on the first floor, which is a reading room for art major students. The room is well-lighted through the big windows in all the walls, and has comfortable chairs for reading. He enjoyed reading the books for three hours and found some images needed for his own work in the biggest book. During the reading time, he felt tired from watching the images too close, and he took a 30-minute break in Picasso café downstairs in the library. After finishing reading, he takes the book to the multimedia copying room, which is right next to the reading area, and uses the special copying machine for art books. The art-copying machine has a high resolution camera hanging from above, so he does not need to put the book inside of the scanner and press it. Since he has all the images he needs for his exhibition, he does not need to check out the books and carry them to his apartment in Menlo Park.

 

 

Persona 2: Jerry, Studio Art Instructor

 

 

Jerry, like many of Stanford's Studio Art faculty, is a local artist who teaches part-time at Stanford.  He has spent most of his life in the Bay Area, except for the four years during which he attended Antioch College in Ohio.  Aside from teaching at Stanford, his main occupation is working as a sound artist for a local multimedia production company.  He teaches classes in painting, scultpure, and electronic media.  He is currently teaching a class called "Sound & Image", which explores the relationship between sound and the moving (and non-moving) image.  Is use of the Art Library is relatively infrequent, perhaps about once a month.  When he makes slides to show in his class, he prefers to check out the books and use his own equipment at home, although if the Art Library offered similar equipment, he might use theirs instead. 

 

Scenario  

 

Today, Jerry is planning to show all 28 minutes of La Jetée, a 1962 British film that uses still images from World War II to create a haunting, narrated "documentary" about an imaginary World War III.  This film, as Jerry will tell his students, is essentially an "animatic," which is a story board that displays still images of what will be scenes from a filmed or animated movie, using the same timing that the finished piece will have, combined with sound and dialog that will appear in the final piece.  Jerry will explain to his students that studies by Stanford's own Cliff Nass has shown that sound actually plays a greated role in creating a sense of realism in media that visual quality, and also that humans are very strongly influenced by the presence of a story, which trumps almost everything.  He will suggest that this is why La Jetée seems almost like "regular" movie even though their is not one moving image in it.  However, it's not enough for him to merely tell this to his students.  He wants them to be able to find images of animation cels from old cartoons from the early 20th century, as well as images of 19th century Impressionist paintings, and combine them with the audio from a recent news report to create an animatic illustrating that story.

 

 

Watch La Jetée on YouTube:

 

 

 

Persona 3 Isaac, Film Studies Undergraduate Student

 

Isaac is a 21-year-old undergraduate student majoring in Film

Studies. His hometown is Houston. He is preparing for the

graduation film project and starts shooting movies. In his film,

he tries to discuss the diverse races in California and how this affects the interactions among people.

• He is not a good storyteller. He believes that only through his movies can he convince people.

• He likes reading novels and take photos to gain inspirations.

• In 2005, he has been an exchanged student to Tokyo, Japan for half a year.

• He likes East Asian movies a lot.

• He is a kind of emotional person. He often cries when he sees romantic movies.

• He will be heading for New York to continue graduate program in Asian film studies in this September.

 

Scenario:

Recently Isaac visits Stanford Art Library very often to photocopy some photo books and try to get inspiration for his movies from novels. However, he finds that the copy and scanning machines in the library are out of date. He notices that people seldom use the multimedia facilities (e.g. screens and DVD player) to watch movies since the open space is close to the quite studying area. Also, he sometimes feels disturbed by people’s noises because there is no unspoken rule in the Art Library. Overall, he prefers go to Green Library to study, read novels, and watch movies mainly because the studying atmosphere in Green is better - quite, having comfortable seats, and better multimedia facilities.

 

Dan, May 5.  These are three interesting people and I understand exactly who they are and what they need to get out of their library experience.  Well done.  You have done a good job giving these people some context as well, what they were doing before they came to Stanford, what they want to do next etc.  I also like these scenarios as a point for understanding what they do now; Mark's scenario is the one I am most interested in because it starts to hint at how your design can meet his needs.  For the scenario part of this project, you can develop the Mark one a little further then write out how Jerry and Isaac might interact with your design.  Would they ever interact with each other?  What happens if they are in there at the same time working on the same project? or different projects?  Overall, good job with these.

 

User scenariokkkkcxdldlfllllldeehhhhh

 

**Final paper

Art_Library_Final_Paper.pdf 

**Final presentation

Art_Library_final_presentation.pdf