Movement and Access

Three concepts govern movement and access inside a library building: physical boundaries, organizational structure, and spatial practice. The first concept is the most obvious of the three. At the base of all movement and access inside a library is the fact that most if not all of the library’s daily activities are fixed within the library itself—and not just on the library site but inside the building itself. Therefore, the most basic of all architectural elements, walls and doors, play a fundamental role in shaping

experience. People cannot walk through walls or float between levels therefore doors and staircases facilitate movement and make movement and access an event: “We possess space by moving through it,” explains Mayerovitch (1996, p. 127). “The voyage creates a sequence of effects, one space preparing us for the impact of the next. Organizing movement makes [space] effective, both functionally and emotionally.”

Doors (see 4xxix), therefore, not only negotiate access, but make compartmentalisation and isolation possible. They symbolize access, they symbolize isolation, and, as explored in the last section, they symbolize rank and

status. The idea of “door” turns up in people’s responses in figurative ways; for example, some staff at Salterton meet in the programming room in the basement because they get to “close the door to the public” (A-Sally). The comment is just as metaphorical as it is literal. Locks are not to keep people out as much as they are to make access conditional: Who are you? For what reasons do you need access to this room or space? Use of locks concentrates

(Top) Locked doors inside the Deptford Library;

(bottom) inside the Cornish Library’s enclosed (and locked) local history room. (Photos by author.)

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on filtering and operates the same way on either side of the front-/back-of-house boundary. Just as a locked CEO’s office keeps certain items from staff’s eyes, a locked door can keep certain collections and materials out of a user’s reach. A good example of this is the Cornish library’s local history room (see 4xxx), a partitioned room at the north end of the building’s second level. At first glance, it would seem that the room is open to the public but partitioned off for reasons of sound isolation. However, the door is locked all the time. As user C-Patrick explained to me, “They get the materials for you. When you’re done with [an item], you take it back to the desk and say ‘I’m finished,’ and then they put it back. You don’t go in there and go through the shelves [yourself],” (C-Patrick). The process is a common one in libraries and has been for a long time. That is because it is such a simple yet powerful example of the filtering process.

While doors negotiate access, staircases and elevators facilitate it. Stairs and elevators have an interesting paradox: because they allow connection among different levels of a building people normally associate them with freedom and access. However, because they are fixed spatially, they in turn fix one’s movement at a certain point and position one’s field of vision so that one sees and experiences things in a controlled sequence. At Salterton, the stairs are integral to the publicly accessible space; their design shows that. Rather than being merely functional stairs, much like Deptford or Cornish’s steel and concrete staircases, Salterton’s staircase’s (see 4xxxi) curved railings stoop to put arms around the user, inviting and thus implying direction: up. Moreover, the staircase occurs in two parts: a singular staircase and, just a half-level below the library’s upper floor, it splits into a double staircase, leading users either east or west. Double staircases “dramatize ascent” (Mayerovitch, 1996, p. 110). Like Salterton’s, Cornish’s stairs (see 4xxxiii) are placed in the library proper; however, their design is rather linear and functional. Curiously, the Deptford (see 4xxxii) library uses stairs in a very different manner. The only publicly accessible stairs in the Deptford library exist outside of the library proper—in the foyer, beyond the checkout desks. They connect the main level with the basement, which also contains publicly accessible space. However, because users must first leave the library proper in order to gain access to the basement, there is the sense that what the basement contains—the public restrooms, the library’s auditorium—is not an integral part of the library. By contrast the only “movement facilitator”

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(Above) Salterton’s grand staircase, which splits into a “dramatic” double staircase at its landing; note the tiled “trail” that leads users from the circulation desk area to the bottom of the staircase and continues up the staircase itself. (Middle)

Deptford’s only public stairs, the steel stairs that lead from the front foyer to the basement. (Bottom)

Cornish’s floating staircase; it connects the first and second levels, although no such staircase connects the second and third levels. (Photos by author.)

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or device linking the library’s main floor to the upper Children’s Department is a ramp. There are no stairs or elevators. One must access the Children’s Department via the adult library. Consequently there is the sense that the Children’s Department is not its own space but rather an extension of the adult library space.

Organizational structure affects movement and access just as much as physical boundaries do. In fact, where and what library staff member can and cannot access in the library is, in all three case libraries, directly proportional to organizational rank, not need—which is curious, given the public library’s traditional focus on efficiency. Though a low-level and/or part-time staff member may at some time require frequent access to a meeting room, programming room, a special collections or storage area, such staff members often do not carry the keys or codes necessary for access. They must obtain them from designated (often higher-ranking) personnel. The Salterton library’s managers and supervisors carry keys; part-time and low- ranking full-time staff do not. Another good example is the Cornish Library’s local history room, situated on the library’s second level and partitioned off from the rest of the library proper. The door is always locked, and library staff require a separate key for access (a physical key, although the overwhelming majority of locks in this library are operated via number code). Thus one lock can create not just a filtering process but a structure to that process that relates to organizational design: the only way into the room is via designated, higher-ranking personnel. Curiously, at Deptford, one part-time staff member explained that he possessed a key that could open nearly every door in the building. He added, however, that he had always made a point of keeping that quiet, as he suspected that his having a master key was a mistake. At Salterton staff members regularly told me that if there was a room or area to which they required access but did not have a key—the attic, where some local history collections are stored, or the programming room which is used almost daily— “... you have to go find a key for someone to open it,” said A-Sarah, adding that “no one’s going to deny me access to that area if I need it.” At the Cornish library, a similar, tiered- access system exists. Access is restricted by department. Thus if a department is closed (for example, the Gallery) no one else can enter unless someone (a member of management, usually) gives them access. Therefore the design of the building has an impact on policy and

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procedures; while the library organization constructed the building, the building in turn constructs an integral aspect of the organization. Moreover, if in a public library building a staff member’s “reach” of access is a direct function of one’s rank, it can be argued the two most powerful people in a public library building are the library’s CEO (or Chief Librarian) and the Chief Caretaker (or Building Superintendant). They have, of any staff member or manager, the broadest reach of access.

In addition to walls, doors, and systems of tiered-access is a certain spatial practice that governs where people choose to go and where they choose to avoid and why. Some staff felt that, though they may have direct access to a co-worker or supervisor’s office or workspace, they would not feel “right” accessing it unless they had an exceptional reason to. A user’s sense of where they can and cannot (or should not) go sometimes has little to do with physical accessibility and more with an implicit sense of permission—or lack thereof. When I asked users to explain where in the library they felt they were not allowed to go, most of them answered “in the staff rooms” (B-Pamela, “places that are locked up” (C-Paul) or something similar. Users believed that these areas of the library were off-limits unless under exceptional circumstances or unless one had, as B-Paula put it, “special permission” to go. Interestingly, some users (for instance, Salterton user A-Preston) claimed that they did not feel welcome in the children’s section—users that did not visit the library with children but nevertheless claimed to enjoy some of the Children’s Department’s materials. This feeling of unwelcomeness they experience may be more than just a feeling; when interviewing some children’s library staff there was the suggestion that users in the children’s department not accompanying children are suspicious and require extra attention. Volunteers are not staff but are more than merely users. They are allowed access into the back, but only under certain conditions and only when they are acting as volunteers—when their organizational identities change and thus spatial identities change.