Development of a New Student Centre
A refurbishment programme is being carried out at the Aldham Robarts LRC, which is linked to a major change programme to enhance the student experience. The refurbishment will update the LRC and will also provide the opportunity to bring all student facing services into one building.
This programme of change offers an exciting opportunity to provide student focussed and professional services from one campus location, incorporating flexible social learning facilities in a 24/7 environment. By bringing services offered by the LRCs and the Campus centres into one space we aim to provide a seamless and intuitive service, with staff helping people to navigate their way to the specialist support they may need. The new Centre will provide flexible, student owned space, services and technologies, which will allow students far more choice as to how they make use of our services. In brief the Centre will include:
A refurbishment programme is being carried out at the Aldham Robarts LRC, which is linked to a major change programme to enhance the student experience. The refurbishment will update the LRC and will also provide the opportunity to bring all student facing services into one building.
This programme of change offers an exciting opportunity to provide student focussed and professional services from one campus location, incorporating flexible social learning facilities in a 24/7 environment. By bringing services offered by the LRCs and the Campus centres into one space we aim to provide a seamless and intuitive service, with staff helping people to navigate their way to the specialist support they may need. The new Centre will provide flexible, student owned space, services and technologies, which will allow students far more choice as to how they make use of our services. In brief the Centre will include:
Ground floor:
A Welcome Team hub dealing with all immediate enquiries and providing a referral and appointments service
Social learning facilities (as piloted at the Avril Robarts LRC) and including flexible space, support in the use of mobile technology – including lap top loans, refreshments and group study areas.
A transaction area to seek help with IT, fee payments, submission of coursework.
Mobile staff support, with rooms for one-to-one meetings as needed.
Other floors:
Private space for welfare and counselling support
Printed books and other learning materials
Equipment to support learning and teaching
Silent study facilities
A Welcome Team hub dealing with all immediate enquiries and providing a referral and appointments service
Social learning facilities (as piloted at the Avril Robarts LRC) and including flexible space, support in the use of mobile technology – including lap top loans, refreshments and group study areas.
A transaction area to seek help with IT, fee payments, submission of coursework.
Mobile staff support, with rooms for one-to-one meetings as needed.
Other floors:
Private space for welfare and counselling support
Printed books and other learning materials
Equipment to support learning and teaching
Silent study facilities
We would really like to hear about what you think of the proposals for the Aldham Robarts project and would welcome any comments you wish to make.
4 comments:
a lot of the text sounds very corny, i.e. 'welcome tem hub' - its almost as bad as the wow factor. and i'm not convinced on the ground floor layout, particularly the position of the book loan areas. Plus there seems to be a lot of dead space in places that don't appear to be high traffic, fair enough you obviously want an informal layout but i think their could be a few more computers. Also, will there be as many resources available when your done? i am concerned you may be sacrificing some book space. finally, i'm not sure removing the stair is a brilliant idea - maybe there is a good reason - but i don't imagine moving between floors on the auxillary stairs is very flattering.
The terms for the areas are still very much a work in progress, for the time being we have a working title of ‘welcome desk’ for the desk in the entrance that will offer directional services and first line support for LRC services and an appointment booking service for welfare and counselling, disability support, careers and employability teams and library and IT support.
At this stage our best guess for visitor numbers is over 6,000 per day. The design of the Social Learning spaces is to allow students to move furniture around so that they can create a space suitable for the number working together, or find somewhere to work on their own. We are putting 45 wired PCs in this area but also putting a power socket at most of the fixed seats as many students either bring their own notebook or borrow a laptop and prefer to plug into a power source.
The building will still contain the same number of PCs and as it does now though they will be on different floors. There is no reduction in the library collection, indeed we will be able to house the whole of the Exhibition Catalogue collection together and on suitable library shelving for the first time.
We found we could not create an acceptable flow for people entering the building and maintain the security systems, (people and library materials) with the stairs in place so after months of trying to design around the staircase we came to the conclusion that we should remove them. We other staircases will be improved as part of the refurbishment.
Brigid Badger
Aldham Project coordinator
The closure of the library is a complete joke! Will I get a partial refund of my tuition fees?!!!?
Although the physical building will be closed all items in the main stock and journal collections will be available, though there will be a delay of 24 hours while staff retrieve the items and send them to Avril Robarts LRC for collection or consultation. The academic staff have selected the essential items from the collections at Aldham that will be required during the summer period and these will be available on clearly identified shelves on the 2nd Floor in Avril Robarts LRC.
Additional support for library users –
- From 24th April students will be able to borrow up to 30 items so that they may borrow the books they require for the summer period. These books will be due for return in October.
- Access to computing facilities.
The IT suite in john Foster building will provide computing access in the local area. Computing access is also available at Avril Robarts and I M Marsh LRCs.
- Support
General and specialist assistance for students will be available from the Avril Robarts LRC. It may be necessary to make an appointment with the specialist staff based in advance and these appointments will be held in Avril Robarts.
- Service opening hours maintained.
Avril Robarts will open for the late evenings normally offered at Aldham, in this way the access hours to services and support will not be reduced. Please see the LRC Opening hours page for full details of the opening times.
http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lea/83095.htm
We hope that we have shown that the help and support for students are unaffected and the library stock remains available to best of our ability while the contractors are undertaking the refurbishments to the building.
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