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On Friday, September 28th, seven members of the ZSR staff, Giz Womack, Mary Horton, Lauren Pressley, Chris Burris, Kaeley McMahan, Leslie McCall, and Mary Scanlon, visited the NCSU Learning Commons in the D. H. Hill Library. The website contains detailed information about the services offered by the Commons as well as the blog for the Commons, which is an interesting read.

This Commons includes 2 group study rooms and a presentation practice room all with either projectors or flat panels and white boards. There are over 100 workstations and numerous “soft seating” areas. In addition to the workstations, there are 100 laptops available for checkout, along with mp3 players, digital camera and camcorders and handheld GPS units.

Joe Williams, the Director of the Learning Commons, gave our group a tour of this facility and other parts of the Library. We were all interested in how the Library had placed all the reference materials on shelves around the perimeter of the Learning Commons, making them far more visible than when in stacks.

As with any new space, they are experiencing “growing pains.” Noise levels are occasionally high and some users are not happy with the placement of video game stations in the Commons. Some problems are taking care of themselves. For example, noise levels in the adjoining Special Collections reading room dropped when lamps were added to the large tables that helped with studying, but hindered cross table discussion, an unplanned benefit of the stately brass lamps.

Check out our photos of the NCSU Learning Commons. Also, here’s a brief (and very low resolution) movie of the NCSU Learning Commons.

(Note the abundance of flat panel displays at the entrance, exit and over the service desk that point out available computers, locations of shuttle busses, and more!)