Jones Media Center

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

The star of Jones Media Center is the Innovation Studio, a high functioning space that operates something like a cross between a traditional Japanese home and a Swiss army knife. Thanks to movable walls, “plug and play” spaces and a variety of equipment and tools, the space shape-shifts throughout any given day, as easily accommodating a two-person recording session as a lecture for 50 people.

Located within Dartmouth College’s main Baker-Berry Library, Jones Media Center supports the school’s multi-media instruction and research needs. The space housing the media center was constructed in 2000. By 2015, it was outdated, and staff was eager to deaccession parts of the collection with low utilization rates to open valuable floor area for new and more flexible uses.

While the librarians had a sense of what they wanted, they had a better sense of what was missing. When it first opened, Jones Media Center was a place of innovation; people came to see what the library was doing with media – by the mid-2010s that was no longer the case. The gap between what they could offer and what students needed was widening. While staff did not know exactly what the final product would look like, they knew they wanted to recapture the enthusiasm of its earlier days.

Digital scholarship is an important trend in academic libraries – users need space that both supports learning through digital means and facilitates media production. Students use library tools to create digital content that is often assigned in classes. This new space – made available when microfiche and microfilm were moved offsite – would be dedicated to supporting those endeavors. It was an opportunity to create something novel in a traditional space.

Working alongside a technology consultant (Vantage), Jones led visioning sessions with the library’s media curators, a sophisticated, forward-thinking user group, to generate a spectrum of ideas for how the space could best be used for learning, collaborating, and production. Ultimately the idea for an innovation studio emerged.

Part of the Baker-Berry Library’s mandate is that it is open to Hanover citizens. The innovation studio is a self-operated, flexible space for anyone to create content. This had not been in the mind of anyone at the beginning of the project. However, it became a main theme that was borne out of discussions as the dialogue progressed.

This interactive, user-friendly production space offers full access to students who use the room for creating videos and recording content – it is also used for classes, media events, lectures, and more.

Moveable walls and “plug and play” infrastructure that accommodates technology as it evolves are key to the studio’s success. Users can configure the space according to what they plan to do in it, using resources that go far beyond media consumption. Computers with editing software are available, as are cameras and other recording equipment that can be checked out like you would a book. So, for example, a student or community member can borrow a camera, shoot with it, and then come back to post-production editing in the space. They could also screen a film, record a lecture, welcome remote lecturers and guests, stage a photo shoot, hold a workshop or host an event.

Other areas within the Media Center include a living room with soft seating for casual connections as well as collaborative seating areas around Y-shaped desks that allow students to do small group work on projects viewing shared content on individual screens. Digital media pods provide individual seating and screens for study, research, and production.

• GREEN FACTOR:

  The ability to “virtually” host guests, students, and lecturers from around the world significantly reduces travel/carbon footprint.

• TEAM:

  Principal in Charge: Rick Jones
  Project Director: Sam Clement

• COLLABORATORS:

  Contractor:
  North Branch Construction, Inc.

  MEP/FP Engineer:
  RFS Engineering

  Structural Engineer:
  RFS Engineering

  Code Consultant:
  Cosentini Associates

  Lighting Designer:
  Collaborative Lighting

  Acoustical Engineer:
  Houghton Associates
  Cavanaugh Tocci Associates

  AV & Technology Consultant:
  Vantage Technology Consulting Group

  Specifications:
  Kalin Associates

  Hardware Specifications:
  Campbell McCabe

• PHOTOGRAPHY:

  William Horne