Paper #2: Users and Space: Reconfiguring Space for Learning and Engagement By Bart Harloe and Helene Williams The Challenge: The transition that college libraries face in the 21 st century involves creating access to high quality collections in both digital and print forms while at the same time reconfiguring existing space to allow for active learning and engagement as well as study and research. As students become more active as creators and producers of knowledge and scholarship, often within a collaborative or mentored project or program, the challenging question arises: How do these new forms of activity fit within the traditional model of a library as a space for collections and individual (often private) study? History: The Instructional Moment The culture of college libraries has been shaped in no small way by what Evan Farber called “the university-library syndrome,” that is, the notion that somehow the larger the collection an institution has, the more effective it will be in addressing the scholarly needs of both students and faculty. Over the past 25 years, there has evolved another conversation, however, one that focused on the appropriateness of college library collection for teaching and learning rather than advanced research. Certainly, within the context of the liberal arts mission, this conversation has increasingly been driven by an idea of collections developed in cooperation with faculty to support undergraduate instruction rather than advanced research per se. Since the mid-90s, with the rise of the internet and the corresponding explosion of digital resources available for both research and instruction, the traditional model of a “place” for quiet study and contemplation has been re-placed by the notion of the library as a space where many kinds of active learning and scholarship can take place. In early days, this meant the creation of computer labs/classrooms where something called “bibliographic instruction” might take place. In more recent years, as more institutions thought about the impact of information technology on teaching and learning, the concept of the so-called “learning commons” began to emerge in both theory and practice. The Evolution of the Learning Commons and the Role of Undergraduate Instruction: At the same time, as the level of library undergraduate instruction has increased over the course of the past 15 years, liberal arts colleges have come to place more emphasis on “active learning”