Over the 2011-12 Winter Break, UC Merced Library added 48 seats to the second floor of the Kolligian Library Building’s east wing. The seats are distributed among 12 tables, each of which sits near a whiteboard in an arrangement that creates a sense of privacy. “The library never has enough collaborative workrooms,” says Eric Scott of the UC Merced Library. “What we have managed to do with furniture here is to create spaces that are similar to collaborative workrooms but which we can provide at a very low cost.” Simply adding more seating capacity to the library was another goal of this project. During the Fall 2011 semester, the library was reporting headcounts of over 600 when the total seating capacity of the library was about 850. According to Scott, “Filling an academic library to 70% of capacity is almost unheard of. It speaks to how much our students use the library as a place to go as well as to how few places there are on campus to study.”
