I’m always trying to ensure our students feel like the library is for THEM. That they’re truly entitled to, and the real owners of, our spaces. Over the summer at York we’ve had a massive refurbishment of the Morrell Library, so I took the opportunity to sneak in what I’ve called a Student Ownership Wall in the entrance of our newly refurbished library, and I absolutely love it...
The Refurb
The new entrance to the Morrell Library
Last week the Morrell Library reopened after the epic summer refurb. The new Lounge space is incredibly popular with students already, having opened to them just before the Semester began - but the entrance / exit (pictured above) was the last thing to finish, launching on Tuesday. It was also the 60th birthday of our building (as someone said on Bluesky, it doesn't look a day over 59...) so we combined the two things into a huge promotional push - Instagram posts, our most-liked-ever TikTok post, and channels for the non-social-media users such as a Library News website item, digital screens around the Uni, student newsletter email etc etc. All of these previewed not just the re-opening (and important changes about how students and staff access the library after 7pm), but also the give-away we were doing to mark the occasion…
The Launch
The Laptop stickers were by far the most popular
60s themed postcards
We ran a stall giving out free 60s themed Morrell merch which we’d ordered specially. This featured stylised images of the library *not* made by GenAI; we commissioned a fantastic local artist, Elliot Harrison, and it was noticeable how supportive of (and pleasantly surprised by) this the students were.
We must have spoken to near enough 1,000 students and staff in the morning alone - it's been incredibly popular. Their feedback has been amazing; people really, really like the space and, crucially, consider it a huge upgrade on what we had before. So many people said they’d come specifically for the merchandise, sometimes on behalf of housemates… We learned several things through this process - people really do love free stuff (especially it’s really stylish like this stuff was!), they really do read email (used well it’s still a great tool), and laptop stickers were by far the most popular thing. By around 4pm we’d given away 2,750 things in total, but the 500 laptop stickers were the first to go, and much asked about by saddened students once the supply ran out!
The ‘STUDENT OWNERSHIP / threshold anxiety reduction’ Wall (internal name only…)
The 3m x 1.5m image wall
Anyway, as part of the refurb I asked for what I call (internally) the Student Ownership Wall. It's extremely prominent as you come in through the revolving doors - one of the first things you see. The pic above doesn't show the scale; these pictures are large, and the whole thing is a full 3 metres wide.
The purpose of this is two-fold - first to give students a sense that this is *their* space, by showing them in it. This is something Andy Priestner put me onto via some UX he'd done in Europe and I think it's really important - a very early signal that the library is something you're fully entitled to, because look, here are your peers using it. The second purpose is to try and reduce threshold anxiety - we understand that you may feel nervous to go through these doors, so here's a little of what you're going to get.
Thank you to Sharon Moss and David Ayre for letting us add this in to the overall design! The whole refurbishment has been a looong old collaborative process, and well worth it now we're seeing and hearing the incredibly positive student reactions. A week on from the launch and the space is still absolutely full every day, and now the plants are in too, and it’s all come together.