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Once you start re-decorating and designing your space, it won't all happen overnight.  It is a process and may take at least a year. First weed your shelves and clear-out the old. That way, whatever you bring in will be color-coordinated with your design palate. Shop year-round:  store sales post-season, garage and estate sales, Craigslist and Offer-Up, and anywhere you go - keep in mind your library decor. I recommend doing just one area at a time. For example, I am working on a teacher collaboration corner: posting a "Guru" wall of teachers self-reported areas of expertise, a bookshelf with coffee, M&Ms, office supplies, and a few good professional books, a decorative lamp, a fake tall tree, and a bistro table with four nice stools. This is just one corner of my library. If I get this done in a month, I'll be happy and will then move on to another part of the library. But, everything I bring in will be coordinated with the color palate we have selected.

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The "shhhh'd" libraries of old are no longer places for our modern world. Libraries today are places for collaborating and creating. In redesigning your library, first get inspired. Watch videos, read articles, write down what features you want to incorporate (or better, survey your students on what they would like), walk the space and imagine. The possibilities are endless: MakerSpace area, Robotics arena, movable furniture - including moveable bookshelves, reading nooks, white board paint, and/or an AppleTV.  Take photos of your current corners and walls; then draw over them with colored pencils on how you can transform your space.  Add plants, water features, or lamps.  Whatever you decide, make sure that you are consistent with color. We recommend choosing two main colors and one accent color.  That way, you'll get a cohesive look.

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Five Key Principles of 21st Century Learning Environments

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Five Key Principles of 21st Century Learning Environments

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This is a great article that describes technology integration (robotics rooms), safety and security (video monitoring, shelters), transparency (wall-less rooms), multi-purpose spaces (movable furniture, even foldable walls), and outdoor learning (covered spaces).

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To get a sense of the best practices in contemporary school design, we interviewed four of the top K-12 architecture firms in the U.S.: Fanning Howey, Corgan, Perkins+Will, and Huckabee. Collectively, the companies bill hundreds of millions of dollars in work annually, and have built or renovated thousands of schools throughout the country and around the globe.

Key insights into five common design principles-technology integration, safety and security, transparency, multipurpose space, and outdoor learning-surfaced during our conversations.

Technology Integration

At the dawn of the digital era, technology integration in most K-12 schools boiled down to the presence of computer labs, separate rooms filled with bulky terminals that students could sign up to use. Today's school technology represents a quantum leap forward-it's at once ubiquitous, invisible, personal, and mobile.

Wiring the entire school-including the outdoors-is necessary, architects agree, and projectors, screens, and sound systems are migrating out of classrooms and into hallways, common spaces, cafeterias, and even stairwells. Students can access the network anywhere on campus, and view and share work on digital displays throughout the building. The effects can be subversive in all the right ways, reducing students' dependence on the teacher, promoting peer-to-peer collaboration, and widening the sphere of learning from the confines of the classroom to the whole school grounds.

"The students we're educating don't know the world without the internet," says Kerri Ranney, vice president of educational practice at Huckabee. "We need to be able to embrace that and prepare students for the types of work environments and companies they are going to be working for when they get out of school."

At Ecole Kenwood French Immersion School, a pre-K to sixth grade public magnet school in Columbus, Ohio, designed by Fanning Howey, the stairway has been extended to accommodate carpeted student seating and features an overhead projector, a large projection screen, a sound reinforcement system, and wireless access. The location is a popular spot for lectures and student presentations as part of project-based learning (PBL).

And In Whitestown, Indiana, Fanning Howey designed a wet retention basin-a pond that collects stormwater-as an outdoor laboratory for Zionsville West Middle School, a public school.

"The one-acre pond has shallow-depth areas for wetland plant species, and the boardwalk has observation decks with wireless access for small group instruction. Many of our school projects have Wi-Fi in these outdoor spaces. In fact, it's pretty much an expectation," says Jeff Bolinger, a landscape architect with Fanning Howey and a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Safety and Security

The horrifying events in Columbine, Colorado, and Parkland, Florida, among many other places, have raised the profile of safety and security measures in school design. But while safeguarding against acts of school terror is uppermost in the public mind, student bullying is a more pervasive, everyday issue and poses its own set of architectural challenges.

Not surprisingly, bullies seek out areas tucked away from adult supervision. In a recent study from the National Center for Education Statistics, students between the ages of 12 and 18 reported nearly twice as many bullying incidents in hallways and stairwells-where they spend a fraction of their time-as in other school areas like cafeterias or playgrounds. A more open, transparent design emphasizing windows and clear lines of sight, even between floors, reduces bullying opportunities and improves the learning environment for vulnerable students, according to architects.

"The old layouts present an anonymous kind of situation, and it's easy for bullying to take place in those spaces," says David Stephen, an educator and architect and the founder of New Vista Designs for Learning, a school design and curriculum consulting firm in Boston. "It's much safer to have more visual interconnectivity because you have lots of sets of adult eyes connecting with kids around the school."

At Annie Purl Elementary School, a pre-K to fifth grade public school, in Georgetown, Texas, the Huckabee architecture firm designed and installed floor-to-ceiling glass classroom walls. Each academic wing features classrooms that connect to a central collaboration space and a teacher design lab-enabling educators to see kids in the classroom, collaboration space, or corridors from virtually any spot in the learning environment.

In the unlikely event of an intruder or an active shooter in the building, architects rely on multiple layers of security. Having a single point of entry to the school is standard protocol to limit unwanted access, but many schools are starting to install double-locked entries-with two locked doors to get through-and often require sign-in and use video surveillance systems to screen visitors before they enter campus.

Counterintuitively, large open spaces can provide protection during a lockdown. The architects of Fanning Howey describe several levels of security within an academic wing designed to prevent the unthinkable at a midwestern public school. The two sets of entry doors bracketing the academic wing are made of bulletproof glass and can be locked remotely from the main office, transforming the shared learning space into a safe haven. If an intruder gains access to the academic wing, four corner classrooms serve as shelters-each is outfitted with bulletproof glass and can be accessed from common areas and adjacent classrooms, and then sealed off from any further entry.

Transparency

Architectural transparency, the principle of visual interconnectedness, is an emerging standard in new school construction. Internal spaces like hallways, classrooms, and cafeterias-typically separated from each other by opaque structures like walls and doorways-have given way to open layouts that emphasize glass partitions and uninterrupted lines of sight, borrowing from cutting-edge work environments like Google's and Apple's campuses.

"In very traditional schools, hallways often look exactly the same," says Stephen, of New Vista Designs for Learning. "They're 10 feet wide, lined with lockers, and the classroom doors are all closed."

Opening a line of sight into adjacent spaces makes learning communal, encourages collaboration, and creates a public forum for celebrating and observing student work, according to leading educational architects.

Fanning Howey constructed the British International School of Houston in Katy, Texas, a pre-K to 12th grade private school, with the intention of making learning visible. The entire building is wrapped around a common area called the Agora-Greek for "gathering place"-which is modeled on the public courtyards at the heart of city life in ancient Greece.

All the classroom walls that surround the Agora are framed in floor-to-ceiling glass. From this central gathering place, students of all ages can see and be seen, peering into others' classrooms to view what they're doing while being observed at their own work.

"Through visual transparency-by looking through a window into something interesting happening in a makerspace, robotic lab, or a classroom-you're creating a public conversation about teaching and learning," says Stephen.

Floor-to-ceiling glass isn't the only way to achieve transparency, though. Perkins + Will used a cheaper alternative-strategically placed glass windows-at Campus International School, a kindergarten to sixth grade public magnet school in Cleveland, to create a continuous line of sight throughout the space. While the effect is less dramatic, the design is more cost-effective and the learning impact is similar, promoting a sense of collaboration and enabling students to gain inspiration from the work of others.

Multipurpose Space

The pace of social and technological change is disorienting-and modern learning environments are evolving to keep pace. Part of making educational spaces work, according to architects, is incorporating long-term flexibility so that as technology, curricula, and pedagogies evolve over a building's 50-year life span, it can support and not hinder those changes.

"We know education is going to change. We know curriculums are going to change. So how best do we provide a facility that is equipped to change over its life?" says Chuck Tyler, principal architect at Fanning Howey.

School architects are tossing out industrial-era blueprints that emphasized enclosed, single-use spaces connected by long hallways designed to move students rapidly between bell periods. Today, every inch of the school is scoured for its ability to contribute to learning: Corridors are being widened to become extensions of the classroom, stairs are turning into seating space, and walls throughout the building are doubling as writing surfaces or displaying Wi-Fi-enabled TV screens. Typical, single-use rooms like cafeteria and libraries, meanwhile, are being designed to function as hybrid theaters, makerspaces, and media centers.

"There's a realization and understanding on the clients' side that the factory model school that most of us went to-where you've got similarly sized classrooms marching down either side of the hallway-is not going to support the kind of teaching and learning that they're after," says Steve Turckes, principal and K-12 education global practice leader for Perkins+Will.

Truly flexible spaces should also meet the day-to-day needs of educators to create instructional variety-direct instruction, group work, independent work-by quickly altering their environments. Lightweight chairs, beanbags, area rugs, tables of different heights, and even movable or foldable walls can transform alcoves into quiet reading spaces, which can in turn be modified to suit project-based learning or direct instruction.

For example, at Milan High School, a public school in Milan, Michigan, the PBL learning addition called the Milan Center for Innovative Studies has a designated collaboration space, the Innovation Zone, where students conduct individual research, collaborate on group projects, and give presentations. But the Innovation Zone also serves as the school's social hub and hosts the campus coffee shop and student-run bookstore, mimicking the integration of work and relaxation space that is so common in today's start-ups and cutting-edge technology companies.

Outdoor Learning

Research suggests that there are many benefits from learning in the outdoors, including improved creativity and reduced stress. And a 1998 study concluded that when learning is hands-on and made relevant to students' surrounding environment, they are more engaged in the curriculum and perform better on academic tests.

According to leading education architects, some outdoor learning environments are simply spaces that facilitate learning-a group of benches, an amphitheater, or a partially covered workspace with amenities like Wi-Fi and supplies. Like classrooms, these outdoor spaces are designated for instruction, presentations, or independent and group work, but they provide a fresh perspective for students who spend most of the school days indoors.

Other outdoor learning spaces are designed to be extensions of the curriculum, and provide opportunities to observe or interact directly with nature.

At Daugherty Elementary, a public school in Garland, Texas, the architecture and design firm Corgan created a learning courtyard that offers a variety of educational zones connected to Texas state standards. On the pavement, there are imprints of fossils native to Texas. Shadow walls-where suspended panels with cutout images cast shadows as the sun shines through the cutouts-teach students about the earth's rotation and seasonal cycles as shadows cast by the sun shift positions and lengths. A rainwater cistern enables students to track rainfall totals, while xeriscape landscaping-which requires little to no water-helps students learn about local, drought-tolerant plants and gain authentic experience with complex biological concepts like photosynthesis and osmosis.

And at Lady Bird Johnson Middle School in Irving, Texas, the biggest net-zero public school in the country-it generates more energy than it consumes-the building itself is a laboratory for learning. Corgan designed the building's green energy capacities to integrate with the school's grade 6-8 science curriculum. For example, in sixth grade, students collect data and do hands-on learning related to energy transformation, comparing the efficiency of fossil fuel to solar, wind, and geothermal power-all sources of energy that the school taps into.

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The Architecture of Ideal Learning Environments

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We talked to some of the leading architects in the country about five key principles in K-12 school design.

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EDhub:  What does a 21st Century learning space really look like? Watch this video and find out.

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EDhub:  What does a 21st Century learning space really look like? Watch this video and find out.

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Okay - this may be sky's the limit for most of us, but as school librarians, we can take mini pieces of these to incorporate into our spaces.

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EDhub: Building a 21st Century Space to Transform Learning

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This is one of my favorite TedTalks. It is almost 13 minutes long, so plan to watch when you can relax. Its inspirational, motivational, and encompasses why we have libraries: for imagining, creating, and connecting.

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What to expect from libraries in the 21st century: Pam Sandlian Smith at TEDxMileHigh

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This article focuses on libraries changing role towards becoming learning commons.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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After envisioning your space, make a list of items the you'll need to buy with estimated costs. For some schools/districts, there are regulations on which vendors to use. For example, Jeffco requires that we use Hon or Virco for our furniture products. However, if you can get approval
from your facilities manager, you might be able to bring-in non-upholstered furniture. So, this is a good area in which you might to DIY it. I'd like to create a new books or feature display table  as you walk into our library. I'd like to pickup an antique round table at a yard sale, sand an paint it in our new library colors.  Online shopping sites like www.paperlanternstore.com offer great decor elements that perk-up space.  In any case, figure out your budget and determine where you might need to splurge, and where you might have to DIY it.

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This is a cheap way to spruce up classrooms and libraries.

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Classroom Hanging Decorations - Lanterns, Garland & More

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Decorate your classroom with our whimsical Hanging Decorations, to create an inviting place where children will be excited to learn.

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Here is a budget that I planned a couple years ago when our school was adding two grade levels. Be flexible with your budgets as our e-library books got scaled back after we analyzed they received low checkouts. So, we used that money for sprucing-up the library decorations, and adding new YA fiction.

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If you've got a tight budget and not a lot of time, collaborate with a teacher on a re-design PBL. Here is an assignment in which students have to re-decorate our library with a $500 budget. Our theater teacher is giving it to her class as part of their set design and staging unit.

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These are the Jeffco Generation colors. We will be implementing
three of them (two main + one accent) into our library re-design. Keep a copy in your purse or planner as you are out-and-about. That way, if you run into something that might fit in your library, you can pull out this color pallet.  Paint swatch samples are another great color tool too keep handy on your self for those spontaneous purchases.

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Look for grant opportunities. And yes, there are some for library re-designs. If you are in Jeffco, there is a grant newsletter that you can subscribe to receive.

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Grants Acquisition & Management assists schools and departments in finding grant funding sources, developing grant

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If you are feeling overwhelmed at having to do it all yourself, delegate work to your teacher  assistants (TAs).  At Jefferson, I had my TAs paint block letters, hang lanterns, and assemble cheap furniture. My TAs also put contact paper on trash cans and inside book shelves.

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The public loves to support our local school libraries. If okay with your district, try sites like DonorsChoose.org or GoFundMe.com

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About us

Founded in 2000 by a high school teacher in the Bronx, DonorsChoose empowers public school teachers from across the country to request much-needed materials for their students. Right now there are thousands of teacher requests that you can help bring to life with a gift of any amount.
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We'll charge you once a month, and you handpick the projects you want to support. No time to pick? We'll use your donation to help an urgent teacher request.
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DonorsChoose: Support a classroom. Build a future.

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DonorsChoose connects teachers in high-need communities with donors who want to help.

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Here is an example of what painting can do: letters and walls.

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Article:  "More Thrifty School Library Design Tips"

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Article:  "More Thrifty School Library Design Tips"

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This is a great article that focuses more on just re-decorating your library spaces on a budget. There are lots of great photo ideas.

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Considering a library remodel? Check out these creative, low-cost ideas from fellow librarians, some shared on Jennifer LaGarde and Mark Samberg's #macgyverlibrarianship Twitter initiative. Learn more about the MacGyver Librarian Movement -and get crafty! Share your ideas on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag.

Dress up the desk

Heather Brown, librarian at St. Joseph School Library in Herndon, VA, collaborated with the school art teacher for International Dot Day to create this beautiful circulation desk (above). Every kindergarten through eighth grade student cut and decorated a dot modeled after Wassily Kandinsky's 1913 painting Squares with Concentric Circles. The squares were then laminated and used to cover the circulation desk.

At the Delft Technology University in the Netherlands, the school created this rainbow-hued desk (below) out of discarded library books that were being replaced after a school fire.

No extra space? Try this

If you're revamping your library, it's a great time to downsize your collection, get rid of outdated books, and create more space. Melissa Mannon at Goffstown (NH) High School Library completely rearranged her library to make the space more usable. She removed tall bookshelves and used the extra room to create a silent reading area (left). She culled the reference section and cut the long, waist-high shelves vertically to make smaller units.

Adding plywood and casters to the bottoms of shelves made them movable to create displays or to divide different sections of the library (below left). The remaining reference section shelves, which were already curved, were fashioned into a reference desk and storage for their graphic novels (below right).

At my school, we removed our entire reference collection and aggressively weeded our nonfiction section. With the extra space, we pushed our shelves against the walls (where our reference section was previously located) and removed two additional rows of shelves to create a cozy reading area. Our circulation desk was moved from the middle of the library to near the main entrance. We didn't need permission or money to make all of these changes-and it made a big difference.

Student-led designs

Getting permission to change your library can be a hurdle. In many districts, libraries aren't allowed to paint the walls or furniture. This can sometimes be solved by designating a project as "student led": If an initiative is for a specific class or driven by students, you may have more freedom to paint, decorate, or renovate. Be sure to talk to your principal before starting, and ask your county's high school programs for additional help. My library had help from our interior design, art, carpentry, and welding classes. Our welding class is building us extra slanted magazine shelves out of leftover metal shelves (right). Once completed, they'll get a nice coat of bright spray paint.

Below: Jessica Gilcreast at the Bedford (NH) High School Library transformed her chairs with remnant fabric and a staple gun.

Below: At Heath (OH) High School Library, Amy Gibson, with the help of some students, made a video production green screen simply by painting a library wall green. Researching the "perfect" color, she settled on Behr paint in the "Sparkling Apple" shade.

At Northwoods Middle School Library in North Charleston, SC, librarian Christy James painted her walls, ceiling, and the top of the circulation desk (right). To update the marbleized countertops, they took tips from a HGTV website tutorial-and sanded, primed, painted, and sealed the countertops with multiple coats of paint. She created large orange READ signs (below) by painting Styrofoam letters and hanging them with Command brand strips.

Fundraising strategies

When you don't have extra money to remodel-or permission to paint or purchase items-sometimes you have to get even more creative. Try a Donors Choose project, which sends you educational items (not money) once the project has been funded. Many new projects qualify for a "price match," where companies will match what you raise. A great time to try Donors Choose is around the holidays, when people are looking to make donations, or tax season, when larger companies are seeking tax breaks. Some school systems have guidelines about using Donors Choose-check out your county's policy. Also consider a book fair: some schools don't regulate how you spend proceeds, and they can go toward redecorating. Also consider contacting your local hardware store about donating leftover materials.

J ennifer LaGarde, #macgyverlibrarianship cofounder, created this fun book table (below) out of a cable spool, discarded books, glue, and black paint for New Hanover High School in Wilmington, NC.

Below: Megan Gill and her students at Summersill Eagles Elementary School Library in Jacksonville, NC, used a sanded cable spool to create a gaming table/charging station. The local electric company donated the spool, which the student will paint with a color of their choice later this year.

Vanessa Calhoun, librarian at Sandy Ridge Elementary School Library in Durham, NC created these book displays (right) out of painted wooden pallets and wire book stands. The hinges on the side allow them to be folded up and stored easily.

Below: The book review bin at Northwoods Middle School Library in North Charleston, SC, is made out of a white kitchen cabinet from Lowes. Librarian Christy James drilled a slot in the top and added handles, a lock, casters, and decals. James also created a book display (below right) by painting Ikea spice racks orange and mounting them to the walls.

Below: At North Buncombe High School in Weaverville, NC, librarian Cindy Mackiernan and I used a projector to show actions words above the different areas of their library. Using a black sharpie, we traced the words and filled them in with dark blue paint.

Below: Librarian Kathryn Garrett from Isaac Litton Middle School Library in Nashville, TN created all these whimsical displays out of discarded books and magazines. A great idea for your library makerspace!
Katie Darty is a librarian at North Buncombe High School in Weaverville, NC. She transformed her library with the help of fellow librarian Cindy Mackiernan, assistant Tony Sykes, and interior design teacher Stephanie Griffin. She lives in Asheville, NC, with her husband, Josh, and their daughter, Charlie. Contact her at anna.darty@bcsemail.org, or follow her library on Twitter.

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Considering a library remodel? Check out these creative, low-cost ideas from fellow librarians, some shared on Jennifer LaGarde and Mark Samberg's #macgyverlibrarianship Twitter initiative. Learn more about the MacGyver Librarian Movement -and get crafty! Share your ideas on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag. Dress up the desk Heather Brown, librarian at St.