The Room of Requirement: Being What the Users of Our Libraries Need

People familiar with the Harry Potter books and movies will recognize the “room of requirement” and understand the important role it played in Harry’s life and the story of Hogwarts. Located on Hogwarts’ 7^th floor across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, the room requires you to walk past the area of the door three times, thinking of what you need. The room can only be accessed when a person (or a house elf) really needs it and they will find it equipped with just what he or she needs.

While there are early references to the room from Albus Dumbledore, Harry first use of the room occurs in The Order of the Phoenix as a place to train Dumbledore’s army. He also used it The Half-Blood Prince to hide his potions text, and in the Deathly Hallows to find the Horcrux made with Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. The room also is referred to as the Room of Hidden Things, an interesting mix of museum storeroom, and junk drawer where Hogwarts students and teachers have hidden things over the centuries.

As I pondered the “Room of Requirement,” I saw that the idea contained in the “room” might provide some insights into thinking about our approach to the people who use our libraries. I soon discovered that I was not the first to make a connection between the “Room of Requirement” and libraries. In July 2015, in a letter to the editor of the Missoulian, Julie Biando Edwards, describes the Missoula Public Library as a room of requirement. She writes “The public library is the Room of Requirement. It’s every place we need it to be – because it is the one place where we can step into other worlds as we figure out our place in our own.” (https://bit.ly/2OkYmGG).

Libraries often approach their role in very defined ways: some historical, some technological, and some dictated by institutional affiliation. Some of our approaches are unconscious, while others deliberate. Like the “Room of Requirement”, the users of our libraries come with expectations and needs. Students come with a set of needs, many of which fall into areas that are in the broad purview of student success. Faculty have a more sophisticated set of needs and interests, as well as more sophisticated methods of obtaining information. The “room of requirement” approach might help libraries think through how users approach our libraries, and where their needs don’t match up with what we have on offer.

Using the “room of requirement” model, I think there are five things we might consider.

1.      Listen to the users: Find ways to “listen” to users on a regular basis. While we don’t have the magic of a room that hears the user’s need and automatically configures a space tailored to their need, we do have a variety of methods and tools available to us to help us listen. Consider student advisory boards, simple surveys (one or two questions), whiteboards, and of course individual conversations with students we see in the library and on campus.

2.      Consider the unexpected: Our users will sometimes ask for things that may seem unusual. While there are many things that will be totally out of scope or out of our power to make happen, do not automatically dismiss these unusual requests. It could be that these unusual requests represent unmet student needs that the library, or the library and other campus partners can meet.

3.      Develop services that fit into the lives of the users: Our users approach our universities and libraries, with ideas of space and services that are primarily formed from the retail world.  Starbucks, Amazon, Apple genius bars, smartphones, ubiquitous WiFi all shape our users’ expectations. Find a librarian or staff with UX experience and charge them with making recommendations on improving the approach we take with our services and spaces.

4.      Limit policy: While some policy is necessary, we tend to create policies to meet any and every possibility. Taking a cue from Nordstrom’s customer service ethos, provide some broad guidelines and empower staff to solve problems for students and faculty.

5.      Reinvent the Library regularly: The magic of the “Room of Requirement,” in some sense, was that it was always new; based on the needs of the moment and the person or persons who needed it. One of the wonderful things about working at a university is the constantly changing group of students. Every year a new cohort of students comes to campus and helps make the campus their own. This act of making it their own is a type of reinvention because the needs and interests of this year’s students are similar to but not totally the same as last year’s students. Every year is a new opportunity to partner with our users to make the library theirs – a space for inquiry, creativity, innovation, scholarship, and community.