The Quiet Plug Crisis
A digital generation scours the library for electrical outlets Feb 1, 2011Thirty years ago, the only person in a library looking for an electrical outlet was a blue-smocked cleaning person who had to plug in a vacuum cleaner with a very long cord.
Now, hordes of patrons outfitted with amp-devouring laptops and cell phones expect and need the library to offer an endless supply of electricity. The overall demand for electricity at the library—driven by everything from electronic signage to recording studios—is straining electrical systems everywhere, even at the Pentagon’s libraries.
But it’s the plug, the lowly plug, first patented in 1904 by one Harvey Hubbell, that is, perhaps, the biggest problem. More precisely, it’s the lack of outlets for those plugs and their modern contemporary, the data port, or jack.
“People talk about the problem of ebooks, but sometimes it is the simple things that present the biggest challenge,” Melanie Huggins, executive director of the Richland County Public Library, SC, tells LJ.
Times have changed
Ginnie Cooper, executive director of the District of Columbia Public Library, is overseeing the construction of three new libraries and two historic renovations scheduled to open in 2011. She has already completed ten building projects in the district, and the need to provide ever more outlets is a problem she knows all too well.
“We talk about the need for broadband access, but nobody talks about electricity,” she says. “It’s not seen as sexy and exciting, and yet for us it’s a critical issue.”
The problem boils down to flexibility so 1) patrons can access electrical power in the most convenient way, and 2) libraries can adapt their space to changing technology.
“A lot of what we are doing is moving seating to existing outlets or adding new outlets where we think people are going to be,” Dennelle Wrightson, the director for library architecture at PSA-Dewberry, headquartered in Chicago, says. “It’s usually one of the top priorities for any client when we are setting the goals.” The issue was on the table at a recent LJ Design Institute in South Carolina in which Wrightson and her firm participated.
| PLETHORA OF PLUGS these are just a handful of the outlets at the new Bedford Public Library, TX |
Universities struggle to keep up
The problem cuts across all library sectors.
“The lack of adequate power is a fairly big issue for [the Dimond Library],” Tracey Lauder, the assistant dean for library administration at the University of New Hampshire, confirms. “Students frequently move large tables and soft seating closer to walls with outlets, or they bring their own extension cords, which obviously can be a hazard,” she says.
The university recently conducted an extensive survey of its library with the goal of making the spaces more “user-centric.”
“All the resulting data showed consistent requests for more outlets,” Lauder says. A similar survey at the University of Chicago elicited nearly 100 comments about the need for more outlets.
To complicate matters, installing new outlets is considered an extra, and Dimond Library has to dip into its operating budget to pay for them. And they aren’t cheap. The recent installation of six wall and six floor receptacles would have cost $10,568, but the decision was made to install the wall receptacles only during the library’s redesign since the floor outlets would have required drilling.
At the Mardigian Library at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the problem had been at the top of students’ wish list for the past several years, according to the Mardigian Library News, and the problem reached critical mass in 2009 as an electrical survey showed that the building was maxing out its power source.
“Amen, brother,” Tim Richards, the library’s director, replied when LJ called and explained it was writing about the problem. “This is a big issue. For a time, it was the biggest complaint I got from students. It wasn’t that they didn’t have access to intellectual content; it was bloody electrical outlets. And for every building built before 1980, no one ever dreamed of this need.”
At Mardigian, 23 additional stations (for $6160) were installed where students could plug in, but the problem still looms. Although Richards is worried since the building is at its capacity, he is cautiously optimistic that the university is going to renovate the library and reconfigure how the power is distributed.
“The astounding thing,” he says, “is every day when I walk into the building at 9 a.m., at least 80 percent of the outlets are already being used.”
Powering collaboration
At the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Scott Plutchak, director of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, and Jerry Stephens, director of the Mervyn Sterne Library, recently described “five key ways in which the digital revolution has made libraries more accessible, personal, and relevant than ever.”
“Plugs are popular” was number four on the list, because without them the digital generation cannot power the connection to information or with one another.
“As part of its renovation, Sterne Library made a point of adding plenty of electrical outlets,” Plutchak told UAB Magazine. “Every student wants to charge [his/her] laptop, iPod, and phone at the same time.”
At universities and colleges, part of what exacerbates the dearth of outlets is the culture of collaboration. Study rooms at Sterne Library, for example, have been outfitted for group interaction, so a student can plug a laptop into a video monitor and everyone can work together. Wheeled furniture lets students congregate. A Starbucks opened in Sterne last year.
“It extends the social network, where students can sit and talk and collaborate,” Stephens says.
A dream list of plugs
Solving the problem of electrical outlets was a major goal set by the town of Bedford, TX, when it hired Hidell and Associates Architects, based in Carrollton, TX, to design the new Bedford Public Library, set to open February 12. [Hidell was another participant/sponsor of the LJ Design Institute South Carolina.]
Maria Redburn, the library manager, had seen patrons getting “into all sorts of crazy places just to plug in their laptops.”
About halfway into the project, Redburn and her IT staff sat down with the contractor and said they wanted a plug any place a person could conceivably sit.
“We looked at the plans and said, ‘We want one here, here, here,’ ” she says. “The contractor said he installed our dream list and that he had never seen so many plugs go into a place.” The new, 40,516 square foot library will have 244 data drops (jacks) and 460 electrical outlets. “We wanted the ability to change,” Redburn says.
Redburn also notes that at public libraries it’s not so much the collaborative nature of work, as it is at universities, but the hard economic times that drive more people to the library in search of an interface for their media.
“People can’t afford Internet service at home anymore, they can’t afford a print cartridge, so there’s a causal relationship between the economy and the growth of people using the library,” she says.
Even the Pentagon has a problem.
In the libraries section of its United Facilities Criteria developed by the Libraries Branch of the Air Force Services Agency, the Department of Defense frequently adjures contractors and engineers to remember that plugs at library facilities are an important part of the military mission.
“Consider the need for additional floor electrical outlets at circulation and reference desks, workrooms, offices for staff use, audiovisual areas, and in reading areas for customer use,” reads one example in section 3-5.4.
Some solutions
For those not building from scratch or renovating, the solution can arrive via lounge chairs or tables that come equipped with an electrical power supply. For Brodart Contract Furniture in McElhattan, PA, this has translated into a growing business; one particularly popular item has been a plug that pops up from a table top.
“We have an 80 percent increase in sales for electrical pop-up style devices from this year over last year,” Lucas Fanning of Brodart tells LJ. “In addition, we have seen an approximate 15 percent increase each year leading up to 2010 (2007–09).”
But when a library wants to raise the bar on its electrical infrastructure, the answer is two words: raised floor.
“In essence, in just about every new library we are doing we are including a raised floor,” says Dennis Humphries, a principal of Humphries Poli Architects based in Denver.
The main benefit with raised floors is that the power distribution does not run in a fixed conduit, so the library can change the configuration of outlets.
“Several of our locations are doing raised floors,” DC’s Cooper says. “They give us the ultimate in flexibility because they let you pick up an 18" x 18" square of the floor and add an outlet at that location.”
Still, the ultimate answer, several sources say, may be longer-lasting batteries, or inductive-charging mats like those featured in January by the Wireless Power Consortium at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It is all a part of the natural evolution of technology and the many curious problems it brings.
Down the road, the question may be what to do with all the unused outlets. But, says Richland County’s Huggins, “It’s no bigger a problem than what we are going to do with all those empty CD cases.”
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| Michael Kelley is Senior Editor, News, LJ |
