Beginning in May 2019, the McGoogan Health Sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) physical space went through a significant renovation. The pre-renovated area included sixteen study rooms. When we opened to the UNMC community in August 2020, the library went from managing sixteen to fifty-four study rooms. Of these fifty-four, forty-two are individual rooms (1-2 people), and twelve are group rooms (3-5 people). These rooms can be reserved by UNMC students and are available 24/7. The library currently provides one or more whiteboards in each room, rolling whiteboards for moveability, markers & erasers, powered standing desks, multiple seating options, and lighting. With the increase of study rooms, our circulation team’s biggest challenge has been whiteboard maintenance. With whiteboards in such high demand in these study spaces, it became a struggle to keep up with usage and get into rooms to clean. Two questions that seemed always to come up when we evaluated our process: How do we keep up with cleaning the whiteboards where these rooms are hot items, and it is hard to get into a room during a workday? What methods can we encourage students to clean the boards when they are done? We explored several different ways to help us: clean and manage our time (between board cleaning, other circulation, reference tasks, projects, etc.), encouraging students to clean up after they’re done with the room, and ensuring they had access to a usable board. Changes we made through this process: Swapped marker brands that erased off boards easier with less resistance. Provided colors that didn’t leave a hard-to-remove residue (we find that the colors orange and red are tougher to remove compared to green, blue, and black). Recruit other staff members to assist with whiteboard cleaning; sent out a fun email that listed the benefits of whiteboard cleaning Reminders were added to the boards to encourage students to clean when done. Tested various cleaning tools – whiteboard erasers, microfiber cloths, and window squeegee. Our biggest success was providing whiteboard cleaner in each room, with a microfiber cloth. This gave the students the ability to do quick work with their cleaning and helped students who came into a room with a messy board clean the dried-on marker. Students who use the whiteboard and plan to come back later in the day or the following day leave messages on the board asking other students or library staff not to erase it. So that everyone has access to a whiteboard, encourage the students wanting to save their work to use mobile apps that will scan a whiteboard text and save it on their phone or tablet. Microsoft Lens or Adobe Scan are two free examples with no paid subscription required. While these changes have not 100% solved the issue of students leaving a messy board, it has helped enough that we’re starting to see a difference in cleanliness. We hope to move these daily cleanings to a weekly task as the semester progresses. AskUs staff has spent a lot of elbow grease and staff time on the status of whiteboards, but it had a silver lining. We had distanced ourselves from virtual reference during the height of COVID, and the time we spent on cleaning efforts was valuable to understanding how our students were using the newly renovated space. We used a spreadsheet tracking system to take daily notes on cleaning trends as we adjusted the supplies available to students. We were able to expand it to include notes on specific library areas. We quickly noticed trends and responded by reconfiguring spaces, maintenance, and additional furniture purchases.
