Abstract:

Many academic libraries are developing their work with organising experimental learning spaces within library buildings. Included in this work is planning for and designing research exhibitions with the purpose of introducing ongoing research at the university to students and other visitors. Mid Sweden University library has organised its work with designing a research exhibition within the project “MIUN Research Exhibition”. This project began in January 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting Sweden just three months later. Due to the pandemic the group of library staff working with the design of the exhibition couldn't meet physically and had to come up with new ways of working together online, using different digital tools.

This paper presents aspects of this adaptation to new forms of creative design work in the context of the university library during the pandemic. The discussion specifically concerns a process where the members of the exhibition team choosed, tried out and evaluated different digital tools for visualizing their design ideas. The aim of the study has been to find and add a digital platform to develop the exhibition during the limitations of the pandemic situation, as well as to be useful in other contexts.

A qualitative participatory method was applied to evaluate different digital tools. The members of the design team choosed and used different digital tools to visualize design ideas for the exhibition. The result of this design work was presented and discussed during an online workshop. Afterwards a formal evaluation survey was conducted.

Results: The survey showed that the group members had positive experiences from the work with different digital tools. In total more than seven different digital tools were tested. The main obstacle in exploring each softwares’ features was the time factor. Some of the software had sets of objects or object libraries that was considered too limited, but such limitations were also experienced as potentially stimulating for creativity when members tried to find solutions among the given options, or by work-arounds. The digital tools was considered helpful when structuring and organizing design ideas and also supportive when visually communicating different design ideas to other group members in a pedagogical way.

Due to the fact that the team members having different background and skills, a general recommendation when choosing software for the continued work process was to keep the chosen digital tool as simple as possible. The threshold should be low for those with little experience working with this kind of digital tools. Also, a softer critical thinking skill set is needed to evaluate what benefit the digital tool can have in relation to the specific design task. However, if you have experience and more elaborate skills you add value to the group when using tools that are more advanced to visualize the design ideas.

Keywords:

Academic libraries, library exhibitions, exhibition design, digital tools, covid-19.