After working for a good few hours in the library, here are what I consider to be the advantages and disadvantages over working in a cafe:

Pros

• The library is a lot quieter than a coffee shop. There’s no music and conversation is kept to fairly muted, hushed tones. In fact, the academic, studious atmosphere is very conducive to serious “head down” work.
• Nice architecture creates a pleasant working environment. The interior of the Bristol Central Library is great Victorian architecture with a lovely vaulted ceiling, which can be see in the photo above. Large public libraries are often housed in impressive buildings (the New York Public Library looks like a great place to work, for example).
• It’s free. You don’t need to feel that you need to keep buying food or drinks to “pay” for your Wi-Fi. You don’t even have to join the library to use the Internet.
• Comfortable desks. Unlike the tables in coffee shops, which are primarily designed for holding drinks and food, the writing desks at my library are at a much more comfortable height for working, which is far kinder on my spine. The chairs were fairly comfortable, too
• Access to research material. Of course, if you need to access any research material you’re already in the library!

Cons

• No telephone/VoIP calls. You can’t make or receive phone calls while you’re in the building (except in the cafe). That’s OK for me on days when I don’t have meetings planned, but it means that this is not going to be a viable workspace for many.
• Not very much social interaction. One of the reasons that I feel like leaving the house is to have some chitchat with regular people — you can’t really get that in a library. Because you can’t have a conversation, a library is not going to make a good pseudo-coworking venue, either.
• You’re not allowed to plug in your computer. If you run out of power, you can’t plug in as they don’t have many outlets (not in the section that I was in, anyway). I was surprised by this, and would guess that more modern libraries probably wouldn’t have this restriction.
• No eating/drinking at your desk (except in the cafe). I quite like having a cup of coffee or tea while I work.

So, will I return to the library in future? Yes, on days when I really need to knuckle down and concentrate on a single project with zero distraction: it is a nice working environment that encourages concentration and hard work. I think it would be useful to, say, block out four hours of working time for getting a long article done, and head to the library to work solely on that task. However, on normal working days, when I’m merely looking to change my scenery and get a little pleasant conversation with some coffee, I think I’ll stick with my local cafe.

Have you tried library working? Does it help you to concentrate?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Larger cities such as Leeds and Manchester have reinvented themselves as financial, media and creative hubs that provide regional alternatives to the global powerhouse of London and attract the Creative Class that Richard Florida defines as the driving economic forces of post-industrial cities.

However, smaller post-industrial cities such as Bradford are still struggling to find a path to attracting information industries, caught between ambitious but incompetent government regeneration programs and projects that misfire and develop facilities for creative classes, but misread what’s actually needed; projects such as a recently announced ‘Digital Park‘.

Much of the core of the city lies dormant, with vacant buildings awaiting vision and leadership, whilst the city’s confidence diminishes along with the hopes of its residents.

However, a pair of recently published articles hints at a way forward for places such as Bradford…

Springwise’s recent article ‘Pop-up workspaces in vacant buildings‘ covered the work of Holland’s SpareSpace Foundation in transforming vacant office and retail space into what they call ‘mobile offices’ (coworking by any other name), helping entrepreneurs from creative classes find low-cost premises in neglected downtown areas. Sparespace intends for their development to be transient until more permanent uses arrive, but there’s no reason that sustainable and viable coworking communities couldn’t continue to exist.

On the other side of the world Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future recently observed The Future of Libraries as Places and the novel uses that students are making of NYU’s Bobst Library.

IFTF staffer Anthony Townsend observes that libraries are transforming from solitary, monastic learning environments into collaborative spaces for discussion and debate. As Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute notes, “libraries will transition from a center of information to a center of culture”. As library materials become more accessible and useful in electronic form, ironically the physical space of a library is performing more of the role of a digital discussions forum. As books are increasingly digitised, forums are being un-digitized.

At NYU Townsend pays a discounted alumni fee of $150 per year for access work areas, printing, conference rooms and research services…that sounds like coworking to me :)

So in a place such as Bradford, where the downtown area is becoming progressively vacant and the public library is utilised less and less each day, but where there’s a vibrant University, perhaps the route to nurturing a creative class lies in the reinvention of our repositories of commerce and knowledge.

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