New 'Learning Commons' defies commonplace

Chelmsford library revamped

The once-shunned Chelmsford High library has a new look and new outlook as students take to the renovated space. (Lisa Poole for the Boston Globe)

CHELMSFORD - In the place formerly known as the library, students perch on long-legged chairs and huddle in purple and black booths. Once a week, they drink coffee and discuss books in the Java Room. They watch a history lesson, school news, and CNN on a 58-inch flat-panel "digital kiosk."

Just don't call it the library. The new Learning Commons was born from the old Chelmsford High School library, until recently an area so notoriously shabby that school officials conspired to keep superintendent candidates from glimpsing its electric yellow walls and duct-tape-scarred floors. But the school district's head of libraries, Valerie Diggs, shepherded a renovation this year that resulted in walls painted soothing shades of violet and beige, fresh carpet, dozens of desktops and laptops - and a concept of 21st century libraries that is new to Massachusetts public schools.

"What you have here is truly a lighthouse accomplishment for schools in Massachusetts, indeed across the US," said Ross J. Todd, an associate professor of library and information science at Rutgers, at an open ing celebration of the Learning Commons on Friday. "What you've done is transformed a school library into a learning commons which traverses both the print and the digital information worlds."

Students say the space they once shunned is now a popular place to work and meet friends.

"It has that Barnes and Noble feel," said Premal Patel, 18, a senior. "You can focus more on the learning experience."

In recent years, many colleges and universities have begun renovating their libraries into "learning commons," creating cozier spaces with cafes and comfortable furniture, hoping to encourage students to return to a place many had forsaken for online research. But the concept is only beginning to trickle down to high schools, especially public schools. Chelmsford's renovation, which debuted in September, was intriguing enough to academics that a handful of them, like Todd, traveled here from other states to tour the new library one day last week.

David Loertscher, a professor at San Jose State University and a champion of redesigning school libraries, flew in to see what the team had created. Although he was impressed by the physical space, he said the most important work was Diggs's collaboration with teachers to teach students how to analyze the information available to them.

"We find that the kids now are just going onto the Internet, downloading stuff, and cutting and clipping it and passing it on to their teachers," Loertscher said.

The high school's Learning Commons now has room for six classes to meet, separated by rows of bookshelves. (The books are still here, all 25,000 of them.) Small groups of students working on projects can gather in six glass-walled rooms - once a repository of audio-video equipment locked up with iron gates.

"This is dramatic," said Susan Babb, youth services consultant to the Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System, who toured the renovated library earlier this week. "I would say it's cutting edge, what's happening . . . Now we can see this implemented as a model. I think other communities are going to say, 'We can do this, too.' "

Diggs, who helped persuade the town to spend more than $150,000 on the renovation, also won grants, including one that will soon bring 29 laptops and wireless Internet access.

"This is not a traditional space," she said. "We don't tell kids they have to be quiet."

It's too soon to know whether the Chelmsford High School Learning Commons will transform the way students learn. Teachers are still learning how to use the "team boards," giant computer screens hanging from the walls. But students say that for the first time this year, they like coming to this space - a stark change from the old library.

"It was gross," said Megan Salisbury, a senior at the school, who said she now spends much of her lunch break in the space.

"You can actually study here, rather than just try to get out of here as quickly as possible," added Alex Hazel, another senior.

When their classes meet in Learning Commons, the students said, discussions are more spirited than in the formal confines of classrooms. "It's more like kind of a debate. The library kind of enables that," Salisbury said.

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com