UTC Library Studio Director Emily Thompson and the cover for the book she has co-authored, “A Complete Guide to Creative Technology Spaces in Academic Libraries: Media Labs, Makerspaces, and More.”
When Emily Thompson arrived at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2014, the world of academic libraries was already changing. Books and journals remained the foundation, but libraries across the country were exploring new ways to support students and faculty through technology and creativity.
As a tenured associate professor and director of the UTC Library Studio, Thompson has spent the past decade guiding that evolution.
“The Library Studio is a place where anyone can come—regardless of major or assignment or experience level—to explore multimedia production, including video, audio, 3D printing and graphic design,” she explained. “We don’t expect any level of expertise. You can come in knowing nothing and you can come in knowing a lot of things.”
Thompson and her team of six full-time staff and five student assistants oversee one-on-one training, audio and video recording spaces, and equipment checkout.
“Most importantly, we have people who are able to answer your questions in addition to our students who are trained to meet you where you are and teach you how to do something cool,” she said.
Now, Thompson’s decade of experience at UTC—combined with the collective expertise of colleagues across the country—has culminated in the publication of “A Complete Guide to Creative Technology Spaces in Academic Libraries: Media Labs, Makerspaces, and More.” The book, published by ALA Editions in collaboration with Core Publishing, provides practical guidance for libraries looking to establish or expand their creative technology spaces.
Thompson is the lead author on her first book, joined by Vanessa Rodriguez of the University of Miami, Eric Johnson and Oscar K. Keyes of Virginia Commonwealth University, and Kelsey Sheaffer of ITHAKA. Their work encompasses everything from equipment and staffing to accessibility, advocacy, budgeting and community building.
Together, she said, “they represent institutions large and small, public and private, each navigating the same question: How do libraries build and sustain spaces for creative technologies?”
For Thompson, the project originated from a sense of isolation she experienced early in her career.
“When you’re one of the first in the field, it’s really lonely,” she explained, “and you just want to toss ideas back and forth with someone. You don’t know who else is doing it. So these are our ideas tossed back and forth, and the organization—separately—is a place where you can come.”
That organization is the Association of Creative Technologies in Academic Librarianship (ACTAL), which Thompson co-founded with her fellow authors and several peers. ACTAL now hosts conferences, interest groups and virtual meetups for librarians engaged in creative technology work.
In fact, its fourth annual conference will take place in Knoxville, Tennessee, this November.
The origins of the book date back to 2020, when Thompson and her colleagues began meeting regularly to share their experiences of adapting during the pandemic. Their group conversations eventually led to the creation of ACTAL; soon after, they realized they should write a book.
“We just decided there are other people who are new to this new field and don’t know that they have colleagues,” Thompson said. “We wanted to be able to have a place where they could talk to people and see what we’d already gone through. So we wrote it down in a book.”
Time on professional development leave in 2024 allowed Thompson to advance the project, and the book was released this September.
While the book draws on case studies from multiple institutions, UTC features prominently. Thompson said the Library Studio’s mission is to help students and faculty “get the technology out of the way” so they can focus on learning and creating.
“I’m really good at explaining technology to people who are worried that all computers hate them,” she said with a laugh.
Thompson said her approach reflects the central theme of the book.
“The biggest takeaway is that people are more important than stuff,” she said. “If you invest in staff—be it librarians, hourly staff, student workers—investing there is way more important than spending a lot of money on a bunch of cool stuff.”
Thompson believes creative technology spaces in libraries address how students learn and communicate today.
“Literature has really changed and articles are great, but we are seeing the way that a lot of information is transferred through social media or on the internet,” she said. “Being able to articulate your ideas in a visual format or in an auditory format in addition to writing really gives you the ability to talk to more people and get it out there in a way that they can understand it.”
She said that students who create podcasts, videos or graphic design projects are often more engaged because they are thinking about the audience in new ways.
“These are things that they can put on their own social media and they can say, ‘Hey, look, I made this video,’” she said. “That’s an essential skill in this day and age where you need to be able to talk in multiple formats.”
For Thompson and her co-authors, the book fills a gap in professional literature.
“It’s the first one talking about academic libraries,” she said. “There have been other works talking about public libraries or school libraries, but this is the first one to say, ‘Hey, we can do this in academia as well.” And the more places that do it, the better.
“Whether someone is building a space from scratch or deciding on the next step after creating an audio lab, the guide offers models, case studies and lessons learned.”
Located on the third floor of the UTC Library, the Library Studio offers 24 workstations with specialized software and dedicated spaces for projects ranging from podcasts and documentaries to prototypes and graphic design.
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