Visual Signage and Academic Library Wayfinding

Many academic libraries use the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system to organise their collections, but few academic library users are familiar with the LCC system or, in libraries with open stacks, able to use it to aid wayfinding and locate known items or discover areas for strategic browsing. This is especially true for students, and despite librarians’ efforts, the problem persists. In order to increase accessibility at Weber State University’s Stewart Library in Ogden, Utah, and to help users navigate the library to locate and discover resources, faculty librarians, graphic designers, a circulation specialist, and technical services personnel collaborated to design and test symbols and signs for a visual signage system founded on highly respected principles of accessibility and universal design. A set of symbols to represent the major LCC headings and other library collections was created and tested with users via surveys and focus groups. The revised symbols were then colour coded to physical areas of the library and incorporated into a variety of identification, directional, and navigational signs together with verbal subject headings or captions to enable wayfinding. User testing of the signage and student feedback in a questionnaire during a needs assessment demonstrated the overall efficacy of the system which, with the symbols, can be adapted to other open-stack libraries and classification systems.