Library buildings assessment: Faulkner-Brown vs. IFLA Questionnaire

This paper examines the evaluation of library buildings, particularly the evaluation of academic libraries, by scrutinizing several approaches employed in recent years. Despite the importance and cost of the space for the libraries, evaluation of library buildings has been neglected until recently. Even now, there are few effective instruments for performing such assessments. Therefore, this paper provides a comparison of two models used for this purpose. We compare an assessment questionnaire based on the Faulkner-Brown and McDonald “commandments” to an adapted version of the Questionnaire on Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Library Buildings developed by IFLA. The evaluations are performed on a real university library in order to assess the suitability of these instruments and the scope of their practical application.