SMART Solutions for Service Improvement and Environmental Sustainability: the NCHU Library Experience

Abstract

This poster demonstrates how National Chung Hsing University Library (NHCU Library) applied SMART technologies to its 13 year-old building and effectively reduced its energy consumption as a result.

NCHU Library, located in central Taiwan, suffered severe damages from a devastating earthquake in 1999. The reconstructed library, measuring 34,492 square meters, was inaugurated in 2005. It serves as the backbone of the campus and opens almost every day year-round. While the emerging technologies have been bringing massive changes to library services over the past decade, NCHU Library is now confronting an urgent need for facility modernization, which is definitely a big challenge under the growing threats of budget cuts, staff shortage and rising electricity costs.

In order to deal with these difficult situations, NCHU Library has consecutively obtained a range of financial supports from the Architecture and Building Research Institute, Ministry of the Interior from 2016 to 2018. Through these funded projects, a SMART Space Management System was adopted to optimize the reservation process of self-learning spaces. It not only helped achieve a comprehensive service improvement but also reduce the labor costs and energy waste. It was found that the number of users has tripled and over 96% of users were satisfied with the upgraded facilities and services. In addition, a SMART Lighting System was completed in 2018, which should achieve 82% of the reduction in lighting energy consumption and make the library more environmentally sustainable as a benefit.

Graphs, photographs, statistics, and small blocks of text will be mainly used to demonstrate these projects on the poster and a video will be included as part of presentation materials as well.