In its Strategy Paper 2025, the St. Pölten UAS set itself the goal of co-shaping society as an engaged university: “We contribute to society as an engaged university.”

The campus library, which accommodates an external branch of the city library, is a space that lends itself to this guiding principle. In this facility with its constructional exterior areas, fields of tension are created as various actors use it in different ways.

Back in 1989, Ray Oldenberg (a spatial sociologist in the USA) coined the “Theory of the Third Place”. In Denmark, libraries evolved into community centers with specific functions and possibilities. Based on the concrete requirements for the campus library, this action-oriented practice research project aims to develop perspectives for the future of “our” library in this sense.

Possible questions:

• How is the campus library as a social space used by the different actors? What are the expectations of the involved parties?
• How can beneficial coexistence be achieved?
• How can Social Work support and accompany this development?
• What are limits and exclusion factors?