News – Sorensen Keynotes ACRL/NEC Conference

News – Sorensen Keynotes ACRL/NEC Conference

Marie S. A. Sorensen keynoted The Association of College and Research Libraries – New England Chapter (ACRL/NEC) Spring 2015 Conference on Friday, May 8, 2015 at College of The Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. Spacing Out with the Library: An Exploration of Collaboration Across the Physical, Virtual and those Places in Between

The History and Future of Collaboration – Marie S.A. Sorensen, AIA NCARB LEED AP

The term ‘collaboration’ has seized our consciousness in academic library planning, design, and organizational theory to such an extent that it has become a holy grail for configuring space and user experience in the digital era. Originating in mid-twentieth century corporate culture, this concept today signifies a mythically ‘new’ spatial type and learning mode that defines pedagogy and mediates the current debate between education as a means to knowledge and education as a vehicle for job preparedness.

Let us broaden our vision to the mission of an academic library as a place that embodies the university community – a cultural organization that nurtures and physically contains the relationships a scholar and future entrepreneur makes with learning, with others, and with a cerebral toolkit of resourcefulness and judgment to be deployed for years beyond academic life. In shaping the communities of the library, architecture should be guided by the values of quality; nuance; inclusiveness; support for differing learning styles; physical, emotional and social health; and a clear sense of place for the academic disciplines that underpin the university’s curriculum and the library services and their constituencies. We will look at academic libraries and design concepts that embody these values as we shape the future of collaboration.

David Weinberger, Senior Researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society also presented a keynote lecture following Marie’s presentation.