Keynote presentation from Jesuit Secondary Education Association Librarians Conference January 2014. Focuses on how we blend material practices and symbolic meanings in 21st century school libraries. Special focus on Learning Commons model.

1. LIBRARIES IN SPACE
Jen LaMaster
Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School, Indianapolis

2. Library of Celsus: Ephesus

3. INFOWHELM AND INFORMATION FLUENCY

4. SO WHAT DO WE DO?

5. Context
Evaluation
Experience
Use
Reflection

6. CONTEXT
• What communities are present in the school?
• How are they articulated now, 3 years from now?
15years from now?
• Interactive strategies to build relationships between
stakeholders. This is the new job of the librarian…

7. • Imagine….
If someone walked into your library right now,
what 3 things would stick in their minds?

8. The relationship
between the material
practices and the
symbolic meanings
that social agents
attach to their spatial
environments.
Image: Seattle Public Library

9. Thus the meaning of
a text is not as much
a quality of the text
itself as it is an
experience in the
mind of the user.
- Ole Jensen
Discourse Analysis and SocioSpatial
Transformation Processes
Image: Aarhaus Library

10. • Imagine…
How do you connect the dots between your work and
student learning?
Between your work and school mission?
Between your work and those things that keep your
Principal and AP up at night?

11. SO HOW DID WE GET HERE?

12. School Media Center
70s
The goal of the
school library media
center is to ensure
that all members of
the school
community have
equitable access “to
books and reading,
to information, and
to information
technology.”
AASL
Image: University of London

13. 80‟s and 90‟s
Information
Commons
“a cluster of network
access points and
associated IT tools
situated in the
context of physical,
digital, human and
social resources
organized in support
of learning”
Beagle and Bennett
Image: IU Bloomington Fine Arts Library

14. EXPERIENCE
• Physical
• Virtual
• Communal
• The Learning Commons

15. 2000s Learning
Commons
The Learning Commons is
an evolution of the
Information Commons in
which the basic tenets of
the Information Commons
are enhanced and
expanded upon in order to
create and environment
more centered on the
creations of knowledge
and self-directed learning.
_ Heitsche and Holley
Image: Dennison University

16. THE PHYSICAL
• The practical workings within…
• Computer hardware/software, furnishings, designated
spaces and traditional collections
• Early libraries created to support the reader, then as
they grew the focus was on supporting the
collections… now shifting back to focus on the learners.

17. Computer hardware
Device, wireless,
printing

18. Furniture

19. Designated spaces
to build, practice,
create

20. THE VIRTUAL
• Beyond four walls and a roof…
• Digital library collections, online tools, electronic learning tools
and Web presences (portal, website, social media)

21. Online tools
LMS, social media,
Google Apps for
Education

22. Electronic content
Digital textbooks,
databases

23. THE COMMUNAL
• “Sites and places are never just locations. They are always
sites for something and someone. „Spirit of the Place‟ subjected
meaning that is contextually located in the community.”
Rob Shields “Places on the Margins”
• Workshops, tutoring programs, research collaborations, mission
and identity, IT support

24. Mission and Identity
Image: JSEA

25. School Academic
Objective
Access, Evaluate,
Use

26. Professional
Development
Best practices in
teaching and
learning… and
raising children

27. BREBEUF‟S LEARNING COMMONS

28. • Remember – a media booth does not turn a student
into a scholar… that begins to happen when pedagogy,
design and reconceptualized library services come
together
• Learning is not training… it is understanding and insight

29. REFLECTION
• What‟s it take?
• Democratic Planning Processes – lots of stakeholder
voices must be heard
• Time
• Surveys of need

30. Imagine…
• How will you make sure everyone who walks into your
library sees the focus on students? Not stuff, not the
view… students.

31. WORKS
•
Educause,”7 things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons”
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7071.pdf
•
AASL. Standards for the 21 st Century Learner. http://www.ala.org/aasl/standardsguidelines#standards
•
Heitsch, E and Holley, R. “The Information and Learning Commons: Some Reflections” New
Reciew of Academic Librarianship, 17:64-77, 2011
•
Beagle, Donald Robert. The Information Commons Handbook. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2006.
Print.
•
Donald Beagle (2010): The Emergent Information Commons: Philosophy, Models, and 21st
Century Learning Paradigms, Journal of Library Administration, 50:1, 7-26
•
Bennett, Scott. “The Information or the Learning Commons: Which Will We Have?” The Journal
of Academic Librarianship 34.3 (2008): 183–85. Print.
•
Worm-Petersen, Kasper. “Democratization of Design.” GRASP (11/7/13)
http://grasp.dk/democratization-of-design/

32. •
Eidson, Diana. “The Celsus Library at Ephasus: Spatial Rhetoric, Literacy and Hegemony
in the Eastern Roman Empire.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2013) Vol 16, Issue 2.
•
Shields, Robert. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity.
London:Routledge (1992).
•
Healey, Patricia. “The communicative Work of Development Plans, Environment and
Planning.” Planning and Design. 1993, Col 20 (1), p 83-105.
•
Jensen, Ole. Discourse Analysis and Sociospatial Transformation Processes. School of
Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Global Urban Research Unity. Electronc Working
Paper 28. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/assets/documents/ewp28.pdf
•
Most photos personally owned. Examples of school libraries over time:
• 1970‟s: University of London Medical Library http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/medicalhistory/clinical-later.shtml
• Information Common: IU Bloomington Fine Arts Library
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IUB_-_Fine_Arts_Library_-_P1100227.JPG
• Learning Commons: Denison University http://www.designgroup.us.com/ourwork/libraries/images/denison_university/04_dul.jpg