Our Library has been transformed!

We’ve gone from this…

To this…

This  is a story of a library reinventing itself. This is, of course, what libraries have always done. Libraries, like Mozart and Shakespeare and the wheel, are a good idea, a classic idea, and because of that they have quite successfully adapted themselves many times during their long and distinguished history. This remaking into a Learning Commons is a reflection of the era where libraries now find themselves. Information has been transformed from what was essentially a very controlled resource, we will organize it and control your access to it, to one that is ubiquitous, sometimes frustratingly comprehensive, and accessible to a degree we could only imagine short years ago.

 This shift is colliding with equally dramatic changes in education. The long-held industrial model of education lacks meaning and effectiveness in a world where so much information is readily available, where new and more dynamic skills will fuel this new century, where the new technologies are transforming how we learn and interact, and where students of all ages have come to expect something very different.  

Enter the library, which has always been an important player in education, whether it be formal or informal, individual or institutionalized. I have always operated under the understanding that the library was a place that bridged the gap between an individual or institution and the information they required. The Library has always been more than a room full of books, and the Learning Commons we are now imagining will be more than a room full of computer technology. Bridging the information gap, providing service and access, establishing an environment where learning can take place, and managing our ever expanding resources and skill-set is a lofty goal for the Learning Commons, yet one that has been well established by that good idea, the library. This is the ongoing story of the North Surrey Secondary Learning Commons.