The new “research tower” now rising above the new home of the Archives of Ontario building at the east end of York Lanes will accommodate not only the offices of many of the Organized Research Units (ORU’s or “research centres”) in the social sciences and humanities, but also a new shared resource centre to support them.  Because the space available to each of the ORU’s that will be moving into the new building is limited, a number of them have been working with the Libraries in recent months to move large parts of their collections to Scott Library.  The remaining part of these local ORU collections will be accommodated in the shared resource centre being created in the tower. 

The new resource centre will be located on a specially reinforced area of flooring in the northwest part of the sixth floor, which is conveniently at the centre of the floors being dedicated to the offices of the ORU’s.  Since the building is being constructed to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, which demand maximal use of natural light, the outer walls of the resource centre, like other parts of the building, will be almost entirely glass.  The overall effect will be of a bright and inviting space for quiet reading or consultation.

While the exact floor plan is still being detailed, it is expected that the resource centre will be more than a storage space for books; rather, it will also serve as a place for faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars to consult books and documents and confer with each other.  Like the shared social spaces in the building, the resource centre will be a place where researchers from different ORU’s will meet and share ideas informally across their different research fields.  The resource centre will also serve as a showcase for the publications of the members of the various ORU’s, with display cases and mobile furnishings that can be moved aside to celebrate a book launch or welcome a visiting speaker.  Researchers may also be able to confer with a librarian on their projects conveniently—right in the resource centre—away from the hubbub of busy Scott Library. 

Initially, the ORU’s that are contributing their collections to the shared resource centre are some of those with the largest collections: the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC), the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS), and the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS).  These centres have devoted time and considerable effort to identify which parts of their collections could go to the open stacks of Scott Library; which may need to be treated as “special collections” within York University Libraries; which items (superseded, redundant, etc.) could be de-accessioned, and which materials should be kept close at hand in the new resource centre. The amount of shelving to be installed in the new space will be based on the size of these remaining collections, although additional shelving space is being planned for growth and for the addition of new collections in future.