Organizational Culture

The Freedman Center is a highly service-oriented service point and its service philosophy correlates strongly with that of both the Kelvin Smith Library and Case Western Reserve University; and, not surprisingly, the Freedman Center has appropriated core values and mission items from both. In alignment with the University vision, we seek to have a transformational impact on all who teach, learn, discover and work at Case so all students, faculty, and staff are prepared and engaged to serve humanity. As a part of a great research university, the Freedman Center combines experiential learning with rigorous scholarship to produce educated learners who are awake to new possibilities. Foremost among our values is the dedication to being an innovative partner with the faculty and students at Case; to act as a focal point for a vibrant re-visioning of knowledge generation and learning. More specifically, the Freedman Center is dedicated to helping students and faculty use multimedia tools in course assignments and curriculum. It is one thing to listen to audio recordings of people speaking French, and to repeat these phrases into a recording device. It is another entirely to speak with a person in France via videoconferencing! Innovative technologies make learning not only more vibrant and alive, but more practical and rooted in the world. The Freedman Center is very much the intersection of the physical and virtual academic universe: it is the place where both realities can exist at once.

One of the biggest challenges for the Freedman Center is that its provision of services and its service philosophy is a microcosm of the Kelvin Smith Library as a whole. That is, many of the services provided in the Freedman Center cross what would be, externally, functional units. For instance, the lending of items such as digital video cameras is very much a function of the Main Service Desk in Kelvin Smith, that is, a Circulation function. Interviewing a student or faculty member to discover what his or her project goal is, and what resources are necessary to achieve that goal, locating those resources and, potentially, showing the student or faculty member how to use the resource, is the main function of Reference Services. As a microcosm of the whole library, the Freedman Center has a unique opportunity to demonstrate to the larger organization how such functional units can interact fluently.