Space and mental models

Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library, thinks the physical layout of the local library she used to visit regularly as a child, helped form her mental models. She argues that the physical orientation of the different sections (archaeology, anthropology and so on) provided her with a framework she adopted in her head.

Interviewed in the Education supplement of The Guardian about the diminishing intellectual rigour of new university entrants, Brindley guessed that they don’t spend as much time in libraries, if at all, and so haven’t benefitted from this embodied Dewey system (the arch categoriser).

Instead, the physical structure of the library has been replaced by the web’s hyperlinks. Brindley thinks that while hyperlinks are wonderful they’re insufficient for intellectual maturity. Hyperlinks, you see, are rather like brainstorming — all associations and no framework.

Graphic Organisers provide such a framework and can train the minds of students to develop internal grids of understanding.

All of which brings the cycle full circle. It was the organised minds in the first place that created the organised physical arrangements of the library. That, in turn, as we saw with Lynne Brindley, was absorbed back into someone else’s mind. She then went on to to use her internal organisational frameworks to create organised systems in her own work. Which in turn became absorbed by her students. Organised structures and systems get passed through generations.