Jorge Sosa

Jorge Sosa is a library leader with more than 30 years of professional experience. In addition to serving as University Librarian at AUP, he serves as an active member of the Leadership and Assessment Committee of the AMICAL Consortium and as its representative to AUP. Jorge joined the AUP community as the Collection and Access Services Librarian, and in 2006 and he started as University Librarian bringing change and innovation to the University Library. Under his leadership the AUP Library has reoriented from a heavy local and remote storage library to a contemporary library based on solid digital collections (1.1 million e-books as well as other online resources and open-access). During his period, the AUP Library became a member of the French Couperin consortium, confirmed the AUP Library’s position in the French world of academic libraries. In later years, the AUP Library has become a hub open to other Paris libraries strengthening relations with local libraries, like the Sciences-Po Library, the BnF and the INHA Library. Under his leadership, the services like the document delivery and inter-library loan, information literacy, and research help have experimented greater development. With special interest in library spaces, Jorge has actively participated in the creation of the new spaces of the AUP Learning Commons and how services are delivered in integrated ways.

Previously, Jorge Sosa served for more than 7 years as library director at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Ecuador, working as well in its architectural design with the local firms of architects and USFQ President Santiago Gangotena. During his time at USFQ he brought together the USFQ collection, the USIS American Studies collection, as well as the UN and the Work Bank repositories under one roof. Jorge worked in the creation of two library schools in his native country, Ecuador and he also started the library of the Colegio Menor San Francisco de Quito, having input in the design of spaces, the development of its core collection, and the recruitment of the library personnel.

Philosopher by training Jorge graduated with honors from the Department of Philosophy at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) where he was part of the student government association of his department. In later years, during his Master’s in Library and Information Sciences at the University of Kentucky he also he participated in its student government association.

Jorge started working with pedagogy and learning as a young tutor, who soon became a young high school teacher of philosophy, ethics and logics at Colegio Francés de Quito. After his first master’s degree he became professor of librarianship at the special library program created by the Fulbright Commission in Ecuador, the American Embassy Cultural Section and the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL).  A few years later, he directed and taught at the Library Program at the Colegio de la Comunidad San Francisco de Quito. After moving to France in 1999, he continued with his pedagogical work at AUP, especially teaching information literacy in numerous FirstBridge courses, as well as in upper senior seminars.

Jorge social engagement started soon in his life with his participation in left-wing catholic groups in the city of Quito working for the improvement of people’s living conditions in low-income neighborhoods, like La Tola.  After his graduate studies, back in Quito, he focused his community work with The LGBT group, Grupo Tolerancia, as a founding member, engaging for the depenalization of homosexuality in Ecuador. He did some counseling with LGBT students at USFQ and has had some involvement with the LGBT groups in Ecuador and France.