LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Orientation - Libraries, Archives, Museums and New Forms of Adult Education

Libraries, Archives, Museums and New Forms of Adult Education

Jay Chatzkel
HUMAN CAPITAL: THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT ARE CHANGING

The role human capital has fundamentally changed from where people were interchangeable resources, to where human capital is the source of renewal and innovation for organizations.They will have to forge new rules of engagement to become knowledge-based enterprises in a continuous process of reworking their relationships, values, structural arrangements, and incentives. Only by operations grounded in transformed principles can enterprise reach the levels of performance required for success in the Knowledge Era.

FROM REPOSITORIES OF INFORMATION TO NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Sue Wilkinson and Jonathan Douglas
AMBITIOUS VISION FOR MUSEUMS, ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES. INSPIRING LEARNING FOR ALL

‘Inspiring Learning for All’ is an online resource for museums, libraries and archives, developed over three years in consultation with over 500 professionals. It contains activities to encourage organisations to explore what learning is, a framework to enable museums, libraries and archives to assess the quality of their learning activities and to plan improvements to them, a way of measuring impact on learning, advocacy materials to help organisations win acceptance for the developments required to improve learning outcomes, and support for shifting the organisational focus to learning.
www.campaignforlearning.org.uk
www.mla.gov.uk
www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk

Danielle Mincio
WORKING FOR GLOBAL ACCESSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

Libraries as the natural information centres fought to get their position acknowledged in the documents in the UN World Summit for Information Society WSIS. Initiated by a group of Swiss librarians, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions have worked to organise occasions where librarians from all over the world could meet members of their official national delegations to the WSIS to show them the basic role of libraries in the information society, to lobby at the highest level. The work continues.
http://www.bridgecontentdivide.net/index.php?newlang=english
http://www.ifla.org/III/wsis2605.html
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi-en-1161|1160.asp

Jela Steinerová, Jaroslav Šušol
HUMAN BEHAVIOUR IN ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SEEKING

It is good for people as well as libraries to know where help, even training is needed in information seeking process. The Slovakian research gives assistance in developing better functioning procedures.
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-02/bishop.html
http://InformationR.net/
http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub110abst.html
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub94/contents.html
http://web.mala.bc.ca/hssfc/Final/QuestionnaireR.htm
http://www.diglib.org/use/whitepaper.htm
http://informationr.net/tdw/publ/papers/1999JDoc.html

Silva Novljan and Alenka Šauperl
TOWARDS LIFELONG LEARNING WITH THE LIBRARY

Libraries should reflect on improving their basic service functions by analysing the target groups and their needs, as well as their own information channels and how to utilise the interaction they provide. The research in Slovenia showed that both people’s reading skills and the way libraries’ websites and other information could be improved to induce tapping of their resources.
http://www2.arnes.si/uljpeins/czve/pirls
http://www.ifla.org./IV/ifla69/papers/031e-Resman

Tuula Haavisto
IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM – ASK THE LIBRARY

There are ways in which libraries can serve the general public interactively, and introducing their own information seeking skills. The article describes two wonderful practical examples.
http://igs.kirjastot.fi/index3.html
http://igs.kirjastot.fi/toimintakertomus/ (in Finnish)
http://www.minedu.fi/minedu/culture/library/public_libraries.html (link under the sub-title For more information)
http://www.tampere.fi/kirjasto/nettinysse/hiirihukassa/hiirihukassa.html (in Finnish; available also in Swedish: Fĺnga musen)
http://www.tampere.fi/kirjasto/nettinysse/fangamusen/fangamusen.html
http://www.fla.fi/seniorit/webbiraportti2000.htm (in Finnish

LIBRARY COOPERATION FOR ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC INFORMATION

The eIFL project organises cooperation between libraries to negotiate affordable prices for electronic journals and other electronic materials. Over 40 countries have joined the network.
www.eifl.net
www.eifl.net/services/services.html
www.soros.org/openaccess/
www.doaj.org

IDEA STORE – LIBRARY AND LIFELONG LEARNING CENTRES BASED ON MARKET RESEARCH

A London borough made a market research on what people want from the library. Based on that they set out to offer library and adult education services when and where people wanted. Results proved highly popular with local people, both in the use of libraries and education services.
http://www.ideastore.co.uk

MUSEUM CONNECTS AND EXPANDS

Alan Chadwick
WHAT ROLE FOR MUSEUMS?

Besides serving their existing users, museums could have a role as institutions engaging imaginatively a variety of socially excluded groups. Museums could work independently or in collaboration with other adult educational or community agencies. As preservers of meanings as well as objects, museums could offer controversial and timely themes and make a contribution to cultural awareness among their many communities; in addition, museums provide learning possibilities across all age groups.
http://www.amonline.net.au/amarc/contested

Sotiria Grek
NEW CUSTOMERS WITH EXPERIMENTAL ADULT EDUCATION IN MUSEUMS

Going through the broad lines of the history of museum education the writer ends with the critical question: Will museums be able to discard their old elitist image and become spaces for critical engagement? The prerequisite for this is, essentially, the need to re-theorise museum politics by examining how the new educational imperatives are often old practices dressed up in new garments.

Carla Padró Puig
WHOSE WORLD PLANS MUSEUM ACTIVITIES? NEW STRATEGIES

Museums are a social invention. There is always a community of professionals who claims for the ‘truth’, either collectors and connoisseurs, directors and curators, educators, visitors and evaluators or managers and marketing people. Social constructionism gives importance to collaboration, reflexivity and multiplicity, we should not overlook visitors as catalysts for meaning making.

Helen O’Donoghue
ONCE IS TOO MUCH. EXPOSING THE ISSUE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN THE MUSEUM

The Irish Museum of Modern Art with partners took up domestic violence as a theme to work on. The women, the artists and the Museum worked collectively to make art to help them to come to terms with the issue of violence against women. A variety of projects and a variety of media and technologies were used to create eleven artworks that became the exhibition Once is Too Much.
http://www.modernart.ie/Education/Education.htm

Margherita Sani
INFORMATION TO SHARE. EUROPEAN MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES NETWORK COLLECT AND SHARE

In most European countries museum education is still mainly addressed to schools. The project Collect & Share can be regarded as 'a lifelong learning project on lifelong learning'. The Project Collect & Share has been designed to act as a platform to collect and disseminate good practice in learning and education for adults in museums and galleries.
www.collectandshare.eu.com
www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk