PULMAN & XT: remembering happy times

Woke up today with the news that in The Netherlands the number of unqualified teachers in high schools has grown quite exponentially. Too few teachers push schools to allowing physics teachers to teach e.g. chemistry. Saying that compentent makes qualified. Oh dear. I was in need for something nice. Some good news. So I looked back on the past 9 years and decided to catch up with some of the old PULMAN and PULMAN XT team. Getting word back was really, really nice and made me remember good times.

On the other hand having worked extensively on the cross roads of education and marketing for non formal educational institutions, (public) libraries and museums I am also somewhat taken aback by how little seems to have changed at times. PULMAN explored - mainly on a policy level - how public libraries, museums and archives could enhance cooperation, reasoning from the idea that for clients the distinction between these institutions is decidely less important that it is to the institutions themselves. Now, nearly 7 years on the same movement is still the ambition of many institutions and digitization enhances disclosure of information for customers. But in the back office the struggle still continues and it is a slow process to merge, in which sometimes IT is wrongly used to force policy decisions. Tempting, but a no goer. An iterative process between policy and IT, yes. IT to force policy decisions....recipe for disaster:-).

But before I drift off, let's stick with the happy memories that the contacts with the PULMAN team brought back, IT being the key factor in general for easily getting in touch, and linked in more specifically. I am only now starting to realise how great a tool that is, to catch up, to find where people are at and what they are doing and to get reconnected without immediately having to share a project or something concrete. Just catchting up is really, really nice. I do hope to reconnect with many colleagues from the past years!

Education for librarians

For the new sector institute for public libraries (siob) I am currently making an inventory of educational opportunies for library directors, middle management and front office. It concerns an inventory for internal use only at the moment, and it will serve as background documentation for the sector institute to determine their own course regarding potential developments of professional training and education. Frankly I am astounded by the wealth of training, workshops, masterpogrammes, post bachelor programmes and sector specific training available. 

Based on what the preliminary inventory I have made so far, from my professonial opinion I would say that there are three major points for action. The first action point is to disclose the wealth of programmes available for libraries. By disclosing I mean to categorize (as I am already doing in a very simple way) in a databse, structured per target group, subject, etc. This is not as simple as it sounds (see my blog on website struggles:-)) but I do think that it would be a first major win. Secondly I think that to somehow relate the available courses to competency profiles and job profiles would be helpful, but I would make that part of a larger marketing and educational effort. Because so much is available but knowing the (public) library I would say that you also need to stimulate them to look for training that goes beyond the day to day work, that introduces a dimension rather more on the process level. This could be done by a strong content related marketing effort, thus also educating the (public) library sector on the power of education. Which they usually deliver but to what extent are they themselves taking a professional stance on their own professional education? An open question, to which I think the answer will vary enormously. Thirdly I would think that it would be useful to offer a workform that allows people, notably directors en management, to make the translation from more generic master and post bachelor programmes to the specific (public) library sector. From my experience in similar trajectories for notably science centers, public libraries and project management trainings I have given, this translation to the specific environment, with its particular (unwritten) laws supports the participants to actually apply the knowledge in their own work. Thus progressing the public library sector.

And then there are other possibilities that could be explored such as negotiating framework contracts with training programmes to establish discounts for library participants. Contentwise the option that I would see as an opportunity as well is to develop a specific strategic librarianship programme, focussing on developing the library for the future. Here some librarians already discussed this, but having made the preliminary inventory now I would be able to give some more direction. I feel it should at any rate include a futures thinking component, teaching about scenario making, strategic business thinking about innovation and development, some risk analysis component and a cross over with industry where it is widely known how innovation work (many, many failures:-). That would be first inclination, I'll let future thoughts on this know. I now just need some time to let it all sink in.

Probably this week somewhere my client and I will take a closer look at this first inventory and we will have some preliminary discussions on the next step. I'll keep you posted, but meanwhile: should you have any library training that I should be aware of, let me know! And the same for any thoughts you might have re librarians training, education, and needs for education.

Africa day in the office

Yesterday seemed a bit of an Africa day in my office. It was the 20th anniversary of Nelsons Mandela's memorable walk to freedom. A moment to remember as his quote "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" has become my motivation, motto and compass. The full quote is: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world…It is through education that a daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a child of farm worker can become the president…Only education will make lasting changes,” was one of Mandela’s enduring statements on education. And thus we had a small toast to commend this truly great man.

And then Africa arrived in my office via skype: Rilwanu Abdulsalami from Kaduna State University in Nigeria skyped in to briefly catch up. We worked together when I organised eIFL.net IP conferences for library directors in Africa and Asia in Istanbul. A great experience and Rilwanu's skype brought back happy memories. The conferences were a great success, judging by the reactions from the participants on the spot and in their feedback forms, but the running up to the conferences were not all bliss. Getting the visa, arranging the right flights with as few visa-needing transfers as possible, finding a good location....there were moments of stress. But we did manage to get librarians from nearly 50 countries together, not once but twice over the course of two years and that made it so very worthwhile. With all the visa regulations and the work that goes in, one could easily be tempted to not even try and organise such a conference. Which would be a shame, because with the right people, time and effort and some (not even a large!) budget it is very possible and a rewarding mutual educational experience. With the help of local organiser Byzas Tours and the good spirits of all participants, speakers and the team at eIFL.net. 

Looking forward to what next week will bring. At any rate another New Zealand day including catching up with New Zealand Futures Trust!

Website struggles

One of the projects I am managing is the cooperation between the three technical universities in the Netherlands (Twente, Eindhoven and Delft) for non-formal education for 4-15 year old children (and their teachers and parents). The idea behind this cooperation is - in a nutshell - that we can organise one front office for clients whereas in the backoffice we can organize structured mutual learning and sharing of ideas, dreams and development processes. One of the first joint products that we have started to work on is the joint presentation of the educational projects, products, programmes and what have you. It sounds almost ridiculously simple, a natural start....As ever reality bites. How do we describe our products, programmes and projects? In The Netherlands we have so called learning targets (determined by government) of what should be covered at the end of primary school and per year in secondary school. These targets are what schools have to teach, and achieving these targets takes up nearly all the available time in a school year. For clarity: the targets describe the content of what should be taught and learned, but not the method. One can thus choose to use non-formal education as a means to teach certain topics. Thus at first sight making it a rather logical choice to indicate exactly which specific targets our individual programmes/products cover. But, how would that reflect on the vision that the non-formal education offered wants to offer a learning experience that goes beyond these targets? Beyond the thought of the tool box learning that seems to govern the entire educational system? The dilemma: not mentioning the targets covered makes potential clients skip further to other sites, mentioning them would potentially contradict the vision behind the activities offered. Mentioning the price is another question mark. We all know that for our (potential) clients the price is a (important) selection criterium. But none of the universities wants the price to be an obstacle for delivering the education.... The dilemma: not mentioning the price can scare (potential) customers away as they may go to others who have clear pricing, but mentioning the price might scare (potential) customers away as they cannot afford the price mentioned and do not feel room for negotiation. In addition the universitied do not wish to come across as a commerical supplier of non-formal educational programmes. They are universities for whom education is central, not the financial profit. For whom the content related contact with the other links in the educational chain is what counts. How will we harness that properly? How can we make it attractive and valuable for (potential) customers and remain true to the roots, aims, objectives, intentions and dreams of the founding fathers? Not to mention the questions and dillemma's that pop up regarding how to describe the products, how to define a limited yet clear list of topics to classify the large number of projects, programmes, events, workshops etc on offer. And the possibilty for taylor made programmes. In short: a good and seemingly operational first step leads to all sorts of dicussions with strategic, political and tactical dimensions. And so step by step we now find ourselves in an iterative and interactive process in which increasingly more layers of the universities become involved. And yet we are still aiming to have the joint website up and running by the end of March. 2010 that is. The operative consultants word being "challenge" I believe:-) I'll keep you posted. 

Education, entertainment, truth, fiction

Following my last blog, I found this article on cnn. Albeit focussed on journalism, it pretty neatly describes the tension between the image culture, trught, entertainment, fact and fiction. Where do we go from here? To what extent should customers wishes and cultural demands be leading? 

Education and entertainment: moral intuitions on the cross roads

Over the course of Christmas and New Year we watched an uncommon amount of tv due to my husbands injured leg. The anesthetic left him unable to read for about two weeks and I was pretty knackered from a succesful but tough year. Although we ordered a meter of feel good movies, we discovered that we cannot watch movies back to back and thus we ended up watching a mix of movies and channels like National Geographic Channel. The overdose of National Geographic made me wonder about the cross roads between education and entertainment.

The beauty of NGC is that they put images to words, thus bringing antiquity to life (as you understand we mainly watched historic stuff, a great many knights templar were smashed to bits on our tvJ). And so realistically that it makes you feel you are watching it as it has indeed happened.

I realised that this approach is in stark contrast with the approach museum professionals take towards what they present. In 2008 I conducted qualitative research for my M.A. thesis Applied Ethics into the moral considerations of museum professionals regarding cross cultural education. The Wereldmuseum, Nederlands Openluchtmuseum, Museumpark Orientalis, Museum Volkenkunde and the Afrika Museum participated in my research, which for a large part focussed on the tension between education and entertainment. 

One of the common denominators in the moral intuitions of the museum practitioners I interviewed was that they drew the line with re-enactment or so called living history. The argument being that one can never know for sure whether it was indeed the way we portray it now. Although living history appeals to the imagination, is an educational method that works and scores well in the entertainment department the museum professionals I interviewed felt that a large degree of certainty was needed should one want to use living history as an educational instrument. I wonder what the moral intuitions of the people behind National Geographic are. Because, as I realised while watching, museums and this channel do have the mix of entertainment and education in common. But they have found a different balance, or maybe rather: way of dealing with the apparent tension between the two. The easy answer here would be “sure, NGC is primarily entertainment, and museums are not.” I would argue that this answer does not do justice to the ambitions of NGC nor takes into full account the struggle that entertainment and education provide for museums. A cross roads begging for further (moral) exploration. Because with the increasing multimedia the boundaries between what is true and what is real, what we know and what we assume, are becoming increasingly blurred. Add to that equasion the increasing need for information to be “entertaining”….and we have an interesting mix that on the strategic and operational level pose new questions to identity of institutions and to demands of the public. Question to which different people find different answers, motivated by different goals but also by different moral intuitions which I think we ought to get out in the open so that we can take them into consideration.

Images for the Future: the view from another backoffice

On 16 December 2009 we had the second national conference for Images for the Future. We had gathered a good set of speakers, including Francisco van Jole and futurist Tony Bosma from www.extendlimits.nl to shine their light on the importance of audiovisual media for libraries with a special focus on cooperation between heritage institutions and libraries. The programma contained a plenary session and different workshops, all organised to inspire libraries to piece together their vision and actions for the near and mid term future. Approximately 125 people participated.

Marco de Niet from DEN in his closing speech reflected on the Images for the Future project from a more international perspective and put forward the BMICE publication, which already is success and might need a print rerun judging by the amount of little brown books that I saw distributed at both DISH2009 and this conference. In his presentation he gave our guests a magnificent insight in European and national research that has been carried out to establish what the state of the art is in the heritage sector concerning digitization. What really struck me was the slide in which research clearly showed the relation between budgets and vision. Now that was a slide with a wake up call! The presentations given at the conference will be made available on the internet, I’ll update this blog when the url is available.

Two things made the Images for the Future conference special in addition to the guests and speakers. One was the availability of four surface tables on the information market that guests could play with. Although technology is only a means and the whole conference stressed the importance of the human factor in cooperation and digitization this hands on experience proved valuable for our guests and definitly showed new perspectives for libraries. The second thing that made the conference special was the human factor. The Zeeuwse Bibliotheek proved to be warm and generous hosts and the whole logistic arrangement was excellent. And that to me proved that point that we often make in the library sector: it’s not exclusively about books, indexing and disclosure of information. It’s also, and very much so!, about offering a warm and open place where you can meet.