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Arizona Convocation

3-4 March 2002
Tucson, Arizona

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Arizona Convocation 2002
Monday Morning

Beverly Sheppard

Sheppard is Deputy Director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Good morning. It is truly a pleasure to be here and to participate in this meeting. I love what is happening here -- from the informal networking to the more formal opportunities to stimulate good conversation about common issues and interests. When you put a lot of bright and inquiring minds together, the results can be very exciting.

In his keynote address initiating a museum and library collaboration in Vermont, Dr. David Carr, Associate Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of North Carolina, asked the audience to consider: "What happens when caring minds meet?" I think you will find many answers to that question here among this gathering.

I wish to express a special thank you to GladysAnn Wells for inviting me to participate today. One of the great privileges of serving as Acting Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was the opportunity to learn so much about the library field, its remarkable accomplishments and services. I feel very honored to have been invited to speak again to an audience of many librarians. You have all enriched my life and thinking about the purposes of our wonderful institutions.

Not long ago, at an Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums, I commented that collaboration has emerged as the strategy of the 21st century. It is reflected in many contemporary statements: we describe our communities as “holistic”; we note that individual silos are breaking down; we speak of building “social capital” together. Even technology offers visual metaphors of new connections: we have webs and nets and a wealth of new intersections. When we talk about collaboration today, our conversation is informed by these images and as well as by our overlapping institutional interests, activities and missions.

In my remarks this morning, I will share with you some of the extraordinary intersections that IMLS sees among libraries, museums and archives, particularly in the realm of lifelong learning. I hope my words will stimulate your thinking about building on those commonalities as we look at learning in the 21st century.

Let me begin with a brief history of IMLS, a history that placed the potential for collaboration at its center. Federal support of museum and library services was combined into a single agency in 1997. Although there were skeptics about the merger, there were visionaries too. Despite the separate needs and structures of museum and library funding, the potential for partnership was particularly intriguing.

Internally, this potential prompted a series of questions. What goals did these two institutions share? Where were the overlaps in their institutional missions? What might IMLS do to encourage partnership activities, and ultimately, how would the public benefit?

As you can imagine, it was easy to see immediately that education -- the support of learning across a lifetime -- is at the heart of both institutional missions. Both are about the critical work of creating and supporting learners. Both institutions invite purposeful use and forge links to the world beyond their walls. They are both embedded in their communities and frequently acknowledged as trusted content and knowledge providers. Libraries and museums also represent an amazing potential network as they are found in communities of all sizes across the country.

This notion of a vast network of learning institutions supporting American society is especially compelling at the outset of a new century. The breadth of change in American society is extraordinary. Fueled by technology, increasing diversity and radical shifts in industry and labor markets, change is occurring at every level and is placing an unprecedented emphasis on the need to be engaged in continuous learning throughout our lifetimes. This information age of ours demands that we prepare to be a learning society, one that supports access to knowledge as a basic human right.

The time is especially ripe to challenge our libraries, archives, museums and other informal educational institutions to be resource-rich leaders in this changing world. How might we change, converge, collaborate, communicate, prepare -- not just to be players in a learning society -- but to be innovators in the change at hand?

This tantalizing question is at the heart of IMLS' continuing initiative that we refer to as The 21st Century Learner -- an ongoing exploration of new and deeper ways in which we can become educational leaders.

What are the unique assets libraries and museums bring to this challenge? In conversations with both fields, IMLS has developed a long and impressive list of assets that museums and libraries bring to a learning culture.

With such a list of assets, who could possibly be better positioned than libraries, archives, and museums as essential resources in responding to the needs of learners across a lifetime?

Starting with this detailed understanding of the shared educational assets and mission of museums and libraries, IMLS began to examine how collaboration between the two might engage the 21st century learner. What happened almost immediately was that we found that we were not the only ones asking new questions about informal education. Organizations as diverse as AARP and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were likewise examining new responsibilities in a learning age.

At a conference in the summer of 1999, public broadcasters gathered in Bethesda, Maryland, to reconsider their changing responsibilities in a digital age. It was here that I heard a call for a “grand alliance” of public broadcasting, museums, libraries, institutions of higher education and others across the community focused on a common purpose.

We found the conversation to be international as well: talked about in the United Kingdom and Europe, in Canada and as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, some of the most exciting language on the topic of a learning society can be found in the publications of RESOURCE, the UK’s counterpart to IMLS.

Each conversation has been edged with a sense of urgency, particularly as technology is making a new commodity out of information, and one that is more and more in the hands of the for-profit community.

The urgency is echoed in America's great concern about public education. No other domestic topic has had greater political resonance than the state of American schools. While many are concerned with accountability, others are also deeply concerned that today’s educational system is out of step with contemporary needs. Some feel that this is the time to see learning supported by the whole of the community. Perhaps our language should change from talking about a school system to talking about a learning system, one that forges a continuum between formal and informal learning.

For the past few years, I have been talking with museum and library audiences about the new learner and have often asked the question: What will be different about the 21st century learner?

As you can imagine, I have received some interesting answers:

I have heard many references to technology and to changing learning styles. I have heard lots about the need for access to practical and utilitarian information -- from local community information to job training materials. I have listened to concerns about the special needs for those for whom English is a second language or those of us who struggle with basic literacy. I have heard worries about learning becoming superficial, emerging from pre-digested information sources. Yet, sometimes, I have heard that it will be deeper than ever, driven by strong personal motivation.

As a composite picture has come together, what I have heard most often is that learning will be increasingly be self-directed, driven internally by personal need and interest. The new learner will assume more and more responsibility for his own learning. It will be facilitated more and more by technology and will require a very generous provision of learning resources -- trusted resources, easily accessible, clearly organized, available in an open environment. New learning will also require a whole new level of information literacy skills.

All of these visions have been accompanied by a grave warning: that access to such learning is in great danger of not being evenly distributed or available to all.

There is no question that these predictions suggest that museums and libraries could and should be, not just participants, but leaders in this new learning world. Place the assets I described a few moments ago alongside the definition of the new learner, and the links are clear. Museums and libraries are uniquely positioned as resource-rich leaders in a learning society. This leadership is something that IMLS believes we must encourage.

At the center of our interest have been a few key questions. Can libraries and museums meet the needs of the 21st century learner more effectively and efficiently through partnership? What kind of infrastructure could make an informal learning system a stronger presence in the community?

To explore these questions, IMLS took several steps. We posted a position paper on our web site and invited comment. We held conversations at professional meetings. We read related materials and researched like mad. We funded collaborative projects through our grants programs. We gathered various people together for extended conversations. We engaged in some collaborative ventures of our own.

Every activity confirmed a fascinating potential for new partnerships in a learning age. In November 2000 we assembled a Steering Committee to take our thinking deeper. I asked for their help in shaping a national conference that would generate new thinking about partnership, that would identify examples of what an innovative learning collaboration looked like and how schools might also be involved.

The Steering Committee offered some very important guidance:

In November 2001, IMLS hosted its first 21st Century Learner Conference, attended by nearly 400 professionals from museums, libraries, public television and related fields. Through a variety of sessions, some high tech and others quite modest and moving, the conference explored both models and objectives of partnership. All attending experienced views of education through multiple lenses.

The conference had two major goals: to widen the community of discourse around learning partnerships and to encourage a new, laboratory-like community of practice. We hoped to stimulate experiments in collaboration where new ideas could be developed, tested, evaluated and shared across our fields.

Ultimately these two goals support a larger mission, central to the health of our society in the years to come. That mission is to create a learning society that strengthens the quality and fabric of our communities at their very core -- what many would call the building of social capital.

We may define such social capital as what bridges the spaces between people, the trust, mutual understanding and shared values and behaviors that build robust human networks and vibrant, workable communities. Social capital is developed only when all members of a community are offered equitable opportunities to grow and learn and share in a joint enterprise. Social capital requires access to learning across our lifetimes.

The conference extended the conversation about the new learning of our day. IMLS will continue to explore and encourage others to share in both the dialogue and the practice. At the heart of our commitment is a powerful conviction that our organizations will be the leaders in this effort. For who is better positioned to serve as a champion of their communities, as catalysts for the learning spirit and as compassionate, human leaders in the 21st century -- than libraries, archives and museums?

 

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Updated:  12/20/2006

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