The Future of Education
Library - Provider of User Oriented Education Services. The Experience of the National Library of Latvia
Marta Dziluma, National Library of Latvia (Latvia)
Abstract
“In a society of lifelong learning public libraries will be nodes connecting the local learning setting – whether it is of a formal or informal kind – with the global resources of information and knowledge, public libraries can therefore play a role of fundamental importance in the development of future systems of lifelong learning.”1 was stated in IFLA (InternationalFederation of Library Associations) report The Role of Libraries in Lifelong Learning, published ten years ago, in 2004. Since that the development of ICT and different communication tools have moved forward incredibly fast and library professionals have had to be able to follow this development and to serve/teach library users according with it.
The opening of the new building of the National Library of Latvia in 2014, the first public building in reestablished independence period of Republic of Latvia (after 1991), is setting new challenges for the whole educative library work and interaction with the library users. In recent decades libraries have developed their role being society educators and trainers and working with different target groups.
The National Library of Latvia has established its role as a player in lifelong learning processes: for library users librarian is an educator - trainer of information literacy for different target groups and educator in numerous subject areas, library organizes educative exhibitions and has to follow newest technologies and tools to address the users of different generations. Secondly, the National Library of Latvia is working as the vocational education centre for its employees as well as for the library professionals.
The article and presentation will focus on following library education issues:
- educative exhibitions - possibilities of new technologies;
- information literacy face to face and distant training;
- learning with subject librarian;
- vocational and professional development education - towards blended teaching/learning solutions;
- library - participant in dissemination activities of existing lifelong learning products;
- existing methodologies and training tools in user and library professional education.
REFERENCES
1 The Role of Libraries in Lifelong Learning : [online]. http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s8/proj/Lifelong-LearningReport.pdf
