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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.

• Museums and libraries offer authenticity and authority. They offer real objects and artifacts, authentic and firsthand experiences and their authority is widely regarded as trustworthy. Both, for example, have rigorous protocols for collection building, enabling them to direct users to resources of quality and authenticity. An emphasis on the “real thing” also stands as an interesting contrast and complement to the virtual world.
• Museums and libraries have a diverse and broad user base and the ability to work across all ages. Libraries, especially, embrace the value of free and equitable access for all. Libraries are core democratic institutions with the capacity to meet the needs of everyone from new immigrants to preschool toddlers. Museums have developed an impressive history of educational programming within their collections, likewise sharing an expertise at building relationships between the ideas inherent in their collections and the interests of various consumer groups.
• As resources for lifelong learning, both institutions can facilitate learning for all ages and across time and place. They share an interest and ability to provide congregate spaces for intergenerational learning and are among those few spaces where families can expect to learn together.
• They are effective knowledge navigators with the skills and structures in place to provide access to information. The library profession especially has a large and well-established infrastructure with a broad, shared understanding of organizational systems, devices and standards.
• One core difference between museums and libraries is that libraries do not interpret; they provide the organized pathways to discovery. Museums, on the other hand, rely on interpretation and use the context to illuminate the meaning of objects. In both cases, however, the intellectual expertise of the institution is put to the service of helping visitors learn.
• Libraries and museums are centers for research and scholarship. The learning that takes place in each is the foundation for exhibits, texts, programs, films, documentaries and a host of vehicles that bring new learning to the public.
• They are both skillful teachers of learning skills, the object-based or critical thinking skills that are so important in today’s world of information overload. Museums and libraries and their staffs are masters at facilitating inquiry-based learning -- the kind of learning that is becoming more vital everyday in this new century. This profound expertise is often one of the least acknowledged of the assets of museums and libraries. Their staffs know how to work with self-directed learners, how to enable them to find their way through the maze of information available. Our institutions are already new-order teachers.
• Libraries and museums are also places -- well trusted, congregate spaces that have demonstrated the ability to convene and respond to community needs. The days following Sept. 11 offered dramatic documentation of libraries and museums responding to people's needs to gather with others in familiar and safe places. Libraries and museums also have a history of serving as community forums, offering places where dissension is permissible and safe.
• And, finally, the staff of libraries and museums truly care. They serve not just because it’s their job to do so, but because most have a compassionate commitment to enriching the lives of others. When the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York reaches out to new immigrant populations through historic materials, it seeks to sever the alienation that besets new residents. Similarly, when libraries like the Queens Borough Public Libraries build collections in multiple languages, teach English as a second language, and partner with dozens of community groups, the motive is to welcome and empower all people. Here in Arizona, the work spearheaded by the State Library to assist Native American populations also emerges from deep human caring. I could cite numerous other examples, from the creation of job training centers to computer training for the elderly -- each an act that enables all visitors to find and place themselves in history and to build images of dignity and pride.

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:

• “She has a wrinkled face,” the first answerer told me.
• “He’s seeking to change careers.”
• “He’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with him -- taking responsibility for his own health care.”
• “She’s upgrading her computer skills.”
• “He’s logged on at 2 am, after the late shift.”
• “She took early retirement to have time for new interests and to return to old hobbies.”
• “His parents don't speak English so he’s trying to find the information they need to learn.”

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:

• They stressed that lifelong learning is a continuum -- with formal and non-formal learning opportunities complementing one another. Even if we focused on the non-formal learning opportunities afforded by our institutions, our work might also have a profound impact on school-based learning. Museums and libraries have great capacity for bridging the gaps throughout the whole of our educational system.
• The Steering Committee stressed the word access and urged us to define and enlarge upon the concept of access. Access is for more than just “in the presence of” or “having the tools.” Providing access also means developing, enhancing and supporting the disposition and desire to learn. It means providing meaningful content in useful ways.
• They further stressed the centrality of the learner. They suggested that the learner be present during the development of our projects and ideas and participate in project teams. Collaboration should not be a one-way process with the collaborators as the presenters, but a process in which need and solution are both present at the table. Take care, they suggested not to focus solely on refining the “supply” end of things, but carefully measure the “demand” as well.
• Technology, they reminded us, offers visual metaphors. Learning is a two-way street. The learner becomes teacher; the teacher becomes learner. Technology challenges traditional definitions of authority and we should be mindful of how authority issues impact our collaborations.
• There gave us other useful metaphors for our new journey through collaboration: the community as campus; the learning system as the town square; the images of nets and webs and intersections; the idea of learning resources as ecosystems for the mind.

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:  8/10/2007