Museums, Libraries and Learning

Dr. Robert S. Martin, Director, U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services
"Charting the Landscape/Mapping New Paths:
Museums, Libraries and K-12"
Washington, DC
August 30, 2004

Welcome to this workshop on the role of Museums and Libraries in strengthening K-12 education. It is a pleasure to see so many familiar faces, and I look forward to meeting those of you I don't yet know. We have invited you here because you share a common interest in and commitment to K-12 education. You represent a variety of institutions, organizations, disciplines, and approaches to teaching and learning.

We are here to do important work: identifying major issues, trends, developments, and avenues for further investigation in the arena of museums, libraries and K-12.

This makes sense for the Institute of Museum and Library Services. IMLS is an independent federal agency that serves as the primary source of federal grants for the nation's libraries and museums. Our grants to museums and libraries build institutional capacity, support core library and museum services, encourage excellence, foster collaboration between and among museums and libraries, and promote innovation.

Through its grant programs and its convening authority, IMLS provides leadership for the library and museum fields. The National Leadership Grants program in particular has funded digital projects in both libraries and museums, which have dramatically enhanced public access to rich cultural heritage resources. National Leadership Grants have also fostered a culture of collaboration between and among museums and libraries, demonstrating the common mission of these important social agencies. The 21st Century Librarian Program and the new Museum Professionals for the 21st Century Program focus on addressing the recruitment, training, and professional development needs of our professions.

Learning and education have always been central to IMLS. The Institute of Museum Services (precursor to IMLS) launched a series of initiatives to strengthen museum partnerships with schools, held a national conference, and published a case study workbook entitled True Needs, True Partners. In 1996 and again in 2002, the agency conducted two national True Needs, True Partners surveys that have charted the meteoric rise in museum investment in K-12 learning. In June 2002, IMLS worked with the Office of First Lady Laura Bush to convene and publish the proceedings from the first White House Conference on School Libraries, a landmark event that brought together education, library, government, and philanthropic leaders to highlight the importance of school libraries in a child's education.

The 2003 Reauthorization of IMLS charges the agency to "encourage and support museums in carrying out their educational role, as core providers of learning…in conjunction with schools, families, and communities," and to support libraries "expanding services for learning and access to information and educational resources in a variety of formats, in all types of libraries, for individuals of all ages."

At IMLS we understand that both museums and libraries are social agencies with the role of providing the resources and services that stimulate and support learning throughout the lifetime. In other words, we understand that museums and libraries are both agencies of public education, fundamental to the education infrastructure of our society. That simple recognition underlies the action of Congress that created IMLS in its present form less than a decade ago.

We often hear it said today that we are living in an information age. But in a world drowning in information, we are hungry for knowledge. That is why today, in the 21st century, we must be more than an information society. We must become a learning society. And that is why at IMLS we are dedicated to the purpose of creating and sustaining a nation of learners.

Libraries and museums exist to serve certain specific needs in our society. To take a bit of liberty with the 1920 words of John Cotton Dana, a great librarian and a great museum director, "All public institutions (and museums [and libraries] are not exceptions to this rule) should give returns for their cost; and those returns should be in good degree positive, definite, visible, measurable. The goodness of a museum [or library] is not in direct ratio to the cost of its building and the upkeep thereof, or to the rarity, auction value or money cost of its collection. A museum [or library] is good only insofar as it is of use…."

Changes in the environment in which libraries and museums operate-in the technological infrastructure through which we deliver services, in the galleries and programmatic spaces we create, in the economic substrate that finances operations, and in the social landscape that defines the communities that we serve-dictate corresponding changes in the way libraries and museums structure and deliver services. One additional change in our environment-our emerging understanding of the nature of learning and the way learning interacts with other aspects of our environment-is likely to result in an even more rapid change in the coming decade.

Libraries and museums-and the professionals who work within them-have been coping with constant and rapidly accelerating changes in these environmental factors for the past three decades. K-12 schools-and their teachers and administrators-have, of course, been struggling with these same changes.

The structures we have in place today for providing public education evolved in response to specific environmental conditions and social needs. They are largely an artifact of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. How else do we explain, for example, the persistence of the nine-month school calendar, which was developed in response to the needs of a rural agrarian society, in which three-quarters of the population were engaged in farming? Today we live in an urban post-industrial society, in which only four percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, and yet the facilities we have created at great expense to house our schools and colleges sit fallow and unused one quarter each year.

Today we are witnessing conspicuous challenges to the basic assumptions of schooling. The dramatic rise of home schooling in the past decade is but one example. There is an unremitting clarion call for educational reform. We recognize the roles of family, home, workplace, and community-in addition to schools-in learning. We are here today and tomorrow to examine how, in this new learning ecosystem, museums, libraries and K-12 can be more effective partners.

In the 21st century, environmental conditions mandate that the ability to learn continuously throughout the lifetime is essential. All Americans need access to learning throughout their lifetimes. The importance of continuous learning for economic vitality and for personal fulfillment is beyond question, and the K-12 years are key building blocks for lifelong learning.

Let me provide one example. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a public-private collaboration of leading business, education and government groups. The Partnership recently published an important document, "The Road to 21st Century Learning." This publication documents that there is a "growing sense of urgency about the future of America" based on the recognition that the nation needs a well educated, engaged populace to achieve national security and economic prosperity, and a "broad consensus that there must be significant improvement in schools."

In response, the Partnership has identified six key elements of 21st century learning required to address the challenges of our time. In addition to the core subjects of English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics, government, economics, arts, history, and geography, 21st century content includes global awareness; financial, economic and business literacy; and civic literacy. Critical learning skills include information and communications skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills. 21st century tools include information and communications technologies, and 21st century context refers to the power of learning "academic content through real-world examples, applications and experiences both inside and outside of schools." Today and tomorrow, we can explore ways in which our libraries and museums contribute to these requirements for 21st century learning.

These observations are reinforced by the recently published 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition, which contends that we now operate in a Knowledge Economy:

...in which technology and the knowledge on which it is based are central motors of economic growth. This means that a growing number of workers manipulate symbols rather than machines. And it means that human or intellectual capital-the knowledge that comes from education, training, on-the-job experience and workplace-based e-learning-is central to sustaining personal and organizational advantage.

This has important implications, among which is that "the ability to learn and to adapt to change is a central life skill. Learning is … a crucial coping skill in an environment of change and flexibility."

The OCLC Environmental Scan also brings our attention to three major social trends: Self-service, moving to self-sufficiency; satisfaction; and seamlessness.

Self-service is becoming the norm in virtually every area of human activity. Whether it is at the gasoline pump, in retail checkout lines at grocery stores and home-improvement centers, or self-service circulation kiosks in libraries, self-service has quickly become the norm.

The economic benefits for retailers and service providers resulting from self-service operations are obvious. However, studies indicate that many individuals-especially younger ones-actually prefer self-service operations over dealing with human beings. Computer terminals are perceived as more reliable and faster. (Licata 2004) "Online banking and online travel activities have disintermediated the humans who used to be the gatekeepers and guides to these services," notes the OCLC study, "but self-sufficiency and convenience are prime drivers for the consumer."

People who use the Internet to acquire information, products and services profess themselves extremely satisfied with the results that they achieve. They find what they want or need when they want or need it. They may be unaware that higher-quality or more relevant results might be achieved by having recourse to an expert intermediary, and they do not apparently care.

While self-sufficiency and satisfaction are important to learning, and to structuring library services that support learning, the importance of seamlessness is crucial, and possibly the dominant trend for the future of libraries and museums. According to the OCLC report, in today's society

The traditional separation of academic, leisure and work time is fusing into a seamless world aided and supported by nomadic computing and information appliances that support multiple activities.

The report goes on to stress that this is particularly significant among young adults, noting that

the freshman class of 2003 grew up with computers, multimedia, the Internet and a wired world. … Their world is a seamless 'infosphere' where the boundaries between work, play and study are gone. Computers are not technology, and multitasking is a way of life….the lines between workplace and home are blurred. (DeRosa, Dempsey and Wilson, 2004)

The implications of this report go beyond our institutional boxes. We need to contemplate developing a seamless infrastructure for learning across all the social agencies and organizations that create, maintain, and provide access to resources that support learning. In short, we need to adopt a bold new vision of learning.

The responsibility for learning is not and should not be the exclusive preserve of formal educational institutions. It is a community-wide responsibility. Lifelong learning should be a continuum-with formal and non-formal learning opportunities complementing one another. Learning does not start at the schoolroom door; neither does it stop at that portal either. It is and should be ubiquitous. How do our museums and libraries - with our massive holdings, our carefully curated exhibitions and experiences, our trained and knowledgeable professionals, and our educational programs and other services - contribute to effective learning in the K-12 years?

At IMLS, one of our major efforts is to foster collaboration. We believe that effective collaboration is the strategy of the 21st century. It is aligned with how we are thinking about our communities as "holistic" environments, as social ecosystems in which we are part of an integrated whole. The kind of collaboration we try to foster is simply a mature and reflective recognition of intersecting nodes of interest, activity and mission.

Naturally at IMLS, we are interested in fostering collaboration between and among museums and libraries. It is inherent in our structure, and mandated by our governing statute. But we also think it is imperative to reach out beyond the museum and library and to find nodes of intersecting interest, activity and mission among other players in the community.

In fact, at IMLS we perceive a pending convergence of libraries and museums with other partner agencies that are now increasingly seeing their role and mission in supplying the resources and services that encourage and support learning. In part this convergence is driven by a recognition that in the digital environment, the boundaries between museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage agencies are blurring. Let me explain.

In the traditional non-digital environment, libraries organize their collections and present them for use in response to a user's specific need or inquiry. A user comes into the library and asks "what do you have on topic X." For example, "Show me everything you have on impressionist painting, on Native American ritual objects, on Paleolithic protozoa."

Conversely, museums traditionally organize selections from their collections in topical or thematic interpretive and didactic exercises we call exhibitions. A user comes into the museum and looks at what the museum staff has selected, presented and interpreted. A museumgoer would not normally come into the museum and say "show me all of your impressionist paintings, show me all your Native American ritual objects, show me all your Paleolithic protozoa."

In the digital environment, these behaviors are almost precisely reversed. Museums for the first time can present their entire collection, cataloged and surrounded with metadata, retrievable in response to a user's specific interest or inquiry. Examples of such access are common.

Libraries, on the other hand, now routinely organize selected items from their collections in thematic presentations that tell a particular story, and even call these presentations "exhibitions." There are many examples of this behavior in libraries-indeed, it is now so commonplace as to be considered routine.

It is important to note that the users of these digital resources do not care-and may well not even be aware-that the originals of the digital surrogates that they use are in a museum, a library, an archive, or some other kind of institution. They really do not care how you define your institution-they just want access to the "stuff."

This convergence is not restricted to the digital environment. Networked digital information technology has simply lifted the veil that has obscured the basic fact that the silos into which libraries, museums, archives, broadcasters, and other developers and purveyors of learning resources and opportunities are ghettos of our own making. There is no natural law that distinguishes library from museum, museum from archives. On the contrary, the natural state of affairs-underscored by our common history-is that the similarities among such agencies are far more striking than the differences. And, indeed, museums are opening schools; libraries are creating museum environments; school libraries are becoming ICT hubs for multi-media learning.

If we can posit that librarians, archivists and museum professionals are different facets of a single unified profession, we will find that our ability to serve the needs of our communities is strengthened. If we re-envision ourselves as public servants, charged with the responsibility for collecting and organizing the materials that document our rich and diverse cultural heritage and enhancing access to those materials for our citizens, we will find that we can reshape our practices, learn from each other, and better attend to our users-including students and teachers.

We must continue to develop facilities that recognize, embrace, and encourage the collaborative and social nature of learning. But we must also learn more about the real needs of elementary, middle, and high school educators. We must create learning environments that empower student, teacher, and family learning-in and out of school-enabling learners to turn information into knowledge. We must extend these lessons from the realm of the university to all levels of formal education, from the kindergarten to the research university.

At IMLS, we provide leadership through our grant programs. The National Leadership Grants program is one of our most important programs. A good number of you have competed successfully for IMLS National Leadership Grants to support your research, demonstration, or programmatic efforts. As our operations have continued to evolve over the past several years, and our interactions with the museum and library communities have progressed, we have come to realize that it is time for these programs to evolve as well. In exercising our responsibility to provide leadership for museums and libraries, next year we will be changing the categories for both museum and library grants.

Beginning with the 2005 grant cycle, IMLS will offer National Leadership Grants under three categories, the same in both Museum and the Library programs. Those categories will be: 1. Advancing Learning Communities;
2. Building Digital Resources; and
3. Research and Demonstration.

These categories will provide ample opportunities for innovative museum/library/K-12 collaborations that break through traditional learning and teaching boundaries.

Although our focus today and tomorrow is not explicitly on IMLS funding categories and priorities, we will be alert, as you craft a broader library, museum/K-12 agenda, for suggestions that can inform our future grant making programs and other agency activities.

In the 21st century environment of rapid change, schools alone are not enough to foster the ability of our youth to learn throughout the lifetime. We need to embrace a bold new vision of learning. We need to think beyond our institutional boxes. Libraries, museums, and schools are all important elements in this web of learning. This "Charting the Landscape" conference provides an opportunity for us to consider ways in which we can further a seamless infrastructure for K-12 teaching and learning. The time to do this is now.

And so I invite you to turn your engagement, you energy, and your insights to this task for the next two days. Together we can certainly "Map a New Path" that will be of benefit to all learning institutions-and more importantly, to the society that we all seek to serve.

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