Journal articles on the topic 'Vocational school libraries'

Objective - Evidence based librarianship (EBL) springs from medical and academic origins. As librarians are tertiary educated (only occasionally with supplementary qualifications covering research and statistics) EBL has had an academic focus. The EBL literature has significant content from school and university perspectives, but has had little, if any, vocational content. This paper suggests a possible Evidence Based Librarianship context for vocational libraries. Methods - A multidisciplinary scan of evidence based literature was undertaken, covering medicine and allied health, librarianship, law, science and education. National and international vocational education developments were examined. The concept and use of evidence in vocational libraries was considered. Results - Library practice can generally benefit from generic empirical science methodologies used elsewhere. Different areas, however, may have different concepts of what constitutes evidence and appropriate methodologies. Libraries also need to reflect the evidence used in their host organisations. The Australian vocational librarian has been functioning in an evidence based educational sector: national, transportable, prescriptive, competency based and outcome driven Training Packages. These require a qualitatively different concept of evidence compared to other educational sectors as they reflect pragmatic, economic, employability outcomes. Conclusions - Vocational and other librarians have been doing research but need to be more systematic about design and analysis. Librarians need to develop ‘evidence literacy’ as one of their professional evaluation skills. Libraries will need to utilise evidence relevant to their host organisations to establish and maintain credibility, and in the vocational sector this is set in a competency based framework. Competency based measures are becoming increasingly relevant in school and university (including medical) education.

Introduction: At present there are 36 state higher vocational schools in Poland. Each of them hosts a library, which is an indispensable element of the process of higher education. Aim of the study: The purpose of the study is to outline a characteristics of the academic libraries which have been functioning since the beginnings of state higher vocational schools in Poland.Material and methods: The basic method used was an analysis of a survey of 20 libraries that had responded to the survey (out of the 36 existing ones). The questionnaire contained both closed and open questions. The study included several self-chosen library activity areas and a few selected functionality indicators. Results: Most of the libraries surveyed share space with other university units. The prevailing use area is up to 100 thousand m2, with the storage area being up to 100 thousand volumes. All the libraries provide free access to shelves; 12 of them run science information centres. Using Internet home pages with a view to communicating with a reader is still not common. Formally, 13 libraries have created special departments , but none has had heads of the departments appointed. Only 3 libraries have had deputy directors appointed. A functionality indicator comparison has demonstrated that state higher vocational school libraries are very close to public university libraries; when compared to private university libraries, however, their results are very often higher.Conclusions: State higher vocational school libraries form a specific network of university libraries and fulfil similar tasks at the same time and at the same level as most academic libraries in Poland. Their specifics is indicated by less extensive organizational structure, smaller use and storage areas as well as non-autonomous budget implemented from the central level of a university

This article deals with the problem of “white stains” in the history of libraries in Russia — activity of libraries at the secondary professional educational institutions on a boundary of 19—20th centuries that gets special interest in modern conditions of reforming of a vocational school. The work reveals the purposes and features of functioning of similar libraries on an example of Kazan, and considers the organization of library cases in them, including literature acquisition, creation of catalogues and departments, work with readers, and also structure of their collections. The special attention is given to functioning of student’s libraries and reading rooms, and also work of librarians.

It is important to assess usability of Integrated Library Information System (SIPUS) at UGM in order to find out whether the system that has been developed by the Central Library of UGM is useful and accepted by user libraries spread out within the campus. There are three criteria of usability assessment based on the standard of ISO 9241-11 (1998), i.e. efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. This ISO standard is used because it has a series of assessment criteria relevant with the problems of SIPUS implementation at various libraries within UGM. The study was descriptive quantitative. Data collected during the study were analyzed using statistical method and interpreted. Population of the study were the librarians at UGM. Samples consisted of 30 librarians/library staff at faculty libraries, Central Library, the library of vocational school and Jakarta Campus. The result of analysis and discussion showed that usability, effectiveness and efficiency of integrated SIPUS implementation werevery high.

This study aims to determine: (1) Is there an effect of the use of the school's digital library on the learning motivation of the FKIP UNRI FKIP-assisted SMK students 'accounting skills program, (2) Is there an effect of the use of the school's digital library on the learning outcomes of the FKIP-assisted SMK students' accounting skills program. UNRI, (3) Is there an effect of the use of digital libraries and learning motivation on the learning outcomes of the accounting skills program of FKIP UNRI Fostered Vocational School students.This research method uses descriptive quantitative research. The population in this study were students of class X Accounting 2 at Vocational High School of FKIP, Riau University Pekanbaru, by taking a sample of the entire population as many as 26 students. Collecting data using questionnaires and documentation, data analysis using descriptive analysis and regression analysis.The results of the study state that: (1) The use of digital libraries partially affects the motivation to learn business economics in class 10 accounting students at SMK Labor Assisted by FKIP UNRI Pekanbaru. Where the motivation to learn business economics is influenced by the use of digital libraries of 91.9%. (2) The use of digital libraries partially has no effect on the learning outcomes of business economics for class 10 accounting students at SMK Labor Assisted by FKIP UNRI Pekanbaru. Where learning outcomes are influenced by the use of digital libraries by 10%. (3) The simultaneous use of digital libraries has an effect on learning motivation, while the simultaneous use of digital libraries has no effect on the learning outcomes of business economy class X Accounting 2 at SMK Labor Assisted by FKIP UNRI Pekanbaru.

The aim of this study is to discover and obtain information about the upkeep of educational facilities and infrastructure at Vocational High School 2 Cikarang Barat. The analysis method used is descriptive qualitative. The study took place at Vocational High School 2 Cikarang Barat from July 2020 to December 2020. The school principal, deputy headmaster in charge of facilities and infrastructure, maintenance support staff, and students of Vocational High School 2 Cikarang Barat served as research informants. Interviews, observation, and reporting studies are all used to collect data. After that, the data is analyzed by reducing it, presenting it, and drawing conclusions. The triangulation of sources, techniques, and hypotheses is a validity technique. The study's findings indicate that: (1) Vocational High School 2 Cikarang Barat maintenance preparation starts with a work meeting, and then maintenance is divided into two categories: normal and routine maintenance. A one-year budget is generated after deciding maintenance tasks based on their categories. Following that, representatives from the facilities and infrastructure sector specifically select the structure of facility and infrastructure maintenance, as well as their respective job desks in each division, which are known to the school principal. The final move is to socialize students at school. (2) School maintenance processes and techniques begin with frequent and routine maintenance. Routine maintenance includes the upkeep of classrooms, teacher's offices, and special rooms such as libraries, computer laboratories, and science labs. The school also performs routine maintenance on air conditioners, printers, and photocopiers, as well as computer program upgrades. (3) Obstacles faced by schools in preparing facility and infrastructure repairs, including, among other problems, things that arise unexpectedly and need urgent repair at the facility. The lack of knowledge of users of school facilities and infrastructure, partners with outsiders who are often less sensitive, and cultural differences among individuals in the use of facilities and infrastructure are among the process and technological obstacles encountered.

The SMK Negeri 1 Siantar School Library is one of the special libraries located at the SMK Negeri 1 Siantar School. Libraries provide various kinds of library materials such as books, lessons, lesson questions, and other vocational books. After the researcher made observations, the problem that often occurred was books that were borrowed and returned books that had a non-strategic layout, so that library visitors who did not know the placement found it difficult to find the books they wanted to borrow. This research uses data mining techniques, namely the Apriori Algorithm, the Apriori Method is a method for looking for patterns of relationships between one or more items in a dataset. The Apriori method can be used for data on borrowing books at the Siantar 1 State Vocational School School Library, where the composition of the library books (B1) X_Press UN 2019 B. Indonesia side by side with books (B4) School of Love is a Great Leader and Teacher, if the composition of the book is (B10) Moral Mulia side by side with book (B1) X_Press UN 2019 B. Indonesia, If the book arrangement (B7) X_Press Mathematics is side by side with the book (B5) Relationer, if the book arrangement (B7) X_Press Mathematics is side by side with the book (B9) Indonesian Wisdom Batak Toba, and if the arrangement of the book (B10) Morals Mulia is side by side with the book (B8) Hati Therapy, the data from these items each met the minimum confidance value of 0,5% or the same as the specified 50%. The result of this research is to help library staff arrange the book layout correctly. It is hoped that this research can provide input to the school

At the beginning of the twentieth century about one in twenty American teenagers graduated from high school; by mid century over half of them did so; and today six of seven do. Along with this expansion in graduation, the experiences of high schooling became more significant. Though diversity existed at the school level, by the interwar period most high schools offered courses in “higher” academic subjects (literature, mathematics, and ancient and foreign languages), while they gave large numbers of students a chance to practice music, drama, and other fine arts. Business leaders and educators developed programs in technical-skill training. Courses in household economics, personal hygiene, and sex and reproduction appeared as well. A few schools operated with two shifts: day and night Many maximized their capacity by rotating students between newly constructed gymnasiums, stadiums, fields, swimming pools, showers, cafeterias, laundries, machine shops, laboratories, performance halls, and libraries. Some provided up-to-date diagnostic and preventative medical and psychological services. Others developed vocational guidance. Nearly all established relationships with juvenile justice and youth custody agencies. More than any other institution, the increasingly comprehensive high schools of the twentieth-century redefined the social lives of American youths through teams, clubs, bands, and groups engaged in a long list of contests, games, performances, and other events. Early in the century extracurricular activities began to rival formal class work as the primary focus of secondary schooling. Today there is a joke told from Ohio to Texas, funny for its sad truth. Q: How do you pass a school levy? A: Put football on the chopping-block.

SMK Negeri 3 Tanjungpinang is a vocational high school located in Kampung Bulang, Tanjungpinang. This school is facing problems in managing the library that is owned so that it can serve library lending for users more quickly and accurately including in providing access to library materials directly to users. But, at the moment. The library still does not have a library circulation system that can provide library access. The web-based library system that is designed is expected to facilitate library members in SMK Negeri 3 Tanjungpinang in finding digital books about library materials owned by libraries without time and place limits. The web-based library sirkuasi system, which is designed according to the needs and conditions of the library is also expected to be able to facilitate and speed up officers in handling circulation services and making reports. Programming is done to make the system above is done using the PHP programming language with a MySQL database server. From the results of the implementation of the system and testing, it was concluded that the web-based library information system can answer the problems encountered so that it can help the library in serving users quickly and accurately.

The article analyses activities of the ‘local society’ of Ust-Sysolsk, Vologda gubernia in the second half of the 19th century. It draws on both published and unpublished historical sources to reconstruct its history. These are known to researchers of problems of culture and education of the Komi population. However, the term ‘local society’ is rarely used. The author defines ‘local society’ of the uezd town of Ust-Sysolsk of the second half of the 19th century as a voluntary self-identifying association of citizens, codified or not, conceived on a on-going basis in order to solve urgent problems of non-productive and non-commercial nature. In the studied period in Ust-Sysolsk there were a boys gymnasium and a girls one, a town school, a vocational school, and a religious college, and also several a parochial and uezd schools. Teachers, town and uezd officials, merchants and townspeople formed the ‘local society.’ The intelligentsia made up for absence of cultural and educational institutions in the town by creating public organizations, whether spontaneously and in an organized way. The spectrum of the Ust-Sysolsk ‘local society’ activities covered spheres of education, charity, organization of public libraries and reading rooms, leisure and scientific expeditions, collecting of ethnographical materials. Cultural and educational activities were purely amateur, of non-professional nature. And yet it bolstered the development of theatre, music, and visual arts in the town. There also were societies ‘just for fun.’ These organized soir?es, feasts, masquerades; in winter constructed an ice rink. The Ust-Sysolsk ‘local society’ had its peculiar features, such as clear differentiation of the citizens’ cultural values and new forms of public associations. Its many events and activities prompted community connections. The ‘local society’ was a ‘school of citizenship’ of sorts, meaning that it produced a sense of public service, duty, and national pride. Performing its different functions, it complemented top-down governance. As it had a dual nature (the nature of its activities was both public and state), in course of reforms the ‘local society’ continued to develop its public spirit.

This study aims to determine the roles and obstacles of school librarians in providing services during the Covid-19. This descriptive study used a qualitative approach. The researchers selected 13 representatives of high schools, vocational high schools, and madrasah aliyah at the same level as public and private. The data were obtained through observations, interviews, and documentation. The study found that school librarians have provided certain library services during the Covid-19 pandemic, namely providing direct services by implementing health protocols, providing digital information sources or e-books, disseminating information via WhatsApp, improving and fixing library infrastructures. Meanwhile, the obstacles faced by school librarians were unpreparedness to face the pandemic, lack of technology facilities and internet access, lack of competency, and minimum library budget.

Objective – To explore the motivations for choosing school librarianship as a career. Design – Narrative research, qualitative interviews. Setting – The School Media program specialization in a Master of Library Science program at a large research university. Subjects – Five graduate school students seeking initial certification as school library media specialists. Methods – The researcher employed narrative research, based on career construction theory and the Life Story Interview, (McAdams, 1995). This methodology is a set of loosely-structured, open-ended questions designed to encourage detailed, in-depth responses from the participant teller, combined with a more structured Career Style Interview (Savickas, 2005) designed to elicit self-defining stories. Data was collected through qualitative interviews, using personal narrative interviews that focused on the entire life of each person from birth to present (Life Story Interviews) and additional questions in an interview format (Career Style Interview.) Data was collected and analyzed in two stages. The analysis first examined participants as individuals then tried to identify commonalties among the stories. Each life story was examined to determine a career style on the basis of vocational personality, career adaptability and life theme. The interview data was then analyzed for thematic connections and occupational choice. Main Results – The final analysis identified the following themes as relevant to the study, and to the career choices of graduate students planning to be school librarians: parental expectations; career changers; librarian mentors; prior library work experiences; reading; library experiences; altruism-service; desire to work with children; financial stability and security; flexibility of work schedule; emotional distance; and vocational personality. In general, the participants appear to value safe, traditional career choices that allow them to put family first and maintain a flexible work schedule, while also providing financial stability and security. Those who are already teachers noted interest in a job that provides relief and emotional distance from the everyday social problems of students. All five noted the “love of reading” as a motivation for choosing this career path. The vocational personality of each subject was determined through interpreting their answers on the Career Interest Surveys, using Holland Occupational Theme RIASEC codes: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. The vocational personality of all five students did not match the predominant code for school librarians. None exhibited a resemblance to the “enterprising” type, the most prominent personality for successful school librarians. All five did exhibit “artistic” vocational personality, and the researcher notes that this may be an explanation for the choice of librarianship as a second career, as artistic types take longer to find a compatible career match. The researcher also notes that the final code is a “best estimate” for each subject. Conclusion – Examining the vocational development of the five graduate students through vocational personality, career adaption and life theme afforded a broader viewpoint than traditional survey studies. The determining of vocational personality type may be helpful to recruitment efforts to the profession, and help make the career choice more visible.

Objectives – To explore how students use the school library in their daily activities, who visits the school library, what activities occur during these visits, and how students value the school library. Design – Comparative, multi-case study. Setting – Two Norwegian senior high schools in two different counties. Subjects – Students in year one, two, and three at two high schools; and teachers, principals, and school librarians at each of the two schools. Methods – Data was collected from interviews, observations, documents, and questionnaires during the first five months of 1998. Most data was gathered from 25 observations in the school library (each observation was 3-4 hours in length). Observations were made in three specific areas of each library: work tables, the computer site, and a reading hall quiet area. In addition, seventeen 45-minute observations were made in various classrooms. To gain student perspectives and to learn how and why students valued the school library, in-depth interviews were conducted with 28 students, consisting of 2 boys and 2 girls from each of years 1, 2, and 3 at each school, plus 2 boys and 2 girls from the International Baccalaureate classes at one school. Four teachers from each school, the school librarians, and the principals from each school were also interviewed to explore attitudes about the school library, how they valued it and what instructional role they believed the library played in students’ daily lives. Sixty students completed questionnaires that asked when and for what reason students used the library, what locations in the library they used, and what the library meant to them in both their schoolwork and free time. Documents such as class schedules and curricula, and school policies and rules were also considered. Main Results – Data analysis indicated students had a lot of appreciation for the school library, but mainly for its role as a “social meeting place,” rather than as resource center for information. Students were aware of the function, purpose, and importance of the school library, but rarely used it for projects or research. The library was most appreciated for the fact that users went there to meet friends and talk. One observed group did not borrow books or bring work to do, clearly demonstrating that their purpose in the library was strictly social. There were students who used the library for research and information retrieval, but these students were the minority. Most of the students who did instruction-related activities in the library did homework from textbooks they brought to the library. There was no indication that teachers or the school librarians made any efforts to alter the attitudes of students or their use of the library as a social club. Based on observations, the researcher offered several possible reasons for her findings: weak rules and few sanctions, invisibility of the school librarians, failure of teachers to use the library or make assignments that required information seeking, and lack of a cafeteria in School A (which may have also contributed to the value of the library as a “meeting place”). Leisure-related activities in the quiet reading hall were highest among the girls, and highest among the boys at the work tables and computer sites. Daily users (occupants) of the library at School A were second and third year boys and girls. Only boys from first, second and third year vocational classes were “occupants” at School B. The occupants at both schools influenced the activities of new users. Conclusion – The findings of this study reveal a “gap between the rhetoric on instruction and school library use and actual practice” (pg.12). Students were rarely given assignments that required use of the library and there was no collaboration between the classroom teachers and the school librarian. The library was not perceived as a resource center and was not viewed as an integral part of daily instruction. Weak rules, few sanctions, misperceptions, and inadequate instructional leadership by the school librarian appeared to contribute to the observed behaviors related to library use in the two schools. The author suggests the need for organization, leadership, and the proper training of students on the use of the library. She mentions the need for principals, teachers, librarians, students, and teacher preparatory colleges to work hand-in-hand to bring about a change of attitude about – and usage of – the school library.

Internet Resources and Technologies have become an integral part o f education globally. Computer education and computer in education are two aspects o f technology that enhanced Teaching and Learning o f Vocational and Technical subjects. In addition, it stressed the importance o f teaching and learning o f Vocational and Technical Education (VTED) in technology fantasy environment using simulation, interactive, explorative, and subject specific software. It highlighted the impact o f using internet and technologies in the unification o f some modern teaching strategies, the barriers faced by developing nations, and urges schools to expand their libraries to include ICT unit for universal access. Some recommendations were forwarded which includes: Internet facilities and computers should be provided in all vocational and technical institutions o f learning, and powerful broadband servers should be provided that will stand the test o f time.

The present research featured educational and demonstration handicraft workshops in the Tomsk Province in the early XX century. The research objective was to determine the general course and features of the workshops that played a significant role in the modernization of technology and handicrafts in the region, along with other institutions of the Tomsk State Handicraft Committee, e.g. museums, warehouses, and libraries. The workshops became an important part of vocational education. A major role on the state level belonged to the administration of land management and agriculture and the Imperial Russian technical society. In the Tomsk province it belonged to the Tomsk Provincial Handicraft Committee and the Tomsk Department of the Russian Technical Society. By 1917, seventeen settlements in six parishes of the Province had seventeen workshops in nine areas of handicraft industry. Weaving, wagon-making, and agricultural engineering workshops predominated. They became centers for the development of vocational education and the popularization of new technologies. They organized educational support workshops for the adult population, sold modern machinery and materials, built warehouses for handicrafts and repair shops, instructor schools, etc. The network of workshops, along with vocational educational institutions, became the basis for the Soviet system of vocational education in Siberia in the post-revolutionary period. The paper contains an analysis of researches and historical sources. The results helped to fill the gaps in the history of vocational education in the South of Western Siberia.

After a short introduction of the LIS landscape in Austria, the development of LIS education for academic librarians will be discussed. Until 2004 library education in Austria consisted mainly of vocational training to which only university graduates and eventually high-school graduates were admitted. In the nineteen-nineties, with Austria joining the European Union and the creation of universities of applied sciences, LIS education became possible at the university level. For various reasons, the two established LIS programmes were discontinued after a relatively short time period. Major changes in university legislation concerning the legal autonomy of Austrian universities meant, however, that a post-graduate inter-university library and information studies programme could be launched in 2004. With the fourth revision of the curriculum in 2019, the programme has become even more aligned with international practice in terms of content, didactic methods and flexibility. The increased dynamism in library education has also had an impact on the creation of non-academic training and continuing education programmes.

Sammanfattning”Läslyftet” är en statlig kompetensutvecklingssatsning baserad på arbetet av Timperley et al. (2007). Syftet är att genom kollegialt lärande utveckla lärarnas didaktiska kunskaper för att förbättra elevernas läs- och skrivförmåga. Denna artikel redovisar en studie av hur satsningen genomförs på en gymnasieskola. Syftet är att förstå och diskutera genomförandet genom att undersöka det pedagogiska material som studeras av lärarna och hur det uppfattas av dem. Det analyserade materialet är 1) artikeln ”Att bearbeta text – före läsandet” (Hallesson & Visén, 2016) och 2) en gruppdiskussion i en grupp av sju lärare, en bibliotekarie och en samtalshandledare, om samma artikel. Studien använder två metoder: en textanalys (Hellspong & Ledin, 1997) av artikeln och en kritisk diskursanalys (Winther Jørgensen & Phillips, 2000) av lärarnas diskussion. Analysen av lärarnas diskussion visar en avsaknad av matchning mellan lärarna och texten. Denna kan delvis förklaras av textanalysens resultat som visar att texten innefattar ett antal abstrakta begrepp och saknar tydlig röst. Analysen av lärarnas samtal visar att samtalshandledaren endast delvis kan överbrygga denna distans till texten. Lärarna utvecklar i samtalet en överenskommelse om att det är svårt att se det som erbjuds i texten som användbart i den egna praktiken. Vår tolkning är att lärarnas mottagande av texten kan beskrivas som motstånd och att de upplever texten som ett hot mot sina identiteter som lärare. I analogi med Timperley et al. (2007) visar vår studie också att kompetensutveckling och kollegialt lärande är komplext och beroende på olika kontextuella faktorer som behöver undersökas ytterligare.Nøkkelord: professionellt lärande, kollegialt lärande, motstånd, Läslyftet, läsning i skolanThe Swedish Reading Enhancement. Analysis of a text and a group of teachers’ professional learning discussionAbstract“Reading Enhancement” is a teacher professional learning investment by the Swedish Government based on the work by Timperley et al. (2007). Its aim is to develop teachers’ teaching skills through collegial learning in order to improve the pupils’ ability to read and write. This article reports on a study of how the investment is implemented at a Swedish vocational upper secondary school. The purpose is to understand and discuss the implementation by investigating the educational material studied by the teachers and how it is perceived by them. The analyzed material is 1) the article “To process text – before reading” (Hallesson & Visén, 2016) and 2) a group discussion in a group of seven teachers, a librarian and a discussion supervisor, about the same article. The study uses two methodological approaches: a text analysis (Hellspong & Ledin, 1997) of the article, and a critical discourse analysis (Winther Jørgensen & Phillips, 2000) of the teachers’ discussion. The analysis shows a discrepancy between the article and the teachers. This can partly be explained by the result of the text analysis, which shows that the article contains a large number of abstract concepts and lacks a clear voice. The analysis of the teachers’ discussion shows that the supervisor of the group can only partly manage the distance to the text. The analysis also indicates a mutual agreement in the group that it is hard to see how the ideas offered in the article can be transferred into their daily practices. We interpret this as resistance, since the teachers seem to fear that their teacher identity is threatened. In analogy with Timperley et al. (2007), our study also shows that professional learning is complex and depending on various contextual factors that need to be further investigated.Keywords: professional learning, teacher development, resistance, Reading Enhancement, reading in school

During 1990s, traditional senior high school education encountered challenges of social transitions, information explosion while entering a learning-oriented society. Educational reforms and policies were conducted and enforced nation-wide. School libraries was situated in a turning edge to cope with the education reforms. Two major projects have impacted heavily on the development of high school (including vocational high schools) librarianship. One was the subsidy for collection development from the Ministry of Education that enriched the high schools’ library holdings, the other one was the establishment of “The Senior High School Library Guidance Committee (SHSLGC)”. SHSLGC consists of scholars of Library and Information Science Education, educational administrators, and selected high school library directors. The SHSGC Team started consulting jobs by selecting high school libraries as demonstrative models in different regions of the Island, conducting library symposiums, having published “The Handbook for Senior High School Libraries”, hosting forums for high school principals and chief librarians, establishing professional courses for chief librarians, and paying on-site visits to high school libraries around the Island. The on-site visits created inter-library cooperation and exchange of professional experiences among high schools and vocational high schools. Efforts continued and when the “ Library Law” was effected in year of 2002, SHSLGC gained its legal stands and became a regular organization to officially provide its services to senior school libraries. In addition to its original services 2 during the years, SHSLGC expanded its services to conduct researches on current-status of senior school libraries, posting e-Paper on the Internet, composing a high school e-learning data bank, helping high school libraries to delivery services to communities. This paper addresses the development of SHSLGC, the history, milestones, the implementation, and its impact as well.

It is not usual that there is a good library or learning centre in vocational institutes in Finland. Finland has a functional network of general libraries, but no national policy for school libraries. Nevertheless, some vocational institutes in Tampere Region have been able to realize a vision of the school library as an open learning environment; as a pedagogical tool and a source of innovations.AVOKI project – Developing of Open Learning Environments in Secondary Education in Tampere Region, is our answer to the biggest challenges of school libraries in vocational institutes.

It is the age of technology revolution and is what is called the age of “third wave.” Knowledge has become the most precious resource and property of a person or an organization. As globalization is a trend, knowledge becomes extremely significant. All the educational institutions also need to do well in knowledge management. In this age of information explosion and information technology, a single school, especially the school library, faces the biggest influence and impact. Besides, librarians themselves are the managers of knowledge, and they stand at the frontline to put knowledge management into practice in school. Therefore, according to knowledge-based economy, this article probes into the possible ways to operate the libraries in senior high schools and vocational schools when faced with and information knowledge exploded globally.

According to the concept of ‘Public Library at School’, secondary schools and public libraries in the Netherlands are working on a structural cooperation. They collaborate at strategic, tactical and operating level to improve language skills, reading motivation and information literacy of students. This paper describes the experiences of the collaboration between several pre-vocational secondary schools and public libraries during the period of 2012 – 2015. Especially, the force of the collaboration of all the parties involved, is shown at all the components of the concept ‘Public library at school’. In all the example-schools it is shown that collaboration pays off. There are results on the management, employee and student level. The most important improvements are: students read more, students visit the (school) library more often, reading is more and more seen as ‘a normal thing to do’ and reading attitudes of students are improved.

Traditionally, rather than using books in the library, a typical Asian student preferred reading and studying from textbooks in order to pass the college entrance examination. Likewise, this trend was the same in the small suburban town in Taiwan like Tuku with the area is 46 square kilometer, its population of 32,000 people, and 70% of its population is farmers. Due to its agriculture background, there are only two libraries to service its residents. One is the public high school’s library that belongs to Tuku Vocational High School that has approximately about 28 classes and 1000 students while the other is Tuku’s public library. Owing to the textbooks edition from one tomany, the exam content has changed a lot from the past to the present. In order to master the examination, multiple facets of literacy should be mastered. Because of this, library should be gaining popularity than before. In contrary, this was not the case. Library books were seldom checked out according to the electronic tracking system for library books. From three years ago, the average of books checked out was below 15 per day. That average has steady climbing to about 120 with the maximum around 370. Recently, by conducting an open-end questionnaires and chatting with its students, it was found that some marketing strategies are needed to educate them the importance of utilizing the books in the library as the primary source of mastering multi-facets of literacy instead of textbooks.

AbstrakProses pembelajaran di sekolah kini mengalami perubahan yang signifikan. Murid-murid selama ini diposisikan sebagai objek kini berubah menjadi subjek. Paradigma mengajar (teaching) yang pada masa lalu hendaknya diubah menjadi paradigma belajar (learning). Dengan adanya perubahan paradigma itu maka seyogianya peserta didik tidak lagi disebut siswa (pupil) tetapi pembelajar (learner). Konsekuensinya adalah pembelajar harus aktif belajar sendiri dengan menggunakan berbagai sumber. Perpustakaan merupakan salah satu sumber belajar yang seharusnya bisa menjadi andalan dalam proses belajar tersebut. Oleh karena itu fungsi perpustakaan pun seharusnya mengalami perubahan yang signifikan ; awalnya didudukkan sebagai penunjang (supportive services), kini seyogianya berubah menjadi mitra (partner). Adanya perubahan peran perpustakaan tersebut, keberadaan perpustakaan maya tentunya sangat vital, karena mempunyai kelebihan dalam hal kebaruan, fasilitas sharing, efisiensi, dan dapat diakses setiap saat. Keberadaan perpustakaan maya diperkirakan sangat efektif karena murid-murid SMK rata-rata akrab dengan teknologi informasi. Kegiatan-kegiatan yang dapat dilakukan dalam proses pembelajaran adalah : diskusi online terhadap suatu kasus yang melibatkan beberapa SMK, pembahasan kasus atau topik menarik oleh guru di forum, pengerjaan tugas-tugas yang materinya didapat melalui perpustakaan virtual berbasis web, kegiatan ekstrakurikuler yang berhubungan dengan pembelajaran, dan mengadakan event-event pendidikan tertentu yang berhubungan dengan perpustakaan virtual berbasis web. Dalam pengoperasian perpustakaan maya diharapkan dapat kerja sama dengan SMK-SMK, ICT Centre, PPPPTK/LPMP, Badan Sertifikasi, perpustakaan konvensional, industri/dunia usaha. Kata kunci : Pembelajaran, Perpustakaan Maya, Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan. Abstract Learning process at schools today experiences a significant change. Students bearing the role as a n object have changed into a subject of learning. A teaching paradigm as previously practiced should now be changed into a learning paradigm. This phenomenon brings with it a change in paradigm and thus leads to the shifting of role from pupils to learners. Consequently, learners should make every effort to actively adopt a learning style of independence in that making use of various kinds of information mostly by themselves takes place. In this sense, library serves to be a learning facility giving support to the learning process. Therefore, library functions should also be changed significantly: from providing supportive services to a partner. The change in a role played by library makes it possible for the services given through a virtual library to develop its importance. Part of the reason is that there works newness in sharing facilities, efficiency, and accessible any time. The existence of a virtual library proves to be effective because vocational school students in average are familiar with information technology. Activities worth doing in the process of learning include online discussion on a case involving several vocational schools, discussion on a case or an interesting topic with a teacher in a forum, doing tasks from which materials are generated from a Web-based virtual library, any extra-curricular activities having to do with learning, and holding events on education relating to web-based virtual library. In running the services of the virtual library, collaboration with SMK (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan -Vocational Schools), ICT Centers, PPPTK/LPMP, Certification Institution, conventional libraries, and industries/business world is expected. Key words: learning, virtual lilbrary, Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan (SMK – Vocational Schools)

School head master managerial is one things must be conducted systematically and continuously in order to improve the competence and the skill in carrying out the duty to reach the national education goal. The purpose of this study is to describe the school head master managerial at state vocational school SMK 2 Sinabang. This study uses descriptive qualitative approach, and the data collection techniques were observations, interviews, and documentations. The subjects of the research were: school head master, school administration chairman, and the deputy of the school head master. The results shows (1) the school head master’s ability in developing planning programs is formulated by school head master which was started at new school year academic such as supervising, assessing the teacher’s performance, involving the teachers on the trainings, giving extra tasks for some teachers such as vice school headmaster, department chairman, lab chairman, supervisors, and librarian, teachers for training, distribution of additional duties for teachers as a representative example principal, head of department, head of the laboratory, supervisor, and manager of the library; (2) the strategies undertaken by the school head master in teacher performance implementation were: guiding teachers in arranging lesson plan, applying teaching model variation, giving motivation, engaging teachers in some training activities and refreshment courses, and giving the opportunities to the teachers to pursue their study, activating MGMPs activity and KKG forum at school; (3) The impact of the coaching process being carried out by the school head master to improve the teacher performance, will be seen from the teacher changing attitude to be better, namely, the ability of the teacher in setting the plan, implement, and evaluate the teaching–learning process; (4) the constraints being faced in improving the professional capability of teachers among others are: funding problem, timing, and the limitation of the human resources as an instructor/ trainer in the field of vocational, as well as limited training/refresher courses held in conjunction to the professional upgrading of teachers.

Concerns (complaints) about the quality of writing exhibited among seminary students are not new. Nor is the fact that many students come to seminary as a second career, or with backgrounds in disciplines that do not emphasize extensive scholarly writing. However, in an era of reduced enrollment, when recruitment and retention are of existential significance for seminaries, the traditional “sink or swim” approach that presumes students will “learn as they go” (or not) seems increasingly inadequate. Given the centrality of writing to academic success in seminary, helping students develop as writers is an essential component of providing academic support, thereby ensuring that students are prepared to pursue their vocations. As seminaries face budgetary challenges that may preclude offering writing support, and as the role of librarians is changing, we have an opportunity to expand our traditional role of supporting students. Join presenters David Schmersal, Jane Elder and Melody Diehl Detar as they share some of their experiences in extending writing support to seminary students at Perkins School of Theology and Regent University.

EdNA Online is a unique national collaboration between the Australian Commonwealth government Department of Education, Training and Science and the state Education Departments. This collaboration unites learning communities as it provides free resources and online services to all education sectors, including tertiary, schools, vocational training and adult education. There is access to evaluated curriculum resources in a safe environment. The use of standards to enable sharing between states, territories and national education departments has extended knowledge networks. Free communication tools link teacher librarians, teachers and students and assist engagement in professional development.

This article shows the Islam and its followers (Arabs) had created a civilization that played very important role on the world stage for more than a thousand years. One of the most important specific qualities of the Islamic civilization is that it is a well-balanced civilization that brought together science and faith, struck a balance between spirit and matter and did not separate this world from the Hereafter. The Islamic civilization in Spain encompasses many fields that left a profound imprint in the Iberian Peninsula and Europe. The cultural climate of Spain in the era of Muslim rule (711-1492) brought about a prospering of different aspects of science and culture. Numerous schools and libraries were established and books were procured due to which the majority of the people were literate. Literature and art flourished. Buildings were constructed and Islamic art with its specific qualities was cultivated. Because of that movement, Cordoba became the civilization capital of both Spain and the West in general. Many schools were established in it, such as medical and technical schools in addition to the general education and other vocational schools. Hospitals, chemical plants and observatories were also built.

Planning of Teaching Library (TLib.) as an entity involves steps of examining environments, conducting needs assessments, and evaluating available resources. In its implementation, TLib. affirms librarian to holds a position as more than just a supporting element for academic programs and research. The role librarian plays as a major organizer of intellectual asset brings with it some responsibility of teaching users to get well informed and benefit sources of information available and at the same time encouraging the opportunity of lifelong learning through continuous teaching-learning process. To librarian, teaching proves to be a supporting activity towards credits to enhance his career as professional. In regards with the concept of TLib. teaching is geared towards illuminating efficient techniques to evaluate and provide information for various kinds of users in the society. Giving new students especially, bibliographic instructions of how to benefit from the collections the best way through User Education effectively. Delivering materials of librarianship to information communities from both outside and inside the campus: in-house training, practices for vocational school students majoring in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), comparative study, and benchmarking. As information specialist and subject librarian as well, this professional guides a new paradigm with vision and mission basically doing some strengthening on the motto the university has, namely “A leading and outstanding university”. Standards serving as an objective tool are applied based on performance measurements and referred to the correlation between information resources served and the achievement of the Civitas Academica (CA) of the university in a more intense way. The TLib.’s goals as the implementation of standards are focused on users as stakeholders and range from the empowerment to the preservation of knowledge and culture.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia and $120,000 in funding from the Myer Foundation to trial the provision of a paid Collections Care Coordinator who would provide free training, expertise and support to local museums in the region. Tragically, CCA was de-funded by the Cultural Ministers Council the same year and the roll-out of a hub and spoke regional model was not supported by government due to the lack of an evidence base (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 18). An evaluation of the trial project would have tested a different model of regional training and added to the evidence base.All these state-based models (except the aborted Collections Care hub in Western Australia) require small regional museums to compete with each other for access to a museum professional and to successfully apply for funding, usually from their local council or state government. If they are successful, the training that is delivered is a one-off, as they are unlikely to get a second slice of the regional pie.An alternative to this competitive, fly-in fly-out, one-off model of professional development is to harness the technology and resources of local libraries and other cultural facilities in regional areas. This is what the Sydney Opera House Trust did in March 2019 to deliver their All about Women program of speakers via live streaming to 37 satellite sites throughout Australia and New Zealand.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: ScenarioImagine the following scenario. It is a Monday morning in a regional library in Dubbo, New South Wales. Dubbo is 391 km or five hours drive by car from the nearest capital city (Sydney) and there are 50 regional museums within a 100 km radius. Ten people are gathered in a meeting room at the library watching a live stream of the keynote speakers who are presenting at their national museums conference. They are from five regional museums where they work as volunteers or part-time paid staff. They cannot afford to pay $2000, or more, to attend the conference, but they are happy to self-fund to drive for an hour or two to link up with other colleagues to listen to the presentations. They make notes and tweet in their questions using the conference twitter handle and hashtag. They have not been exposed to international speakers in the industry before and the ideas presented are fresh and stimulating. When the conference breaks for morning tea, they take a break too and get to know each other over a cuppa (provided free of charge by the library). Just as the networking sessions at conferences are vitally important for the delegates, they are even more important to address social isolation amongst this group. When they reconvene, they discuss their questions and agree to email the presenters with the questions that are unresolved. After the conference keynote sessions finish, the main conference (in the capital city) disperses into parallel sessions, which are no longer available via live stream.To make the two-hour drive more worthwhile and continue their professional development, they have arranged to hold a significance assessment workshop as well. Each museum worker has brought along photographs of one item in their collection that they want to do more research on. Some of them have also brought the object, if it is small and robust enough to travel. They have downloaded copies of Significance 2.0 and read it before they arrived. They started to write significance reports but could not fully understand how to apply some of the criteria. They cannot afford to pay for professional workshop facilitators, but they have arranged for the local studies librarian to give them an hour of free training on using the library’s resources (online and onsite) to do research on the local area and local families. They learn more about Trove, Papers Past and other research tools which are available online. This is hands-on and computer-based skills training using their own laptops/tablets or the ones provided by the library. After the training with the librarian, they break into two groups and read each other’s significance reports and make suggestions. The day finishes with a cuppa at 2.30pm giving them time to drive home before the sun sets. They agree to exchange email addresses so they can keep in touch. All the volunteers and staff who attended these sessions in regional areas feel energised after these meetings. They no longer feel so isolated and like they are working in the dark. They feel supported just knowing that there are other people who are struggling with the same issues and constraints as they are. They are sick of talking about the lack of budget, expertise, training and resources and want to do something with what they have.Bert (fictional name) decides that it is worth capitalising on this success. He emails the people who came to the session in Dubbo to ask them if they would like to do it again but focus on some different training needs. He asks them to choose two of the following three professional development options. First, they can choose to watch and discuss a recording of the keynote presentations from day two of the recent national conference. The conference organisers have uploaded digital recordings of the speakers’ presentations and the question time to the AMaGA website. This is an option for local libraries that do not have sufficient bandwidth to live stream video. The local library technician will help them cast the videos to a large screen. Second, they can each bring an object from their museum collection that they think needs conservation work. If the item is too fragile or big to move, they will bring digital photographs of it instead. Bert consulted their state-based museum and found some specialist conservators who have agreed to Skype or Facetime them in Dubbo free of charge, to give them expert advice about how to care for their objects, and most importantly, what not to do. The IT technician at Dubbo Library can set up their meeting room so that they can cast the Skype session onto a large smart screen TV. One week before the event, they will send a list of their objects and photographs of them to the conservator so that she can prepare, and they can make best use of her time. After this session, they will feel more confident about undertaking small cleaning and flattening treatments and know when they should not attempt a treatment themselves and need to call on the experts. Third, they could choose to have a training session with the council’s grants officer on writing grant applications. As he assesses grant applications, he can tell them what local councils look for in a successful grant application. He can also inform them about some of the grants that might be relevant to them. After the formal training, there will be an opportunity for them to exchange information about the grants they have applied for in the past—sometimes finding out what’s available can be difficult—and work in small groups to critique each other’s grant applications.The group chooses options two and three, as they want more practical skills development. They take a break in the middle of the day for lunch, which gives them the opportunity to exchange anecdotes from their volunteer work and listen to and support each other. They feel validated and affirmed. They have gained new skills and don’t feel so isolated. Before they leave, Alice agrees to get in touch with everyone to organise their next regional training day.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: BenefitsThese scenarios need not be futuristic. The training needs are real, as is the desire to learn and the capacity of libraries to support regional groups. While funding for regional museums has stagnated or declined in recent years, libraries have been surging ahead. In August 2018, the New South Wales Government announced an “historic investment” of $60 million into all 370 public libraries that would “transform the way NSW’s public libraries deliver much-needed services, especially in regional areas” (Smith). Libraries are equipped and charged with the responsibility of enabling local community groups to make best use of their resources. Most state and national museum workers are keen to share their expertise with their regional colleagues: funding and distance are often the only barriers. These scenarios allow national conference keynote speakers to reach a much larger audience than the conference attendees. While this strategy might reduce the number of workers from regional areas who pay to attend conferences, the reality is that due to distance, other volunteer commitments, expense and family responsibilities, they probably would not attend anyway. Most regional museums and galleries and their staff might be asset-rich, but they are cash-poor, and the only way their workers get to attend conferences is if they win a bursary or grant. In 2005, Winkworth said: “the future for community museums is to locate them within local government as an integral part of the cultural, educational and economic infrastructure of the community, just like libraries and galleries” (“Fixing the Slums” 7). Fourteen years on, very little progress has been made in this direction. Those museums which have been integrated into the local council infrastructure, such as at Orange and Wagga Wagga in western New South Wales, are doing much better than those that are still stuck in ‘cultural poverty’ and trying to operate independently.However, the co-location and convergence of museums, libraries and archives is only successful if it is well managed. Helena Robinson has examined the impact on museum collection management and interpretation of five local government funded, converged collecting institutions in Australia and New Zealand and found that the process is complex and does not necessarily result in “optimal” cross-disciplinary expertise or best practice outcomes (14158).ConclusionRobinson’s research, however, did not consider community-based collecting institutions using regional libraries as sites for training and networking. By harnessing local library resources and making better use of existing communications technology it is possible to create regional hubs for professional development and collegiate support, which are not reliant on grants. If the current competitive, fly-in fly-out, self-funded model of providing professional development and support to regional museums continues, then the future for our cultural heritage collections and the dedicated volunteers who care for them is bleak. Alternatively, the scenarios I have described give regional museum workers agency to address their own professional development needs. This in no way removes the need for leadership, advocacy and coordination by national representative bodies such as AMaGA and Museums Aotearoa. If AMaGA partnered with the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) to stream their conference keynote sessions to strategically located regional libraries and used some of their annual funding from the Department of Communication and the Arts to pay for museum professionals to travel to some of those sites to deliver training, they would be investing in the nation’s social and cultural capital and addressing the professional development needs of regional museum workers. This would also increase the sustainability of our cultural heritage collections, which are valuable economic assets.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. “2071.0—Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia—Snapshot of Australia, 2016”. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Snapshot%20of%20Australia,%202016~2>.Boylan, Patrick. “The Intangible Heritage: A Challenge and an Opportunity for Museums and Museum Professional Training.” International Journal of Intangible Heritage 1 (2006): 53–65.Burton, Christine, and Jane Griffin. “More than a Museum? Understanding How Small Museums Contribute to Social Capital in Regional Communities.” Asia Pacific Journal of Arts & Cultural Management 5.1 (2008): 314–32. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://apjacm.arts.unimelb.edu.au/article/view/32>.Dunn, Anne. The Dunn Report: A Report on the Concept of Regional Collections Jobs. Adelaide: Collections Council of Australia, 2007.ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development. 2000. <http://museumstudies.si.edu/ICOM-ICTOP/comp.htm>.Kelly, Lynda. “Measuring the Impact of Museums on Their Communities: The Role of the 21st Century Museum.” New Roles and Issues of Museums INTERCOM Symposium (2006): 25–34. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://media.australianmuseum.net.au/media/dd/Uploads/Documents/9355/impact+paper+INTERCOM+2006.bb50ba1.pdf>.Museums and Galleries New South Wales (MGNSW). 2018 NSW Museums and Galleries Sector Census. Museums and Galleries of New South Wales. Data and Insights—Culture Counts. Sydney: MGNSW, 2019. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2018-NSW-Museum-Gallery-Sector-Census.pdf>Oppenheimer, Melanie. Volunteering: Why We Can’t Survive without It. Sydney: U of New South Wales P, 2008.Pigott, Peter. Museums in Australia 1975. Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections Including the Report of the Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1975. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://apo.org.au/node/35268>.Public Sector Commission, Western Australia. 70:20:10 Framework Learning Philosophy. Perth: Government of Western Australia, 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://publicsector.wa.gov.au/centre-public-sector-excellence/about-centre/702010-framework>.Robinson, Helena. “‘A Lot of People Going That Extra Mile’: Professional Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity in Converged Collecting Institutions.” Museum Management and Curatorship 31 (2016): 141–58.Scott, Lee. National Operations Manager, Museums Australia, Personal Communication. 22 Oct. 2018.Shaw, Iain, and Lee Davidson, Museums Aotearoa 2014 Sector Survey Report. Wellington: Victoria U, 2014. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://www.museumsaotearoa.org.nz/sites/default/files/documents/museums_aotearoa_sector_survey_2014_report_-_final_draft_oct_2015.pdf>.Smith, Alexandra. “NSW Libraries to Benefit from $60 Million Boost.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Aug. 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-libraries-to-benefit-from-60-million-boost-20180823-p4zzdj.html>. Winkworth, Kylie. “Fixing the Slums of Australian Museums; or Sustaining Heritage Collections in Regional Australia.” Museums Australia Conference Paper. Canberra: Museums Australia, 2005. ———. “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Museums in Regional Australia.” Understanding Museums—Australian Museums and Museology. Eds. Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2011. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/KWinkworth_2011.html>.

Introduction I have this somewhat diffuse concern that at some point, I am in an appointment procedure ... and people say: ‘He has to ... be on social media, [and] have followers ..., because otherwise he can’t say anything about the field of research, otherwise he won’t identify with it … and we need a direct connection to legitimise our discipline in the population!’ And this is where I think: ‘For God’s sake! No, I really don’t want that.’ (Postdoc) Social media such as Facebook or Twitter have become an integral part of many people’s everyday lives and have introduced severe changes to the ways we communicate with each other and about ourselves. Presenting ourselves on social media and creating different online personas has become a normal practice (Vorderer et al. 270). While social media such as Facebook were at first mostly used to communicate with friends and family, they were soon also used for work-related communication (Cardon and Marshall). Later, professional networks such as LinkedIn, which focus on working relations and career management and special interest networks, such as the academic social networking sites (ASNS) Academia.edu and ResearchGate, catering specifically to academic needs, emerged. Even though social media have been around for more than 15 years now, academics in general and German academics in particular are rather reluctant users of these tools in a work-related context (König and Nentwich 175; Lo 155; Pscheida et al. 1). This is surprising as studies indicate that the presence and positive self-portrayal of researchers in social media as well as the distribution of articles via social networks such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate have a positive effect on the visibility of academics as well as the likelihood of their articles being read and cited (Eysenbach; Lo 192; Terras). Gruzd, Staves, and Wilk even assume that the presence in online media could become a relevant criterion in the allocation of scientific jobs. Science is a field where competition for long-term positions is high. In 2017, only about 17% of all scientific personnel in Germany had permanent positions, and of these 10% were professors (Federal Statistical Office 32). Having a professorship is therefore the best shot at obtaining a permanent position in the scientific field. However, the average vocational age is 40 (Zimmer et al. 40), which leads to a long phase of career-related uncertainty. Directing attention to yourself by acquiring knowledge in the use of social media for professional self-representation might offer a career advantage when trying to obtain a professorship. At the same time, social media, which have been praised for giving a voice to the unheard, become a tool for the exclusion of scholars who might not want or be able to use these tools as part of their work and career-related communication, and might remain unseen and unheard. The author obtained current data on this topic while working on a project on Mediated Scholarly Communication in Post-Normal and Traditional Science under the project lead of Corinna Lüthje. The project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In the project, German-speaking scholars were interviewed about their work-related media usage in qualitative interviews. Among them were users and non-users of social media. For this article, 16 interviews with communication scholars (three PhD students, six postdocs, seven professors) were chosen for a closer analysis, because of all the interviewees they described the (dis)advantages of career-related social media use in the most detail, giving the deepest insights into whether social media contribute to a social exclusion of academics or not. How to Define Social Exclusion (in Academia)? The term social exclusion describes a separation of individuals or groups from mainstream society (Walsh et al.). Exclusion is a practice which implies agency. It can be the result of the actions of others, but individuals can also exclude themselves by choosing not to be part of something, for example of social media and the communication taking part there (Atkinson 14). Exclusion is an everyday social practice, because wherever there is an in-group there will always be an out-group. This is what Bourdieu calls distinction. Symbols and behaviours of distinction both function as signs of demarcation and belonging (Bourdieu, Distinction). Those are not always explicitly communicated, but part of people’s behaviour. They act on a social sense by telling them how to behave appropriately in a certain situation. According to Bourdieu, the practical sense is part of the habitus (Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice). The habitus generates patterns of action that come naturally and do not have to be reflected by the actor, due to an implicit knowledge that is acquired during the course of (group-specific) socialisation. For scholars, the process of socialisation in an area of research involves the acquisition of a so-called disciplinary self-image, which is crucial to building a disciplinary identity. In every discipline it contains a dominant disciplinary self-image which defines the scientific perspectives, practices, and even media that are typically used and therefore belong to the mainstream of a discipline (Huber 24). Yet, there is a societal mainstream outside of science which scholars are a part of. Furthermore, they have been socialised into other groups as well. Therefore, the disciplinary mainstream and the habitus of its members can be impacted upon by the societal mainstream and other fields of society. For example, societally mainstream social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, focussing on establishing and sustaining social connections, might be used for scholarly communication just as well as ASNS. The latter cater to the needs of scholars to not just network with colleagues, but to upload academic articles, share and track them, and consume scholarly information (Meishar-Tal and Pieterse 17). Both can become part of the disciplinary mainstream of media usage. In order to define whether and how social media contribute to forms of social exclusion among communication scholars, it is helpful to first identify in how far their usage is part of the disciplinary mainstream, and what their including features are. In contrast to this, forms of exclusion will be analysed and discussed on the basis of qualitative interviews with communication scholars. Including Features of Social Media for Communication Scholars The interviews for this essay were first conducted in 2016. At that time all of the 16 communication scholars interviewed used at least one social medium such as ResearchGate (8), Academia.edu (8), Twitter (10), or Facebook (11) as part of their scientific workflow. By 2019, all of them had a ResearchGate and 11 an Academia.edu account, 13 were on Twitter and 13 on Facebook. This supports the notion of one of the professors, who said that he registered with ResearchGate in 2016 because "everyone’s doing that now!” It also indicates that the work-related presence especially on ResearchGate, but also on other social media, is part of the disciplinary mainstream of communication science. The interviewees figured that the social media they used helped them to increase their visibility in their own community through promoting their work and networking. They also mentioned that they were helpful to keep up to date on the newest articles and on what was happening in communication science in general. The usage of ResearchGate and Academia.edu focussed on publications. Here the scholars could, as one professor put it, access articles that were not available via their university libraries, as well as “previously unpublished articles”. They also liked that they could see "what other scientists are working on" (professor) and were informed via e-mail "when someone publishes a new publication" (PhD student). The interviewees saw clear advantages to their registration with the ASNS, because they felt that they became "much more visible and present" (postdoc) in the scientific community. Seven of the communication scholars (two PhD students, three postdocs, two professors) shared their publications on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Two described doing cross-network promotion, where they would write a post about their publications on Twitter or Facebook that linked to the full article on Academia.edu or ResearchGate. The usage of Twitter and especially Facebook focussed a lot more on accessing discipline-related information and social networking. The communication scholars mentioned that various sections and working groups of professional organisations in their research field had accounts on Facebook, where they would post news. A postdoc said that she was on Facebook "because I get a lot of information from certain scientists that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise". Several interviewees pointed out that Twitter is "a place where you can find professional networks, become a part of them or create them yourself" (professor). On Twitter the interviewees explained that they were rather making new connections. Facebook was used to maintain and intensify existing professional relationships. They applied it to communicate with their local networks at their institute, just as well as for international communication. A postdoc and a professor both mentioned that they perceived that Scandinavian or US-American colleagues were easier to contact via Facebook than via any other medium. One professor described how he used Facebook at international conferences to arrange meetings with people he knew and wanted to meet. But to him Facebook also catered to accessing more personal information about his colleagues, thus creating a new "mixture of professional respect for the work of other scientists and personal relationships", which resulted in a "new kind of friendship". Excluding Features of Social Media for Communication Scholars While everyone may create an Academia.edu, Facebook, or Twitter account, ResearchGate is already an exclusive network in itself, as only people working in a scientific field are allowed to join. In 2016, eight of the interviewees and in 2019 all of them had signed up to ResearchGate. So at least among the communication scholars, this did not seem to be an excluding factor. More of an issue was for one of the postdocs that she did not have the copyright to upload her published articles on the ASNS and therefore refrained from uploading them. Interestingly enough, this did not seem to worry any of the other interviewees, and concerns were mostly voiced in relation to the societal mainstream social media. Although all of the interviewees had an account with at least one social medium, three of them described that they did not use or had withdrawn from using Facebook and Twitter. For one professor and one PhD student this had to do with the privacy and data security issues of these networks. The PhD student said that she did not want to be reminded of what she “tweeted maybe 10 years ago somewhere”, and also considered tweeting to be irrelevant in her community. To her, important scientific findings would rather be presented in front of a professional audience and not so much to the “general public”, which she felt was mostly addressed on social media. The professor mentioned that she had been on Facebook since she was a postdoc, but decided to stop using the service when it introduced new rules on data security. On one hand she saw the “benefits” of the network to “stay informed about what is happening in the community”, and especially “in regards to the promotion of young researchers, since some of the junior research groups are very active there”. On the other she found it problematic for her own time management and said that she received a lot of the posted information via e-mail as well. A postdoc mentioned that he had a Facebook account to stay in contact with young scholars he met at a networking event, but never used it. He would rather connect with his colleagues in person at conferences. He felt people would just use social media to “show off what they do and how awesome it is”, which he did not understand. He mentioned that if this “is how you do it now … I don't think this is for me.” Another professor described that Facebook "is the channel for German-speaking science to generate social traffic”, but that he did not like to use it, because “there is so much nonsense ... . It’s just not fun. Twitter is more fun, but the effect is much smaller", as bigger target groups could be reached via Facebook. The majority of the interviewees did not use mainstream social media because they were intrinsically motivated. They rather did it because they felt that it was expected of them to be there, and that it was important for their career to be visible there. Many were worried that they would miss out on opportunities to promote themselves, network, and receive information if they did not use Twitter or Facebook. One of the postdocs mentioned, for example, that she was not a fan of Twitter and would often not know what to write, but that the professor she worked for had told her she needed to tweet regularly. But she did see the benefits as she said that she had underestimated the effect of this at first: “I think, if you want to keep up, then you have to do that, because people don’t notice you.” This also indicates a disciplinary mainstream of social media usage. Conclusion The interviews indicate that the usage of ResearchGate in particular, but also of Academia.edu and of the societal mainstream social media platforms Twitter and Facebook has become part of the disciplinary mainstream of communication science and the habitus of many of its members. ResearchGate mainly targets people working in the scientific field, while excluding everyone else. Its focus on publication sharing makes the network very attractive among its main target group, and serves at the same time as a symbol of distinction from other groups (Bourdieu, Distinction). Yet it also raises copyright issues, which led at least one of the participants to refrain from using this option. The societal mainstream social media Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, have a broader reach and were more often used by the interviewees for social networking purposes than the ASNS. The interviewees emphasised the benefits of Twitter and Facebook for exchanging information and connecting with others. Factors that led the communication scholars to refrain from using the networks, and thus were excluding factors, were data security and privacy concerns; disliking that the networks were used to “show off”; as well as considering Twitter and Facebook as unfit for addressing the scholarly target group properly. The last statement on the target group, which was made by a PhD student, does not seem to represent the mainstream of the communication scholars interviewed, however. Many of them were using Twitter and Facebook for scholarly communication and rather seemed to find them advantageous. Still, this perception of the disciplinary mainstream led to her not using them for work-related purposes, and excluding her from their advantages. Even though, as one professor described it, a lot of information shared via Facebook is often spread through other communication channels as well, some can only be received via the networks. Although social media are mostly just a substitute for face-to-face communication, by not using them scholars will miss out on the possibilities of creating the “new kind of friendship” another professor mentioned, where professional and personal relations mix. The results of this study show that social media use is advantageous for academics as they offer possibilities to access exclusive information, form new kinds of relations, as well as promote oneself and one’s publications. At the same time, those not using these social media are excluded and might experience career-related disadvantages. As described in the introduction, academia is a competitive environment where many people try to obtain a few permanent positions. By default, this leads to processes of exclusion rather than integration. Any means to stand out from competitors are welcome to emerging scholars, and a career-related advantage will be used. If the growth in the number of communication scholars in the sample signing up to social networks between 2016 to 2019 is any indication, it is likely that the networks have not yet reached their full potential as tools for career advancement among scientific communities, and will become more important in the future. Now one could argue that the communication scholars who were interviewed for this essay are a special case, because they might use social media more actively than other scholars due to their area of research. Though this might be true, studies of other scholarly fields show that social media are being applied just the same (though maybe less extensively), and that they are used to establish cooperations and increase the amount of people reading and citing their publications (Eysenbach; Lo 192; Terras). The question is whether researchers will be able to avoid using social media when striving for a career in science in the future, which can only be answered by further research on the topic. References Atkinson, A.B. “Social Exclusion, Poverty and Unemployment.” Exclusion, Employment and Opportunity. Eds. A.B. Atkinson and John Hills. London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 1998. 1–20. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1984. ———. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1990. Cardon, Peter W., and Bryan Marshall. “The Hype and Reality of Social Media Use for Work Collaboration and Team Communication.” International Journal of Business Communication 52.3 (2015): 273–93. Eysenbach, Gunther. “Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 13.4 (2011): e123. Federal Statistical Office [Statistisches Bundesamt]. Hochschulen auf einen Blick: Ausgabe 2018: 2018. 27 Dec. 2019 <https://www.destatis.de/Migration/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/BroschuereHochschulenBlick.html>. Gruzd, Anatoliy, Kathleen Staves, and Amanda Wilk. “Tenure and Promotion in the Age of Online Social Media.” Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 48.1 (2011): 1–9. Huber, Nathalie. Kommunikationswissenschaft als Beruf: Zum Selbstverständnis von Professoren des Faches im deutschsprachigen Raum. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2010. König, René, and Michael Nentwich. “Soziale Medien in der Wissenschaft.” Handbuch Soziale Medien. Eds. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt and Monika Taddicken. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2017. 170–188. Lo, Yin-Yueh. “Online Communication beyond the Scientific Community: Scientists' Use of New Media in Germany, Taiwan and the United States to Address the Public.” 2016. 17 Oct. 2019 <https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/7426/Diss_Lo_2016.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>. Meishar-Tal, Hagit, and Efrat Pieterse. “Why Do Academics Use Academic Social Networking Sites?” IRRODL 18.1 (2017). Pscheida, Daniela, Claudia Minet, Sabrina Herbst, Steffen Albrecht, and Thomas Köhler. Nutzung von Social Media und onlinebasierten Anwendungen in der Wissenschaft: Ergebnisse des Science 2.0-Survey 2014. Dresden: Leibniz-Forschungsverbund „Science 2.0“, 2014. 17 Mar. 2020. <https://d-nb.info/1069096679/34>. Terras, Melissa. The Verdict: Is Blogging or Tweeting about Research Papers Worth It? LSE Impact Blog, 2012. 28 Dec. 2019 <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/>. Vorderer, Peter, et al. “Der mediatisierte Lebenswandel: Permanently Online, Permanently Connected.” Publizistik 60.3 (2015): 259–76. Walsh, Kieran, Thomas Scharf, and Norah Keating. “Social Exclusion of Older Persons: a Scoping Review and Conceptual Framework.” European Journal of Ageing 14.1 (2017): 81–98. Zimmer, Annette, Holger Krimmer, and Freia Stallmann. “Winners among Losers: Zur Feminisierung der deutschen Universitäten.” Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung 4.28 (2006): 30-57. 17 Mar. 2020 <https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/sites/zentrale-frauenbeauftragte/Berichte/4-2006-zimmer-krimmer-stallmann.pdf>.

On May 18, 2003, the Australian Minister for Education, Brendon Nelson, appeared on the Channel Nine Sunday programme. The Yoda of political journalism, Laurie Oakes, attacked him personally and professionally. He disclosed to viewers that the Minister for Education, Science and Training had suffered a false start in his education, enrolling in one semester of an economics degree that was never completed. The following year, he commenced a medical qualification and went on to become a practicing doctor. He did not pay fees for any of his University courses. When reminded of these events, Dr Nelson became agitated, and revealed information not included in the public presentation of the budget of that year, including a ‘cap’ on HECS-funded places of five years for each student. He justified such a decision with the cliché that Australia’s taxpayers do not want “professional students completing degree after degree.” The Minister confirmed that the primary – and perhaps the only – task for university academics was to ‘train’ young people for the workforce. The fact that nearly 50% of students in some Australian Universities are over the age of twenty five has not entered his vision. He wanted young people to complete a rapid degree and enter the workforce, to commence paying taxes and the debt or loan required to fund a full fee-paying place. Now – nearly two years after this interview and with the Howard government blessed with a new mandate – it is time to ask how this administration will order education and value teaching and learning. The curbing of the time available to complete undergraduate courses during their last term in office makes plain the Australian Liberal Government’s stance on formal, publicly-funded lifelong learning. The notion that a student/worker can attain all required competencies, skills, attributes, motivations and ambitions from a single degree is an assumption of the new funding model. It is also significant to note that while attention is placed on the changing sources of income for universities, there have also been major shifts in the pattern of expenditure within universities, focusing on branding, marketing, recruitment, ‘regional’ campuses and off-shore courses. Similarly, the short-term funding goals of university research agendas encourage projects required by industry, rather than socially inflected concerns. There is little inevitable about teaching, research and education in Australia, except that the Federal Government will not create a fully-funded model for lifelong learning. The task for those of us involved in – and committed to – education in this environment is to probe the form and rationale for a (post) publicly funded University. This short paper for the ‘order’ issue of M/C explores learning and teaching within our current political and economic order. Particularly, I place attention on the synergies to such an order via phrases like the knowledge economy and the creative industries. To move beyond the empty promises of just-in-time learning, on-the-job training, graduate attributes and generic skills, we must reorder our assumptions and ask difficult questions of those who frame the context in which education takes place. For the term of your natural life Learning is a big business. Whether discussing the University of the Third Age, personal development courses, self help bestsellers or hard-edged vocational qualifications, definitions of learning – let alone education – are expanding. Concurrent with this growth, governments are reducing centralized funding and promoting alternative revenue streams. The diversity of student interests – or to use the language of the time, client’s learning goals – is transforming higher education into more than the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The expansion of the student body beyond the 18-25 age group and the desire to ‘service industry’ has reordered the form and purpose of formal education. The number of potential students has expanded extraordinarily. As Lee Bash realized Today, some estimates suggest that as many as 47 percent of all students enrolled in higher education are over 25 years old. In the future, as lifelong learning becomes more integrated into the fabric of our culture, the proportion of adult students is expected to increase. And while we may not yet realize it, the academy is already being transformed as a result. (35) Lifelong learning is the major phrase and trope that initiates and justifies these changes. Such expansive economic opportunities trigger the entrepreneurial directives within universities. If lifelong learning is taken seriously, then the goals, entry standards, curriculum, information management policies and assessments need to be challenged and changed. Attention must be placed on words and phrases like ‘access’ and ‘alternative entry.’ Even more consideration must be placed on ‘outcomes’ and ‘accountability.’ Lifelong learning is a catchphrase for a change in purpose and agenda. Courses are developed from a wide range of education providers so that citizens can function in, or at least survive, the agitation of the post-work world. Both neo-liberal and third way models of capitalism require the labeling and development of an aspirational class, a group who desires to move ‘above’ their current context. Such an ambiguous economic and social goal always involves more than the vocational education and training sector or universities, with the aim being to seamlessly slot education into a ‘lifestyle.’ The difficulties with this discourse are two-fold. Firstly, how effectively can these aspirational notions be applied and translated into a real family and a real workplace? Secondly, does this scheme increase the information divide between rich and poor? There are many characteristics of an effective lifelong learner including great personal motivation, self esteem, confidence and intellectual curiosity. In a double shifting, change-fatigued population, the enthusiasm for perpetual learning may be difficult to summon. With the casualization of the post-Fordist workplace, it is no surprise that policy makers and employers are placing the economic and personal responsibility for retraining on individual workers. Instead of funding a training scheme in the workplace, there has been a devolving of skill acquisition and personal development. Through the twentieth century, and particularly after 1945, education was the track to social mobility. The difficulty now – with degree inflation and the loss of stable, secure, long-term employment – is that new modes of exclusion and disempowerment are being perpetuated through the education system. Field recognized that “the new adult education has been embraced most enthusiastically by those who are already relatively well qualified.” (105) This is a significant realization. Motivation, meta-learning skills and curiosity are increasingly being rewarded when found in the already credentialed, empowered workforce. Those already in work undertake lifelong learning. Adult education operates well for members of the middle class who are doing well and wish to do better. If success is individualized, then failure is also cast on the self, not the social system or policy. The disempowered are blamed for their own conditions and ‘failures.’ The concern, through the internationalization of the workforce, technological change and privatization of national assets, is that failure in formal education results in social exclusion and immobility. Besides being forced into classrooms, there are few options for those who do not wish to learn, in a learning society. Those who ‘choose’ not be a part of the national project of individual improvement, increased market share, company competitiveness and international standards are not relevant to the economy. But there is a personal benefit – that may have long term political consequences – from being ‘outside’ society. Perhaps the best theorist of the excluded is not sourced from a University, but from the realm of fictional writing. Irvine Welsh, author of the landmark Trainspotting, has stated that What we really need is freedom from choice … People who are in work have no time for anything else but work. They have no mental space to accommodate anything else but work. Whereas people who are outside the system will always find ways of amusing themselves. Even if they are materially disadvantaged they’ll still find ways of coping, getting by and making their own entertainment. (145-6) A blurring of work and learning, and work and leisure, may seem to create a borderless education, a learning framework uninhibited by curriculum, assessment or power structures. But lifelong learning aims to place as many (national) citizens as possible in ‘the system,’ striving for success or at least a pay increase which will facilitate the purchase of more consumer goods. Through any discussion of work-place training and vocationalism, it is important to remember those who choose not to choose life, who choose something else, who will not follow orders. Everybody wants to work The great imponderable for complex economic systems is how to manage fluctuations in labour and the market. The unstable relationship between need and supply necessitates flexibility in staffing solutions, and short-term supplementary labour options. When productivity and profit are the primary variables through which to judge successful management, then the alignments of education and employment are viewed and skewed through specific ideological imperatives. The library profession is an obvious occupation that has confronted these contradictions. It is ironic that the occupation that orders knowledge is experiencing a volatile and disordered workplace. In the past, it had been assumed that librarians hold a degree while technicians do not, and that technicians would not be asked to perform – unsupervised – the same duties as librarians. Obviously, such distinctions are increasingly redundant. Training packages, structured through competency-based training principles, have ensured technicians and librarians share knowledge systems which are taught through incremental stages. Mary Carroll recognized the primary questions raised through this change. If it is now the case that these distinctions have disappeared do we need to continue to draw them between professional and para-professional education? Does this mean that all sectors of the education community are in fact learning/teaching the same skills but at different levels so that no unique set of skills exist? (122) With education reduced to skills, thereby discrediting generalist degrees, the needs of industry have corroded the professional standards and stature of librarians. Certainly, the abilities of library technicians are finally being valued, but it is too convenient that one of the few professions dominated by women has suffered a demeaning of knowledge into competency. Lifelong learning, in this context, has collapsed high level abilities in information management into bite sized chunks of ‘skills.’ The ideology of lifelong learning – which is rarely discussed – is that it serves to devalue prior abilities and knowledges into an ever-expanding imperative for ‘new’ skills and software competencies. For example, ponder the consequences of Hitendra Pillay and Robert Elliott’s words: The expectations inherent in new roles, confounded by uncertainty of the environment and the explosion of information technology, now challenge us to reconceptualise human cognition and develop education and training in a way that resonates with current knowledge and skills. (95) Neophilliacal urges jut from their prose. The stress on ‘new roles,’ and ‘uncertain environments,’ the ‘explosion of information technology,’ ‘challenges,’ ‘reconceptualisations,’ and ‘current knowledge’ all affirms the present, the contemporary, and the now. Knowledge and expertise that have taken years to develop, nurture and apply are not validated through this educational brief. The demands of family, work, leisure, lifestyle, class and sexuality stretch the skin taut over economic and social contradictions. To ease these paradoxes, lifelong learning should stress pedagogy rather than applications, and context rather than content. Put another way, instead of stressing the link between (gee wizz) technological change and (inevitable) workplace restructuring and redundancies, emphasis needs to be placed on the relationship between professional development and verifiable technological outcomes, rather than spruiks and promises. Short term vocationalism in educational policy speaks to the ordering of our public culture, requiring immediate profits and a tight dialogue between education and work. Furthering this logic, if education ‘creates’ employment, then it also ‘creates’ unemployment. Ironically, in an environment that focuses on the multiple identities and roles of citizens, students are reduced to one label – ‘future workers.’ Obviously education has always been marinated in the political directives of the day. The industrial revolution introduced a range of technical complexities to the workforce. Fordism necessitated that a worker complete a task with precision and speed, requiring a high tolerance of stress and boredom. Now, more skills are ‘assumed’ by employers at the time that workplaces are off-loading their training expectations to the post-compulsory education sector. Therefore ‘lifelong learning’ is a political mask to empower the already empowered and create a low-level skill base for low paid workers, with the promise of competency-based training. Such ideologies never need to be stated overtly. A celebration of ‘the new’ masks this task. Not surprisingly therefore, lifelong learning has a rich new life in ordering creative industries strategies and frameworks. Codifying the creative The last twenty years have witnessed an expanding jurisdiction and justification of the market. As part of Tony Blair’s third way, the creative industries and the knowledge economy became catchwords to demonstrate that cultural concerns are not only economically viable but a necessity in the digital, post-Fordist, information age. Concerns with intellectual property rights, copyright, patents, and ownership of creative productions predominate in such a discourse. Described by Charles Leadbeater as Living on Thin Air, this new economy is “driven by new actors of production and sources of competitive advantage – innovation, design, branding, know-how – which are at work on all industries.” (10) Such market imperatives offer both challenges and opportunity for educationalists and students. Lifelong learning is a necessary accoutrement to the creative industries project. Learning cities and communities are the foundations for design, music, architecture and journalism. In British policy, and increasingly in Queensland, attention is placed on industry-based research funding to address this changing environment. In 2000, Stuart Cunningham and others listed the eight trends that order education, teaching and learning in this new environment. The Changes to the Provision of Education Globalization The arrival of new information and communication technologies The development of a knowledge economy, shortening the time between the development of new ideas and their application. The formation of learning organizations User-pays education The distribution of knowledge through interactive communication technologies (ICT) Increasing demand for education and training Scarcity of an experienced and trained workforce Source: S. Cunningham, Y. Ryan, L. Stedman, S. Tapsall, K. Bagdon, T. Flew and P. Coaldrake. The Business of Borderless Education. Canberra: DETYA Evaluation and Investigations Program [EIP], 2000. This table reverberates with the current challenges confronting education. Mobilizing such changes requires the lubrication of lifelong learning tropes in university mission statements and the promotion of a learning culture, while also acknowledging the limited financial conditions in which the educational sector is placed. For university scholars facilitating the creative industries approach, education is “supplying high value-added inputs to other enterprises,” (Hartley and Cunningham 5) rather than having value or purpose beyond the immediately and applicably economic. The assumption behind this table is that the areas of expansion in the workforce are the creative and service industries. In fact, the creative industries are the new service sector. This new economy makes specific demands of education. Education in the ‘old economy’ and the ‘new economy’ Old Economy New Economy Four-year degree Forty-year degree Training as a cost Training as a source of competitive advantage Learner mobility Content mobility Distance education Distributed learning Correspondence materials with video Multimedia centre Fordist training – one size fits all Tailored programmes Geographically fixed institutions Brand named universities and celebrity professors Just-in-case Just-in-time Isolated learners Virtual learning communities Source: T. Flew. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 20. There are myriad assumptions lurking in Flew’s fascinating table. The imperative is short courses on the web, servicing the needs of industry. He described the product of this system as a “learner-earner.” (50) This ‘forty year degree’ is based on lifelong learning ideologies. However Flew’s ideas are undermined by the current government higher education agenda, through the capping – through time – of courses. The effect on the ‘learner-earner’ in having to earn more to privately fund a continuance of learning – to ensure that they keep on earning – needs to be addressed. There will be consequences to the housing market, family structures and leisure time. The costs of education will impact on other sectors of the economy and private lives. Also, there is little attention to the groups who are outside this taken-for-granted commitment to learning. Flew noted that barriers to greater participation in education and training at all levels, which is a fundamental requirement of lifelong learning in the knowledge economy, arise in part out of the lack of provision of quality technology-mediated learning, and also from inequalities of access to ICTs, or the ‘digital divide.’ (51) In such a statement, there is a misreading of teaching and learning. Such confusion is fuelled by the untheorised gap between ‘student’ and ‘consumer.’ The notion that technology (which in this context too often means computer-mediated platforms) is a barrier to education does not explain why conventional distance education courses, utilizing paper, ink and postage, were also unable to welcome or encourage groups disengaged from formal learning. Flew and others do not confront the issue of motivation, or the reason why citizens choose to add or remove the label of ‘student’ from their bag of identity labels. The stress on technology as both a panacea and problem for lifelong learning may justify theories of convergence and the integration of financial, retail, community, health and education provision into a services sector, but does not explain why students desire to learn, beyond economic necessity and employer expectations. Based on these assumptions of expanding creative industries and lifelong learning, the shape of education is warping. An ageing population requires educational expenditure to be reallocated from primary and secondary schooling and towards post-compulsory learning and training. This cost will also be privatized. When coupled with immigration flows, technological changes and alterations to market and labour structures, lifelong learning presents a profound and personal cost. An instrument for economic and social progress has been individualized, customized and privatized. The consequence of the ageing population in many nations including Australia is that there will be fewer young people in schools or employment. Such a shift will have consequences for the workplace and the taxation system. Similarly, those young workers who remain will be far more entrepreneurial and less loyal to their employers. Public education is now publically-assisted education. Jane Jenson and Denis Saint-Martin realized the impact of this change. The 1980s ideological shift in economic and social policy thinking towards policies and programmes inspired by neo-liberalism provoked serious social strains, especially income polarization and persistent poverty. An increasing reliance on market forces and the family for generating life-chances, a discourse of ‘responsibility,’ an enthusiasm for off-loading to the voluntary sector and other altered visions of the welfare architecture inspired by neo-liberalism have prompted a reaction. There has been a wide-ranging conversation in the 1990s and the first years of the new century in policy communities in Europe as in Canada, among policy makers who fear the high political, social and economic costs of failing to tend to social cohesion. (78) There are dense social reorderings initiated by neo-liberalism and changing the notions of learning, teaching and education. There are yet to be tracked costs to citizenship. The legacy of the 1980s and 1990s is that all organizations must behave like businesses. In such an environment, there are problems establishing social cohesion, let alone social justice. To stress the product – and not the process – of education contradicts the point of lifelong learning. Compliance and complicity replace critique. (Post) learning The Cold War has ended. The great ideological battle between communism and Western liberal democracy is over. Most countries believe both in markets and in a necessary role for Government. There will be thunderous debates inside nations about the balance, but the struggle for world hegemony by political ideology is gone. What preoccupies decision-makers now is a different danger. It is extremism driven by fanaticism, personified either in terrorist groups or rogue states. Tony Blair (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) Tony Blair, summoning his best Francis Fukuyama impersonation, signaled the triumph of liberal democracy over other political and economic systems. His third way is unrecognizable from the Labour party ideals of Clement Attlee. Probably his policies need to be. Yet in his second term, he is not focused on probing the specificities of the market-orientation of education, health and social welfare. Instead, decision makers are preoccupied with a war on terror. Such a conflict seemingly justifies large defense budgets which must be at the expense of social programmes. There is no recognition by Prime Ministers Blair or Howard that ‘high-tech’ armory and warfare is generally impotent to the terrorist’s weaponry of cars, bodies and bombs. This obvious lesson is present for them to see. After the rapid and successful ‘shock and awe’ tactics of Iraq War II, terrorism was neither annihilated nor slowed by the Coalition’s victory. Instead, suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia and Israel snuck have through defenses, requiring little more than a car and explosives. More Americans have been killed since the war ended than during the conflict. Wars are useful when establishing a political order. They sort out good and evil, the just and the unjust. Education policy will never provide the ‘big win’ or the visible success of toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue. The victories of retraining, literacy, competency and knowledge can never succeed on this scale. As Blair offered, “these are new times. New threats need new measures.” (ht tp://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) These new measures include – by default – a user pays education system. In such an environment, lifelong learning cannot succeed. It requires a dense financial commitment in the long term. A learning society requires a new sort of war, using ideas not bullets. References Bash, Lee. “What Serving Adult Learners Can Teach Us: The Entrepreneurial Response.” Change January/February 2003: 32-7. Blair, Tony. “Full Text of the Prime Minister’s Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet.” November 12, 2002. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp. Carroll, Mary. “The Well-Worn Path.” The Australian Library Journal May 2002: 117-22. Field, J. Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2000. Flew, Terry. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 47-60. Hartley, John, and Cunningham, Stuart. “Creative Industries – from Blue Poles to Fat Pipes.” Department of Education, Science and Training, Commonwealth of Australia (2002). Jenson, Jane, and Saint-Martin, Denis. “New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 28.1 (2003): 77-99. Leadbeater, Charles. Living on Thin Air. London: Viking, 1999. Pillay, Hitendra, and Elliott, Robert. “Distributed Learning: Understanding the Emerging Workplace Knowledge.” Journal of Interactive Learning Research 13.1-2 (2002): 93-107. Welsh, Irvine, from Redhead, Steve. “Post-Punk Junk.” Repetitive Beat Generation. Glasgow: Rebel Inc, 2000: 138-50. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brabazon, Tara. "Freedom from Choice: Who Pays for Customer Service in the Knowledge Economy?." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/02-brabazon.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T. (Jan. 2005) "Freedom from Choice: Who Pays for Customer Service in the Knowledge Economy?," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/02-brabazon.php>.