Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

Cultural institutions must reimagine their roles as education facilities for their communities and address the public need for conversations in safe and fair places, thereby renewing their essential place in democratic society. This book explains how.

Open Conversations: Public Learning in Libraries and Museums is a provocative book, one that is designed to offer courage to cultural institution administrators and staff even as it opens their eyes to the possibility that their facilities can offer more than they are. Rather than offering prescriptive answers, the author invites readers to consider museums and libraries in fresh ways.

Author David Carr believes professionals in libraries and museums need to think more broadly. He challenges them to address communities, national social change, psychology, and learning, and to think about ways to frame their institutions, not as repositories or research chambers, but as instruments for human thinking. Now is the time for these institutions to recover their integrity and purpose as fundamental, informing structures in a struggling democracy. Based on lectures and previously published writings by the author, and drawing on new scholarship and research, the essays here will inspire professionals to understand their collections and institutions as instruments of personal, social, and cultural change.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface(p. vii)
• Acknowledgments(p. xi)
• Introduction: Think With Me(p. xiii)
• 1 Our Places(p. 1)
• 2 Beginnings(p. 9)
• 3 Flourishing(p. 19)
• 4 Unfinished Lives(p. 37)
• 5 Living Strands(p. 49)
• 6 Open Conversations(p. 63)
• 7 Provocative Texts(p. 79)
• 8 Look at the Unknown(p. 103)
• 9 This Afternoon(p. 113)
• 10 That Difference(p. 127)
• 11 Where a Space Opens(p. 133)
• 12 Civility(p. 153)
• References(p. 165)
• Further Reading(p. 169)
• Index(p. 171)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This is Carr's (Sch. of Information & Library Science, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) third collection of essays, consisting of previously published materials and lectures. He challenges library and museum professionals to view their institutions in a different light. Rather than considering themselves simply as destinations, libraries and museums should view themselves as having the power to affect personal, social, and cultural change, as centers to promote learning through group activities, e.g., viewing/studying the past for better understanding of current lives and social conditions, while providing materials and experiences to help people grow independently. Carr discusses in detail reading groups and organized conversations, among other examples, and offers explanations of how to conduct these programs. He recommends books, periodicals, and websites to get things started. -VERDICT Carr's thoughts about libraries and museums in the cultural landscape will provide professionals a new way of viewing their institutions. This book will be useful in library school classroom discussions and by professionals who want to broaden the focus and direction of their institutions.-Marie Bruni, Huntington Memorial Lib., Oneonta, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

David Carr , PhD, has observed cultural institutions for four decades and has assisted programs and professionals in an array of settings, such as the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, and the Queens Museum of Art.