Public Libraries - Learning and Cultural Transfer Ecosystems. Case study: Cultural Agora @ Your Library

Abstract

Libraries - as territories of collective experiences - can serve as an infrastructure for testing and validating the new learning paradigms, while being, at the same time, the outposts for initiating different categories of target-groups by mentoring and coaching. Moreover, libraries have the potential to become vibrant spaces for broadcasting and for calibrating new relationship models next to best practices in innovation sprouting, in close connection with everyday life. Via the Cultural Agora @ Your Library project, the National Association of Public Librarians and Libraries in Romania - ANBPR has tested a set of modern technology-based tools and techniques whereby library users belonging to different ethnic communities became original digital storytellers on cultural diversity, with the aim of encouraging intercultural dialogue and of preserving multicultural values. ANBPR supports public libraries to become leaders in information navigation, by promoting the library as a dynamic space that inspires the discovery and the connecting of people from different cultures. The library provides always a lot of information, but it rarely provides creations of its own users.

Keywords

• library projects
• library associations
• digital storytelling
• cultural dialogue
• cultural diversity
• minorities