We have now been busy implementing the TUNE project actively for more than four months. As the project has been in our minds for one and half year, we feel that we “live and breath” with this project. It is in fact a special and overwhelming feeling to put our thoughts and plans into practice. We all feel that we already have changed our perspectives and minds towards a more flexible point of view. And we share the feeling that obstacles appear only to be solved. No problems have been real obstacles as we have met them with a positive attitude.
To work with this kind of project raises a lot of questions and reflections, and it´s a pity we haven´t got more time to spend on the project. When we, the management team, first met in Toledo in september 2003 we decided that we wanted to create a project with a concrete task, a task that was something that we wanted to develop with or without a special EU-project. We discussed different possible items and of course we could have chosen something quite different than a user training module, but by now I must say I´ve found the chosen task perfect for this kind of international co-working.
It´s easy to meet colleagues from other countries to discuss common problems and possibilities. Often you find you have lots in common and you get inspiration and new ideas. When you start working together with a common task, like developing a user training module, you have to go much deeper into the questions that arise. And you have to find out what each of the participants actually mean with their opinions and answers and how that may influence the module. You must analyse and try to really understand each other and the different circumstances we are submitted to.
We have put lots of effort into the discussions of the role of the public library in the society. It is a difficult and challenging task to problematise. As we often are deeply involved in practical library matters where we are solving different problems that occur on a daily basis, it is useful and challenging for us to start all project activities by thinking in “why-questions”. Why libraries? Why user training? Why do like this? Why do like that? By asking us the reason why we are keeping on doing things and for whom, we have also realised the importance of preparing a good base for our analysises. Often we do a lot of things because of traditional reasons, of some (often vague) assumptions or of the reason that someone happened to be interested in these matters.
I do hope that we in our TUNE-project will be able both to create a module for user training that is useful for libraries all over Europe, but also to produce reports and platforms for further discussions all around Europe as we show in every detail the process and the way we´ve walked to find our module.
|
|
|