Children's Media Culture: A Key to Libraries of the Future?
Publication details
| Year: | 2011 |
| Issued: | 2011 |
| Language: | English |
| Start Page: | 1 |
| End Page: | 8 |
| Editors: | Drotner K. |
| Authors: | Drotner K. |
| Type: | Book chapter |
| Book title: | Designing Library Space for Children |
| Publisher: | De Gruyter |
| Place: | Berlin/München |
| Topics: | Digital and socio-cultural environment |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Other |
| Other Stakeholder Implication: | Libraries |
Abstract
Public libraries offer key arenas of galvanising children's socio-cultural expressions and expectations of the future. A main argument of the paper is that today these expressions and expectations feed on a complex media culture, and therefore both physical and virtual libraries need to offer young users high-quality output within all semiotic modes of representation - texts, images and sounds - and high-quality input within these modes through engaged dialogues between users and professional librarians skilled in quality assessment across different modes of representation. The main argument is substantiated through a brief analysis of global trends in children's media uses and their socio-cultural divides and through examples of the challenges facing multimodal libraries
Outcome
"If public libraries are to remain resources for children's freedom of expresssion under the changed conditions outlined above, one of their major challenges is to develop more holistic strategies of communication with users." (p. 6)