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The Meanings of the Adult Independent Library Learning Project.

1986; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

1559-0682

David Carr,

Adult and Continuing Education Topics

DURING THE YEARS I SPENT thinking and writing about the Adult Independent Learning Project, there were no moments when the questions I sought to understand and answer were not, to me, the most important ones I could ask as a librarian: How do adults learn in libraries? How do they make sense out of their tasks? How do adult learners become different because of what they do in libraries? And perhaps the most important question of these important questions: How do librarians help? How do they reinvent themselves in order to make differences in the lives they touch? And what is the nature of that touch? These questions are still sources of delight, though I answered most of them for myself and have now come to think of other things. What I saw and knew then, however, altered permanently my vision of learning in this society, especially my view of that extraordinary instrumentality that is the librarian’s touch. I am still an inquirer devoted to understanding informing acts in individual lives, especially as these occur in cultural institutions. Everything I know causes me to see information as the formative continuity of adult life-the definitive stream that flows through us as we live and work-and to see the library as a cultural institution where thinking and knowing through information and informing acts occur as in no other human settings. As a scholar and a learner my task is to make these acts and their importance clear.