Abstract in English

General information about the Grundtvig Triangle Project

The Grundtvig Triangle Project will bring together three different types of institutions - libraries, museums/archives and adult education institutions, all of which are involved in formal and informal adult learning.

Libraries, museums/archives and adult education centres from seven countries - Austria, Greece, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania and Norway - are participating in the Project and their range of activities includes organising workshops about pre-historic crafts for senior citizens, using resources such as photographs and library materials for learning about environmental changes in the last 40 years and exploring what teenage life was like in the fifties and sixties.

During the first year of the project the partners have defined:

•  target groups of adult learners, their needs and expectations,
•  ways in which the participating institutions can cooperate by integrating their potential and expertise.

Vilnius, 2002

At the first meeting which took place in Vilnius the partners shared ideas and information about how to develop educational activities such as exhibitions, lectures, meetings, performances, educational programmes, within “triangles”. In the course of their discussions about the activities they were planning and the approaches and methods to be applied the partners felt that despite the great diversity they had several points in common, namely:

• to try and attract more people to libraries and museums,
• to make wider use of their resources,
• an awareness of the great educational potential “buried“ in these resources and
• a recognition of the mutual benefits cooperation can bring by combining the expertise and experience of different institutions.

The second year of the project will be dedicated to the implementation and evaluation of the various activities. It is expected that as a result of the Project the partners

• will develop methods enabling museums, libraries and adult educators to co-operate in the context of lifelong learning,
• will ascertain how best to take into account the needs and wishes of adult learners.

The project results will be disseminated through a published project report, a common website and a final international conference. But in addition to that the invidual partners will find the communication channels most suited to their particular target groups.

The Grundtvig Triangle Project in Austria "Between Roller, Petticoat and Rock 'n’ Roll" Life in the fifties and sixties

"Those who have to tell a story will not feel lonely nor will those who listen to a story. And as long as someone somewhere exists who wants to listen to a story it makes sense to live in such a way that one will be able to tell a story."

Sten Nadolny

The Project

Under the motto of “lifelong learning” the Dornbirn Municipal Library and the Municipal Archive have developed the Project „From Roller, Petticoat and Rock 'n’ Roll - life in the fifties and sixties”. We are looking for people interested in this topic and together we shall undertake a journey into the past. Both the Archive and the Library will be happy to take up your suggestions, ideas and project proposals.

These journeys can take a variety of forms: For example, interviews can be conducted with former Mods, Teds, Rockers, Twist Dancers, Young Catholics, Couch Potatoes etc. Photographs are an attractive way to encourage journeys into the past since images tend to elicit memories and can tell “more than a thousand words”. This is why we have included a “Photo Album” on the web site of our Project.

We shall collect and process the material we receive about life in the fifties and sixties and publish it on our web site. The results will also be disseminated by means of public events such as lectures, thematic readings, reading circles or “oral history cafés”.

Our Project forms part of the transnational Triangle Project which is co-financed by the European Commission in the framework of its adult educational programme Grundtvig under the umbrella of Socrates. Triangle brings together different types of institutions - libraries, museums/archives and adult education institutions, all of which are involved in formal and informal adult learning. Our Project has been chosen by the Austrian Socrates Office among a host of proposals for Grundtvig 2, in the Action Line of Learning Partnerships. Further participants are the Centre for Knowledge and Information Management at the Donau University Krems (near Vienna) and the Austrian Library Association (Österreichisches BibliotheksWerk).

The Triangle Project aims to encourage cooperation and exchange of experience and knowledge between different institutions of adult learning from seven countries - Austria, Greece, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania and Norway. It is co-ordinated by one of the biggest libraries of Lithuania, which is the Lithuanian Technical Library, located in Vilnius.

Come and join us!
You can participate in our Project „Between Roller, Petticoat and Rock 'n’ Roll” in a variety of ways, for example:

• Let us have your photographs – either drop by, send them by post or via e-mail;
• Write down your story and post it to us or send it by e-mail;
• Talk about your memories of the past – please get in touch with us!
• Or you can become a researcher yourself and carry out interviews – contact us!
• Share your ideas, project proposals and suggestions with us.

What will happen to your contributions?

• Your pictures will be published in the "Photo Album" on our web site. They are important to us because they can convey what life was like in the fifties and sixties. Over time, based on your photographs an image data base about that period will develop.
• Your stories will be published on our web site as well and gradually these will come to form an anthology of the fifties and sixties.
• Your oral contributions will be recorded on tape and transcribed. Furthermore, you will have the opportunity of talking about your experiences of the past at various events – if you wish.
• As a researcher you will become a member of our team. Together with other team members you will focus on a topic which is of particular interest to you. The results will be disseminated via the Internet and at public events and all interviews will be documented and included in our Oral History Archive. Furthermore, anyone wishing to participate can receive guidance and training with regard to interviewing as well as practical support in the form of recording equipment.
• Your ideas will help us develop events such as reading circles, oral history cafés, lectures or theatre workshops etc. and encourage us to explore avenues we might not have thought of ourselves.

Check our web site http://www.biblio.at/petticoat, which is up-dated regularly, for new contributions, events and results.

Partners in the Grundtvig Triangle Project

A The Dornbirn Municipal Library

The Dornbirn Municipal Library of Dornbirn is the first library in Austria to participate in a Grundtvig project, a very welcome development since in other countries both public and academic libraries have played a prominent role in this programme dedicated to lifelong informal learning.

The Dornbirn Municipal Library is the biggest public library in Austria’s most westerly province of Vorarlberg and as the town’s main library it is responsible for seven branch libraries in different districts. It has 57,000 media items such as books, periodicals, reference materials, CD-Roms, CD’s, DVD’s and video tapes.

In the last few years the Library has undertaken various measures to set itself up as a lifelong learning centre and thus expand its adult customer base. This objective has been achieved: 68% of its present clientele are adults, a fact which is largely due to the increase in the number of non-fiction and language learning materials and to a wide range of cultural events and activities which respond to adults’ cultural and learning interests such as reading circles, thematic exhibitions, lectures and play readings.

The Grundtvig Triangle Project should help to attract teenagers to libraries - a notoriously difficult target group to reach. Interviewing older people who were young in the sixties might give present-day teenagers a new perspective on their own values and ambitions. Perhaps those “oldies” are not as ossified, their ideas not as hopelessly out-of-date as they think?

Cooperation with other institutions such as schools, the Municipal Archive, museums, the regional conservatorium as well as individual artists and “local stakeholders” have also contributed to the success and wide-spread recognition of the Municipal Library in the regional cultural and learning environment.

B The Dornbirn Municipal Archive

The Municipal Archive functions as a documentation centre for local history and local government and as a service centre for all citizens, scholars and scientists interested in Dornbirn's history and its immediate surroundings. Anyone wishing to investigate past events can receive support, guidance and training from the staff of the Archive.

The Archive has been carrying out research on topics such as traditional medicine or the visual history of the town and region and has been publishing the results in its own series called “Dornbirner Schriften” (Writings from Dornbirn). The production costs of the biannual volumes are largely covered by more than 600 subscriptions.

Apart from traditional archival activities such as indexing, classifying, cataloguing and preserving manuscripts and records, the Archive has recently shifted its emphasis to oral history records. Since 1996 the Dornbirn Municipal Archive has been organising a so-called “oral history café“ to encourage local citizens to talk about their past. Every three months a particular topic is chosen, e.g. relating to work, traditional crafts, marital relations etc. Normally these informal gatherings are supplemented by photographic exhibitions or other relevant artefacts.

Staff of the Archive record and document these stories and have been building up an oral history archive for the region. The initiative has won wide recognition from both professionals in the cultural heritage field and local citizens.

By co-operating more closely with the Municipal Library and other educational/cultural organisations the Grundtvig Triangle Project should allow the archive to reach new target groups and expand its range of topics. Themes which might emerge from the interviews to be conducted within the framework of the Project are:

•  gender relations in the fifties and sixties,
•  the change of attitudes to immigrant workers,
•   youth between conformism and rebellion.

For the purposes of the Project the Archive will make use of its existing resources whilst at the same time producing new resources which for the sake of more efficient retrieval will be indexed with a set of keywords. The present keyword list will probably have to be enlarged to accomodate the specific themes and requirements of the Project which, however, will only become clear in the course of the Project.

C The Centre for Knowledge and Information Management

The Centre for Knowledge and Information Management at the Donau-Universität Krems near Vienna specialises in developing and organising courses at post-graduate level. Its courses are characterised by the immediate applicability of the expertise and skills imparted and an interdisciplinary approach in teaching and research. This is why students are encouraged to get involved in on-going projects and use them as “raw material” for writing their master theses.

The Grundtvig Triangle Project is of particular importance to the Centre and the Library and Information Science, in particular, on account of:

• New target group for libraries - The Grundtvig Triangle Project should help to attract teenagers - a target group that is usually hard to reach - to libraries. If this succeeds the Project could very well serve as a best-practice example for other libraries.
  
• Story-telling - Telling stories is one of the most successful techniques for the transfer and distribution of knowledge. The Project could show how story-telling can help individuals to better understand their past (interviewees) but also contribute to the common knowledge base of a town or a region.
  
• International developments - Since the Project brings together libraries, museums and adult education centres from all over Europe the students will gain a good overview concerning developments, issues and activities in other countries and possibly even open up new job opportunities.

The contribution of the Centre for Knowledge and Information Management will consist mainly in providing theoretical input, in assisting with the documentation of the activities and, finally, in evaluating the results of the Project.

D The Austrian Libraries Association

• The Austrian Libraries Association (Österreichisches Bibliothekswerk ÖBW) concentrates its activities on consulting, supporting and representing about 1000 public libraries all over Austria as well as training around 5000 mainly honorary librarians.
  
• The Austrian Libraries Association issues the most extensive Austrian book review magazine (5 issues with around 2000 reviews annually). The ÖBW's homepage „www.biblio.at" offers people globally access to the world of libraries and books ( i.e. literature data bank "rezensionen-online"), gives impulses (for example with projects like "library quiz in cyberspace") and fosters communication (mailing lists).
  
• For years the ÖBW has been leading Austrian-wide projects to transmit literature and to promote reading. Some of the recent projects: "Reading against Violence", "Growing with Books", "The manifold fifteen: Europe in the Library"...
  
• The ÖBW co-operates regularly and closely with institutions in Germany and Italy, especially the German speaking Southern Tyrol, and intensifies its contact to institutions in other European countries. These contacts were greatly reinforced with the set-up of the homepage „www.biblio.at" which is a big success (550 000 entries within 20 months).
  
• The ÖBW contributes with its supportive measures and projects to supply public libraries with hard- and software and thus to make them into "digital libraries" which live up to the demands of modern society.
  
• The Austrian Libraries Association works on behalf of the Austrian catholic church.