| dc.description.abstract | Since the very beginning of the educational reform in Poland, the Polish Ministry for National Education,
Parliamentary Commission for National Education, various NGO’s and companies working in the field of education
and information technology have been promoting a project known as Interkl@sa [Interclass]. The project has been
initiated by Grażyna Staniszewska, Member of the Polish Parliament. One of its objectives is to introduce
information technology to all educational activities at schools. Students should develop practical skills and
learn how to collect, process and use information. Thus, the project has been created in order to prepare
children for independent life in the age of information; it promotes schools which transform into centres for
implementing the idea of the information society.
The integral part of the project is to promote the so-called didactic information or media centres in Polish
schools. The term media centre was used for the first time in the USA in 1969 to describe the modem school
library defined as ‘the centre for studying at school, providing students and teachers with the full range of
printed and audiovisual materials, the necessary equipment and services provided by librarians and media
specialists’.
Many models of such centres have been created. In one of the first models, let us call it the Information Centre,
the main emphasis is put on enriching the collections of books with multimedia materials and educational
software, which - just like books and other educational media collected in the school library - can be borrowed
out or used in the reading-room or the computer-room. The second model, the Centre for Computerised Information,
prefers to base the activities of the library on materials accessible via the Internet and on CD-ROMs. This model
fulfils the expectations of the teachers who are starting to use information technology in the classroom. The
third model, the so-called Didactic Information Centre, is the most useful for the programme of general
education. Such a centre has a planned policy connected with didactic objectives of the school; its workers are
obliged to run systematic training sessions, not only for students.
The Didactic Information Centre is an organisational unit of the school, which serves as a library and
information centre, stimulates self-education and creative activity, and whose functions are didactic,
pedagogical, educational and communicational.
In order to realise the above-mentioned forms of activity, and accounting for the necessity to provide the
centres with new sources of information, equipment, facilities, staff and user workstations, library rooms have
to be modified. The new complex should include the following studies and rooms:
— computerised library room
— reading-room
— Information Centre storing rooms
— the study for collecting, describing and preservation of the materials
— multimedia study (the centre for computerised information)
— computer room (with Internet access)
— the room for multimedia presentations, which could also serve as a viewing, conference and didactic room
— exhibition hall at the Centre complex
— video and record library
— Information Centre office
— internet cafe
— school bookshop.
The paper includes helpful tips for those who attempt to design a school library media centre. It pays special
attention to rooms, equipment, collections, personnel, users, working time and the organisation of teaching at
the centre. | en_EN |
