#Libraries, museums and Media and Information Literacy #GlobalMILweek #MILcities

I will liveblog a few snippets from a session on Revitalizing city libraries museums and archives through creative MIL actions, from the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week. Aleisa Fishman (Levine Institute for Holocause Tducation, USA) talked about an educational exhibit they had developed on how the Nazis used propaganda, with material available to help educators teach students about the issues arising from that. "We wanted visitors to be better consumers of media". She referred to the website which they had collaborated to produce: Mind over Media https://propaganda.mediaeducationlab.com/node/1 which focuses on issues such as recognising propaganda, and analysing propaganda. It also has an interactive element.
Kyoko Murakami (Director of the Asia-Pacific Media and Information Literacy education Centre) talked about Empowering future citizens through MIL in city libraries and social network services. She started by highlighting how libaries are using social media. She went on to talk about the Japanese situation, identifying how everyone is using smartphones, with a dramatic change in the way they use the internet. A map of Japan showed coverage of the internet - with the big concentration on big cities, in particular Tokyo. In terms of use of social media, it is a minority of city libraries that use it. She showed a slide (see picture) which had some characteristice of library use. She used the University of Tsukuba as an example of effective use of social media, a video of a robot helper at a public library, and also use by the National Archives.
She summed up issues for libraries: that communication was mostly one way; that libraries were seen as unattractive; and that only a quarter of Japanese were confident in evaluating information (from one research study). Murakami advocated collaboration with other stakeholders, more understanding of effective use of social networking applications, education for effective use of these applications, and more participative use of the services by libraries.
Monika Straupyte (Culture Manager for Public Relations, Kaunas Municipal Vincas Kurdika Public Library) talked in particular about their computer classes for seniors (with several thousand participants) and their Media and Information Academy for seniors (with 36 participants, 60-80 years old). Activities varied from searching, to editing and uploading. She said that they learned about dangers as well as opportunities. This helped the seniors to become "full members of society". The MIL academy also included public lectures on topics such as fake news. They also had a course in MIL for librarians.
Viorica Palamarciuc (IREX Europe) talked about, in particular, librarians becoming ambassadors of MIL in Moldova. 113 librarians have been trained, so they can then carry out activities in their own (I think, rural) communities. They have organised over 250 events for over 3000 people. They have set up "media corners" in libraries in some cases. She also talked about activities with young people in Moldova.