(563) THE VICTORIAN INTERNET OR, WHERE LIBRARY INSTRUCTION MEETS THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

摘要

The proposed paper discusses the rationale for the creation of an innovative educational Museum ofthe History of Technology at the Charles Evans Inniss Memorial Library (Medgar Evers College,CUNY). The museum is a collaborative project of the Archives and Media departments of the libraryand the college Department of Computer Information Systems.The ever so quickly changing information and communication technology as well as contemporarymodes of social networking have their impact on the higher education contributing to novelteaching/learning formats. Academic librarians are in the frontiers of these changes. There is,however, another task of connecting the future with the past they traditionally perform. In the contextof information technology it is the continuity of the old and new media.Information technology developers produce devices with increasingly comprehensible interface. Atypical user does not have to be conscious of the processes going on inside a smoothly runningmachine;;to have a fair command of a tool one only needs to memorize a few simple procedures.Typical IT training programs (for non-IT majors) have also adjusted their courses: they teach studentsto use (a device, a program, a feature, etc.) rather than to understand what stands behind theperformance. At the same time instructors who have an understanding about the inner structure of theobject of study are gradually replaced by those who are familiar mostly with how the object normallybehaves.As conceived, the museum will create a context, both historical and technological, into whichcontemporary machinery is included and demonstrate basic physical and chemical processes thatmake it run. It will serve both as an educational and entertainment environment. Single informationtechnology classes will alternate with thematic exhibitions and regular History of Technology classesfor the CIS Department.The paper describes the academic context, which the museum will try to fit in: the obvious lapses instudents' notions of technology and science;;the obvious revival of popular interest in analoguetechnology;;the media archaeology boom.The second part of the paper is devoted to the basics of the museology essential for those who arestruggling to create a museum from scratch.