“Premises for lifelong learning” - Creating a business plan for literacy events in junior high schools

Abstract

Due to the escalating complexity of rapid technological change, today’s information society is confronted with an abundance of information sources and therefore has to face the defiance of tapping and understanding it. Uncertain quality and expanding quantity of information pose large challenges for information search. If there is no understanding which information is needed and how it can be found, evaluated and used, the abundance of information will not in itself create a more informed but rather a more confused society. In this context information literacy services become more important. More and more universities offer courses to communicate information literacy. Not only higher educational students need guidance in how to use information the correct way. This also holds true for the remaining society. So while studying Information and Library Services, I created a three-phase curriculum. Its courses build upon each other to communicate information literacy to students of class eight, nine and ten (at the age of 13, 14 and 15) in cooperation with public libraries. The events attend to abilities that cannot be attended to in the everyday school life because of time famine. Nevertheless, information literacy is really nowadays. This concept provides an opportunity for schools to communicate these abilities without a cost of time or teaching stuff. To make this opportunity real the content of my bachelor thesis is to create a business plan for the proposed information literacy events. Courses should be offered independent from school and library institutions. The libraries only provide rooms and media. By implementing an e-mail survey I asked several schools and libraries if they are interested in this business idea. The outcome of this survey showed that libraries have a greater interest and have the opportunity to develop a budget for these events. So it is planed to offer the concept to libraries so that they can enlist schools with this new outsourced service. Therefore I will identify potential target groups, markets and competition; present my occupational attitude and possible future prospects, as well as marketing strategies.