THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL ON THEORY AND PRACTICE OF LIBRARIANSHIP
ISSN 2217-5563
 

Novi broj


Vladimir Krivošejev
Univerzitet Singidunum
Poslovni fakultet Valjevo
krisha@open.telekom.rs


Higher Education for Professionals for Work in Heritage Institutions,
with Special Reference to Museums


Summary
The topic of this paper is higher education for professionals, for performing basic professional jobs in heritage institutions. The paper is based on theoretical and empirical knowledge, and its purpose is to highlight the need and ways of comprehensive reforms that would contribute to creation and permanent additional education of professional staff trained for quality work, according to contemporary principles, in archives, libraries, institutes for protection of cultural monuments and museums, which the analysis presented here have mostly dealt with. The fi rst part of the paper is the analysis of the current international practice related to the existence of different internal professions in the heritage institutions. The analysis indicates that, along with various traditional professions, due to development, modernization and democratization of heritage activities, a whole series of the new ones emerged, including the profession of a cultural manager. Educational training for practical work is based on a variety of basic, but also on thematically directed specialist, master’s and doctoral studies. It also involves institutionalization of accredited forms of further permanent education through work. The second part of the paper is focused on the analysis of the current situation in Serbia, which shows that in practice there are neither some of the traditional professions, nor a range of the new ones. It also indicates that the heritage institutions are employing a very narrow range of educational profi les and that there are insuffi cient educational capacities for adequate previous, university, as well as for additional, permanent specialized training, necessary for modernization of work in the heritage institutions. In accordance with these conclusions, the fi nal part of the paper makes suggestions for further reforms of the educational system that would create a wider range of options for the previous, university education of staff needed for modernization of work in the heritage institutions, as well as for the obligatory, partly institutionalized continuing professional development through work. It is also concluded that the proposed set of measures requires existence of a well designed, explicit cultural policy at the state level.

Keywords:
museum, archives, library, heritage, patrimony, education, studies, faculty, culture, cultural policy, management, curator, archivist, librarian



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