Institution:
Department of Education Sciences Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Padua
Padova

Address:
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Padova
piazza Capitaniato 3
35139 Padova
Tel.: 049/8274545
Fax: 049/8274546

Contact persons:
Donatella Lombello
(course director)
Alessandra Dal Corso (organizational secretary)
Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione
Piazza Capitaniato, 3 
35139 Padova
Tel.: 049/8274554
049/8278964 
Fax: 049/8274546

1^st level 12-month Master

Target group: postgraduates
Level: advanced and specialised

Educational goals
The Master’s main task is to qualify the professional level of the librarian-documentalist in the scholastic, educational and museum services (professional profile: school documentalist teacher; librarian in the Public Library - Children and Young Adults Sections; librarian in different territorial structures; documentation expert in didactics of Cultural Heritage).

It covers 3 educational issues:

1. pedagogic and didactic competencies in order to teach how to use a library (information literacy and reading pleasure) and a museum according to users' age;

2. skills related to cataloguing, organizing, handling and managing printed and multimedia matter available in the Public Library - Children and Young Adults Section, in the School Library and in the Territorial Educational Services;

3. skills related to the competent use of the new technologies in the biblioteconomic organization, management and information literacy.

Teaching structure
60 educational credits
1.500 hours (18 weekly) shared in:
1.  300 hours of frontal didactics (lectures, seminars)
2.  60 hours of on-line didactics 
3.  200 hours of stage at a public library or a territorial museum, in Italy or abroad.

Participants' obligations
The students are required to:
- complete an admission questionnaire (in the beginning of the course);
- participate in didactic activities, in presence (300 hours) and online (60 hours);
- go in for their midterm (multiple-choice and/or open-answer questionnaires) and final tests (short thesis);
- carry out the stage;
- discuss the final thesis.

Detailed information about this advanced training course – its origin, methodological proposal, objectives and structure – can be found in the following report, released at the EAHIL Workshop 2001 Cyberspace Odyssey, Alghero, Sardinia, 7-9 June 2001:
Donatella Lombello - Giulia Visintin, A distance learning experience for school librarians.

Keywords: training for school librarians - training for school documentalists - master for librarian-documentalists - scholastic, educational and museum services - information literacy - reading pleasure - didactic competences -  library management - school documentation - multimedia libraries - school libraries - multimedia school libraries - library educational services