| Abstrakt: |
In addition to many professional texts, I was inspired by an article by young graduates of the Department of Information Studies and Librarianship, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno, Pavla Minaříková and Roman Novotný titled Who needs library service design? while writing this contribution. From my own experience working in several cultural institutions in Slovakia, I know that designing a new service or striving to innovate services and processes is rather difficult and problematic to accept and implement in these, by their nature, conservative institutions. That is why I always follow the initiatives and research of colleagues abroad who are trying to use new methods in designing the services of institutions serving the public. In this article, I want to focus on inspiring Czech and Slovak publications and projects and see how museums, galleries, and libraries react to these trends. Do memory and fund institutions need service design? How do we currently perceive these cultural institutions about which we have common prejudices? We usually imagine them as a space where librarians care for books and museum and gallery workers care for museum exhibits. Today, however, we have seen these cultural institutions and gradually perceive them differently — as public institutions providing services. Libraries, museums, and galleries alike serve the state as places where knowledge is spread and shared, as well as the sites which protect a nation’s cultural heritage. However, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, the number of users and visitors, especially younger ones, has been gradually decreasing in Slovak memory and fund institutions in recent years, even in the period before the pandemic began. Institutions, especially in neighbouring countries, take this as a warning and challenge. They are trying to face this fact. By identifying user groups (which exceeds demographic characteristics) and their needs, they are trying to design new services that will be used and needed. Experience from abroad shows that the tasks of these memory and fund institutions can go far beyond the traditional horizon symbolised by the myth of book “rentals” or the depository of museum exhibits. Today, libraries are not only community spaces, but they include, e.g. maker spaces — workshops with a 3D printer or milling machine (in the DeLaMare Science and Technology Library at the University of Nevada in Reno, USA) and recording studios (City Library in Nuremberg). Galleries and museums are undergoing a similar transformation. What else can these institutions do to meet their challenges and the change they face? Can design thinking help them? Design thinking is a process that allows anyone, even without education in design, to explore problems and creatively answer questions such as How can we do better? or How could we … ? That’s also why people today use design thinking across disciplines. However, it is necessary to understand what this term covers. According to Marc Stickdorn, design thinking is not just a process or way of thinking, but a complex concept that includes a set of tools, methods of interdisciplinary flow, i.e. the transfer of information between disciplines, or even a managerial approach to the functioning of an organisation. It is popular in the commercial sphere, but it is also used to solve problems and tasks in the sphere of public services. It is often discussed, which may even lead to the impression that it already belongs to the so-called buzzwords beyond Slovakia, at least. At the same time, we should note that it is not easy to find a single definition or even several “similar” or overlapping ones. On the contrary, in defining design thinking and service design, we encounter several problems. We meet with different interpretations of both concepts in both the academic and commercial areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
