On Tuesday the 30th of October eleven people, including three current members of the South West Networking Committee (Valerie, Sue and Hannah), congregated at the main exit of the Bristol Zoo to meet with Siobhan Klaus, the only librarian formally employed by the zoo, to visit the library on-site, the new Education Centre and to learn all about the educational programmes run at the zoo from two of their leading educators: Daphne Kerhoas and Dave Naish.
The visit started with a very comprehensive talk by primate specialist and Bachelor degree’s module leader Daphne Kerhoas, focused on the types of Higher Education programmes provided by the zoo, both independently and in partnership with other local and regional educational institutions.
She explained to us that Bristol’s zoo is also a charitable organisation centred on the conservation of our ecosystems, and which has a legal responsibility to engage with its local community to provide opportunities to the general public to learn and care more about animals and their habitats.
According to Daphne, who has travelled the world extensively, Ecosystems Conservation is generally concerned with the conservation of the species themselves, instead of the conservation of their surroundings and their specific ways of living. For this reason it is paramount that people are taught how to collaborate to protect these ecosystems by changing the public’s perceptions of wildlife and committing to keep positive daily habits like recycling and avoiding the use of plastics. How do they do this? By inviting members of the public to participate in immersive experiences where they can enter different ecosystems and see, stroke and even feed the animals living there.
The zoo is also involved in other bigger adventures, like the Philippines project, the Wild Place project, the South African Penguin project and other field conservation projects both abroad and in the UK. They are mostly possible thanks to the collaboration and funding of other bigger sister organisations and benefactors like Airbus and MSC. The main aims of these projects are to address threats to the ecosystems by finding alternative solutions with the local populations and to send a clear message to the public to improve their caring behaviour towards these ecosystems.
In terms of the Higher Education programmes organised or supported by the zoo, Daphne explained that they are partnered with the University of the West of England and South Gloucester and Stroud College to impart several courses at foundation and bachelor’s degree levels. These degrees include two different field trips, one to Dartmoor on the first year, and another one to Cyprus at the end of the second year. These three partners are very keen on teaching their students research and critical thinking skills. The delivery and success of these courses wouldn’t have been possible without the construction of the zoo’s conservation and education centre back in 2014.
The second talk of the day was delivered by Siobhan Klaus and focused on the Zoo’s library, its organisation, users and future challenges.
The library is committed to teaching the general public ways to actively engage with wildlife, and it has been really lucky for having received a vast collection of resources on wildlife by the BBC and for having a strong relationship with the Higher Education partners they work with, as they have provided access to their students to many more online resources and the latest research available in the field. Nevertheless, Siobhan admitted that it is still quite exceptional for a public zoo to contain its own library.
Regarding the collection itself and its classification system, it was interesting to hear that it all started as an initiative by a group of volunteers fifteen years ago to catalogue the resources found in each department within the zoo, therefore the system, still in place, wasn’t designed by professional librarians at all. This caused the collection to be organised in very broad classes designated by a series of “call numbers”, which is not perhaps the ideal system, but at least it allows the books to show multiple subjects, depending on their use. This zoo library collection has been developing little by little since that first voluntary classification, mainly due to the small budget dedicated to it, but it has greatly improved since the construction of the conservation and education centre (which contains the library, computer, common, seminar rooms and usual classrooms, plus a teaching laboratory and a preparation room) but especially to the partnership with UWE and SGS College and the access to their resources by their common students (more than 300 every year).
The final talk was given by Education Manager Dave Naish, who explained that his aim at the zoo is not only to help the public acquire new knowledge about animals, but to challenge their beliefs and values in other to increase the awareness and understanding of other people’s views on what conservation really means.
Dave explained that these teachings need to be relevant for people to really engage and change their habits, therefore the zoo is taking a new approach to categorise and analyse each visitor group depending on their motivation or reason to come to the zoo. This new analysis helps the zoo determine the type of teaching and information materials they will need to use with each group: the type of signs, the amount and size of text on signs, adding drawings and cartoon characters to them, creating competitive activities, interactive boards, etc.
For Dave it is very important to be able to offer dynamic activities outside of the classroom that are new and not repetitive for the younger learners, but which still follow the national curriculum of learning objectives. In his opinion, the best way for kids to learn how to care for the ecosystem is interacting with the animals themselves as much as possible (observing, petting or feeding them…), and introducing seasonal items in the animal’s world to make it different for the viewers and more interesting for the animals helps as well to keep the visiting experience fresh each time.
Finally, Dave shared with us information about some of the many different ways in which the zoo tries to encourage people to interact with the animals, such as “face your fear” sessions for people with specific phobias, walk-throughs with members of staff, feeding and petting opportunities, events to watch the birds of prey and the aquarium, etc. All of these are designed so that people with different learning styles can all have a chance to engage with the zoo and its animals in whichever way fits their needs and specific interests. For what we experienced ourselves (holding giant cockroaches and stroking a nice and smooth boa snake!), these interactive sessions are unique experiences that everybody should try and which will provide an incomparable method of learning (fun memories) that will last for a lifetime.
CILIP South West Member Network 