DIE reflections on the end of InfoNet

Adult education in Europe long lacked an official publishing organ. Sure, there was Lifelong Learning in Europe (LLinE), the scholarly Finnish magazine with a European viewpoint; there was the website of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) with European news and plenty of background information. But what was missing was a platform where a lively dialogue could take place among Europeans concerned with adult education in practice and research. InfoNet came at just the right time. The correspondence network increased quickly; the quality of articles slowly but surely. One particular difficulty was writing in a journalistic style for a European audience. The community stood up to this challenge at several workshops – successfully. In the second period of funding InfoNet operated more and more smoothly, the download figures constantly on the rise. Adult educators from all over Europe were able to find out about the latest national and European affairs, draw upon country overviews for background information and exchange news. The tender buds of a European infrastructure were flourishing. Then came the bad news: no more funding. Time to leave when the party was in full swing, when things were just going well? In that case it was scant consolation how much the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) had profited from InfoNet. As a correspondent, DIE had the opportunity to represent German education from a scholarly angle. DIE experts in information technology gained valuable experience with multilingual websites and with content management systems. Personal contacts in the InfoNet family resulted in authorships for DIE publications or paved the way for further international cooperative discussions. DIE publications were translated into Lithuanian. What good was all this in view of the basic information requirements of European adult education? The content of a website left unmaintained will date faster than anyone would like to think; preserving it in a repository is the very least that should be done. Soon we will again come to a sobering conclusion: adult education in Europe lacks an official publishing organ.