AgroLib Ja Project at the Annual Assembly for Librarians of Srem

Dear colleague Ms Crnkovic,

Public Library Dositej Obradovic from Stara Pazova hosts 41st Annual Assembly for Librarians on 14 June 2013.

Annual Assembly for Librarians of Srem started in 1972 and is held every year in different municipalities in Srem, i.e. different library in Srem.  Gathering of librarians of Srem in Irig, which will be held for the 50th time and Annual Assembly for Librarians are the most significant professional manifestation at the territory of Srem and northern Serbia.

This year, our library is again the host of this traditional one-day manifestation.  On 14 June 2013 Public Library Dositej Obradovic from Stara Pazova will host librarians from Srem and guests from the Matica Srpska Library, National Library of Serbia, Russian library, colleagues from Serbia.

On behalf of the Organizing committee, colleagues, and myself I am inviting you to be our guest and a speaker at the meeting. The topic of your presentation would be the internationally awarded project of your library, experiences from its implementation and other issues you think would be significant for others to hear.

Best,

Natasa Filip

Director of Public Library Dositej Obradovic, Stara Pazova

At the invitation of the Organizing committee of the Annual Assembly for Librarians of Srem, the director of Jagodina Public Library, Vesna Crnkovic, was a guest and a speaker at 41st Annual Assembly for Librarians of Srem, held on Friday 14th June in Stara Pazova.

The director of the library was invited to present and share experiences about the AgroLib Ja project. Her presentation “Rural libraries as information and communication centers of local communities”-highlighted how the library started this project, how it was implemented and why it was successful.

By the way, Srem is a part of Serbia in the Pannonian Basin, where rural residents are engaged in agriculture. Farmers in Srem produce wheat, corn and other crops that thrive in the valley. What the librarians in Srem were particularly interested in was abandoning the traditional librarianship as a concept of the development of library and information profession.

When the program ended, a lot of colleagues continued informal discussion with the director Vesna Crnkovic, highlighting the problems in their local communities and seeking advice to overcome them.

The most important for them was to find out that librarians were in a unique position to change lives and build strong communities because vital information that drives changes was available I the libraries. This possibilities has not yet been used in the libraries in Srem but we hope that this and similar presentation would lead to a change in librarians’ thinking.

The project and presentation caused a lot of interest of the media in Stara Pazova and the director Crnkovic talked about them at a local TV station in Stara Pazova and the national radio station "Radio Beograd”.

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