Cooperation with the Opportunity Bank on the AgroLib Project

When, at the beginning of 2015, Vesna Crnković, the Jagodina Library director, was awarded Naj Žena by Blic Žena, the Opportunity Bank awarded her too. The last lines of the article on the Blic Žena portal were: „When she started the project, Vesna didn’t have other projects to replicate, but today others learn from her; therefore rural electronic libraries were revived in Lithuania, Latvia and Macedonia. And there will be more such libraries in Serbia. “

And that’s how it happened- the articles in Blic Zena and a short video about awarded women in Serbia encouraged the Opportunity Bank, to propose cooperation with the library on the project AgroLib. After a well-though-out plan with the director Vesna Crnković regarding the cooperation with theOpportunity Bank, whose main clients are farmers just like the Agrolib’s main beneficiaries are farmers; the support of the Opportunity Bank management was guaranteed.

Therefore, the village library in Vrtogoš near Vranje got a computer and financial support for internet connection and agricultural journals from the Opportunity Bank. The mobile library (bookmobile) which visits village around Aleksinac and provides the residents with books, got two lap tops and financial support for internet connection and agricultural journals, and the Glogovac Library near Jagodina got a computer.

The award from the Opportunity Bank enables the Agricultural Libraries (AgroLib) services to be the integral part of the work of Vrtogoš village library and mobile library in Aleksinac.

Opportunity Bank plans educational activities regarding the organization of workshops for financial andcomputer literacy in libraries for bank clients – small farmers in rural areas where there are libraries thathave helped.

Also, the new website http://agrolib.rs/ and new online marketplace http://www.onlinepijaca.agrolib.rs/provides to all libraries in Serbia for their village branches or users who are farmers, who are engaged in old crafts or village tourism to be a part of this project.

Our plan is to offer the website to all colleague-librarians who are interested in the project Agricultural Libraries. That is the reason the website is bilingual (Serbian and English) and for the colleagues in the region it has the option for Latin alphabet. The online marketplace is in Latin alphabet and the offers are translated into English. The creation of the website was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.

We would like to invite all our colleagues to join us and to pay attention to the users in their rural library branches. The website www.agrolib.rs and the online marketplace www.onlinepijaca.agrolib.rs is free and for all.