AgroLib Ja presented in Pancevo, Serbia

 

On 30 October 2012 Public Library Radislav Nikčević (Jagodina, Serbia) presented their successful AgroLib-Japroject and online marketplace at a reception in the Pančevo City Hall.

 

The event was hosted by Pančevo City Council’s Department for Village and Rural Development and Pančevo Public Library. Presidents of local community councils and farmers’ associations, librarians and directors of cultural centres from southern Serbia were present.

 

Pančevo is the administrative centre of Serbia’s South Banat District. Ms Vesna Crnkovic, director of Public Library Radislav Nikčević, recommended the launch of a service for farmers, modelled on AgroLib-Ja, in Banat.

 

A real story of an AgroLib market user

Ms LJiljana Vulic, who was made redundant due to economic crisis decided to take incentives from the state and start an old hand-made craft business, but it was not very successful.

She registered on our webiste www.agrolib.rs/pijaca and her business improved. A local TV station has recently made a story about her and a local newspaper Novi Put published an article about Ljiljana's business.

Ms Ljiljana is very grateful to Jagodina Public Library and the project Agrolib  for helping her find her place in the Serbian market. Some time ago, Jagodina library celebrated 103rd anniversary. As a sign of her gratefulness, she baked a cake with a logo of the Agrolib project and brought it to the library as a gift. Everyone was pleasantly surprised. 

Article about mat-weaving and AgroLib user  Ms Ljiljana Vulic 

Decorative items

A few words about our online marketplace AGROLIB

Agrolib market (www.agrolib.rs/pijaca) is online marketplace where users can advertise their produce and services and share their experiences regarding agriculture, handicrafts and rural tourism.

Website AgroLib market is for people seeking or offering produce and services in the
domain of agriculture, rural tourism and old crafts. All site users, including unregistered users
have the ability to search the product database, database of registered users and the ability to
view their profiles. After successful registration and account activation users are able to
independently regulate certain activities. Users with an active account can edit their own data
about themselves, their businesses and their products within their user profile. The user must enter the produce name, type must be selected from chierarchicaly ordered structures and must enter the product description. As a part of the reach text editor, a user can use the program for file managing. With this program, they can upload a photo (jpg, png or gif) to the server and include it in the description. Each user has its own
folder.

Ongoing preparations for a new village library branch

            

      Preparations for our new library branch in the village of Majur are in progress. The City Assembly of Jagodina has renovated the space and purchased the furniture for the new village library. 

      We need to resolve the heating issues and some other details, so that we can start supplying the library with books and other library material. Also, we are going to set up 4 computers for free Internet access, one for the librarian and the other three for users. 

      This is going to be the fifth modern village library in the Jagodina municipality. 

AgroLib – Ja project at the IFLA Conference in Helsinki 2012

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of libraries and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. It was established in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1927. Now,  IFLA has 1,600 members in about 150 countries all around the world.

The biggest event in the library world is certainly IFLA General Conference, which is held every year in August, in one of member states of IFLA. This year’s 78^th IFLA General Conference was held in Helsinki, Finland, from 11-17 August 2012.

A delegation of distinguished librarians from Serbia participated at 78^th IFLA conference. This year’s IFLA theme was Libraries Now! – Inspiring, Surprising, Empowering.  Some 4,000 participants from over 100 countries attended the conference. Serbian delegation was led by Dejan Ristic, acting director of the National Library of Serbia; other members of the delegation were: Tatjana Subotin-Golubovic, Ivana Nikolic and Tanja Tasic from the National Library of Serbia, Jasmina Ninkov, Mirko Markovic and Predrag Djukic from the Belgrade City Library, Vesna Crnkovic from the Public Library “Radislav Nikčević” in Jagodina, Nebojsa Vasic from the Public Library “Stevan Sremac” in Nis, Beba Stankovic from the Public Library “Ilija M. Petrovic ” in Pozarevac and Vesna Crnogorac from Serbian Library Association.

Director of the Public Library “Radislav Nikčević” presented the project about revitalization of rural libraries in the municipality of Jagodin- AgroLib Ja (Agricultural Libraries in Jagodina) at two sessions.

At the session New directions for public libraries in the developing world, organized by NGO Beyond Access,the director of the Public Library in Jagodina, Vesna Crnkovic introduce the audience with the success and challenges of the project AgroLib Ja, which aims to help farmers, through the network of rural libraries (agricultural literature and new information technologies), to obtain desired information on agricultural production and competitions and subsidies offered by the state.

http://express.ifla.org/node/5888

This project has been implemented by the Public Library in Jagodina in cooperation with the Town Assembly and the Agency for Small and Medium Enterprise and Registered Agricultural Households from Jagodina. The Agrolib Ja project partner was the Rural Development Support Network of Serbia, the project by the Ministry of Agriculture, which ended a few months ago.

The other session the director of Jagodina library, Vesna Crnkovic participated in was Social Networking for Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Service: an International Perspective and presented her paper Agricultural Rural Libraries in the Era of Information Technologies.

A librarian at the service of the users

The municipality of Jagodina and its 52 villages

      Besides the lecturers themselves, project partners, i.e. the Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises and Registered Agricultural Households participate in all lectures organized by the AgroLib Ja team. 

      At one of the lectures, the farmers’ attention was drawn to the deadline to apply for incentives for fattening of young cattle. Our colleague Ruzica Popovic, who works atthe library branch in Glavinci, took a very responsible task. 

      She informed farmers, who fatten young cattle, from Glavinci, Ivkovacki Prnjavor, Bresje, Lestar, Medojevac, Dragosevac ,Topola and the surrounding villages to submit applications on time and bring all required documentation in order to receive incentive payments. 

AgroLib Ja farmer's cattle

      The deadline was 31 January 2013. This expands the role of librarians. It is not just the job of book publishing, but much more than that, because librarians assist their users in finding the information they need.









http://www.agrolib.rs/?p=3036

Lecture on apitherapy

Dr. Stojkovic 

 On Friday, 1^st February, in a crowded room at the Jagodina library, a lecture on apitherapy was held. Apitherapy involves treatment with honey, royal jelly, pollen, bee wax and bee venom. 

    According to our guest Dr. Ljubinka Stojkovic, therapy is completely natural and safe for human health. Dr. Stojkovic is a general practitioner and professional phytoterapsit and apitherapist. She chose phytotherapy and apitherapy and got license in June 2009 by the Ministry of Health and became the only licensed therapist. 

    In her office WIZARD in Nis, she treats her patients according to the methods of both classical and traditional medicine. There are a lot of people who were cured of diabetes, cancers of all kinds, psoriasis, infertility, growth failure in children, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.

 The purpose of the lecture was to introduce prevention of viral infections with products from the honey pharmacy, since winter brings viral infections and respiratory tract infections. 

    After the lecture, visitors were able to get information they needed regarding their health or health of their family members and friends, or to get recipes from Dr. Stojkovic for preparing natural products based on herbs and bee products.

Discussion after the lecture

A beekeeper and the speaker

 Attentive audience