Las
Vegas, July 1 2014 – The Jagodina Public Library was awarded for its innovative
library project at the American Library Association annual conference in Las
Vegas, USA.
The president of ALA, the oldest and biggest
library association in the world, Barbara Stripling handed out the award to
Vesna Crnković, the director and
the initiator of the awarded project.
This multi-award winning project of renovating
and developing rural libraries was initiated in 2010 so that rural residents in
the Jagodina municipality, who are predominantly engaged in agricultural
production, can have access to information important for the improvement of
production, increase of their income and better life in rural areas, and has
had a significant success.
The Jagodina Public Library and its five village
library identified community needs and developed creative programs to help community
development“, as said by ALA. Other
awarded libraries were: the Public
Library Fran Galovic,’Koprivnica in Croatia; the ZLB Library, Berlin in Germany and
State Library of Queensland in Australia.
„This
award is the culmination of the success of the project and we hope that in the
future, it will be an example to other librarians how to adapt this project
services to the needs of residents in their rural communities. Once more, I
thank the International Relations Round Table (IRRT) for recognizing the values
of the project Agricultural Libraries in Jagodina, all librarians in the
Jagodina Public Library, partners, volunteers, farmers who have built and implemented the project Agricultural
Libraries in Jagodina with a lot of love and enthusiasm“, said Vesna
Crnković, the director of the Jagodina Library.
The idea of village agricultural libraries
from Jagodina reached Lithuania, Latonia, Macedonia, where the project services
have been offered to farmers to sell their produce through the Internet, find
information about current subsidies and opportunities for cooperation, and
sharing experiences with other farmers and experts.
The project was awarded for social
integration by ERSTE in 2013, by American organization Beyond Access for Innovation
and for availability of knowledge and information at the World Summit on Information
Society in Geneva last year.
American Library Association was founded in
1876 u Philadelphia. It encourages development, promotion and improvement of
libraries and library profession. The ALA Presidential Citation for Innovative
International Library Projects was established in 2008 by the past president of
ALA Dr. Lorraine Roy for projects outside the United States that emphasize uniqueness
and sustainability and improve library services, serving as a model for other
libraries worldwide.
Text
by:
Dušan Lopušina, Executive Group, PR agencija
dusan_lopusina@eg.rs;
+381 60 707 1085
http://www.ala.org/irrt/irrtcommittees/irrtreception/reception
