Agricultural Libraries at the Future Library Unconference in Athens, Greece

The Jagodina Library was given one more opportunity to introduce the project Agricultural Libraries in Jagodina to European library public. Jelena Rajic, a librarian and a project coordinator applied for Gates scholarship to attend the Future Library Unconference on 9th and 10th December 2013 at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece.

http://2013.futurelibrary.gr/

The scholarship was available to librarians and other library thinkers and doers from the Balkans. She was also chosen by the organizers of the Future Library Unconference to present the project of Agricultural Libraries during the Session Balkan Stage.

The tagline of the event was "Being creative, inspiring the community". There were nearly 400 participants and 55 speakers who participated in dozens of stages and workshops. Some of the topics were advocacy, design thinking, e-books, robotics, 3D printing, gaming, etc.

During the presentation of the Agricultural Libraries in Jagodina, Jelena talked about the very beginning of the project implementation, the needs of the rural residents in the community, how and why the rural libraries were transformed into modern agricultural libraries, what services they offer to farmers and what the real results of the project are and finally about Beyond Access and its support and engagement in scaling-up of the project idea in the rest of Serbia.

The FL Unconferece was a great place to talk to colleagues from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Bulgaria and Albania about the project. Colleagues in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are facing similar problems in rural areas. They either have libraries in rural areas that are in bad conditions or do not have them at all.

Our library will be in touch with some of them, so we can share our experience and expertise if they decide to include some services for farmers in their rural libraries.

Gates scholarship winners had the opportunity to visit the Municipal Library of Ilioupoli which is a real modern space for its users and has a Media Lab and a Music studio. Also, they visited the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center which is under construction 

Article in Citaliste, the scientific journal on theory and practice of librarianship

ČITALIŠTE is the scientific journal on theory and practice of librarianship and is dedicated to development and fostering scientific researches in the areas such as library history, cultural, communicational and educational functions of librarianship, information literacy, knowledge organization, library management, etc.

In the latest issue of the journal, the article by the director of the Jagodina Library, Vesna Crnkovic and the director of the Pozarevac Library, Beba Stankovic, Future Libraries: Infinite Possibilities, IFLA General Conference and Assembly was published. 

Article in Citaliste, the scientific journal on theory and practice of librarianship

The Jagodina Library director talked about her experience at the IFLA Conference and highlighted the importance of the sessions that were held. Some of them were the session on the future of e-books; the Beyond Access session; the session on management and marketing and the poster session where the project AgroLib Ja was presented. Also, the library system in Singapore was introduced to the library public in Serbia through the article.

Library and the media

Executive Group, the PR Agency of ERSTE Foundation, and the Jagodina Library hosted a workshop on 18 November 2013. The topics were media relations, online PR training: trends and perspectives and organization of events.

The Jagodina Library was awarded by ERSTE Foundation for social integration 2013 for the project Agricultural Libraries in Jagodina and thereby ensured participation in this and other seminars on innovative trends for achieving better business results that ERSTE Foundation organizes.

 Twelve librarians from the town and the village libraries attended the training. All of them are responsible for contact with the media and they wanted to improve their presentation skills.

  Dusan Lopusina held a very dynamic and interactive workshop and gave numerous examples from his experience. He talked about basic principles related to relations with the media and various aspects that provide maximum effects. The speaker highlighted how and why the media contributed to raising the public  awareness about the company, improved corporate image and brand recognition, created opinion where there is none or confirmed the one that already exists.

The aim of the training was to train librarians for public speaking in the media and to improve the quality of communication and understanding different ways of appearance in the media, what the real nature of the media is and how all of that can be used for efficient completion of tasks.

   In the part of the training- Online PR the speaker introduced all the actions that can be performed on the Internet in order to attract the attention of the media: television, radio, newspapers, various websites, online forums, that is how to be presented wherever there is a possibility for your message to be seen and heard and then delivered to others.

The final part of the training was related to the organization of events, and the speaker guided the librarians step by step through the exercise and discussion (setting priorities, delegating tasks, creating the budget and identifying the problem) through the organization of an event from the idea and planning to the realization.

With a hoe and a laptop in the field

Since the Jagodina Library team got back from Beyond Access Asia: 2013 in Bali, public interest in the project has increased. The director of the Library was interviewed for the article titled "Unusual rural libraries: When farmers are studying" for the Serbian print and electronic edition of the magazine Business & Finance.

 The link to the article: http://bif.rs/2013/10/nesvakidasnje-seoske-biblioteke-kad-poljoprivrednici-studiraju/ 

On Sunday, 17 November, the daily newspaper Vecernje Novosti published an article about the AgroLib Ja project in their weekend edition, with the highest circulation during the week. The headline "With a hoe and a laptop in the field" attracts readers’ attention. They have the opportunity to read about the project idea, its awards, Beyond Access and its benefits for the local community.

The director of the library highlights that there are 311 rural libraries in Serbia with no computers or Internet access and that in such libraries the programs and services are not adapted to the needs of the people.

The link to the article:  http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno.293.html:464052-Jedinstven-program-na-svetu-za-obrazovanje-seljaka-U-njivu-sa-motikom-i-laptopom

On Monday, 11 November on a local TV station Palma Plus, the director of the Library talked about the project in the program "U prvom planu".

 The media interest in the project does not decline, so the feature on the project will be shown on the prime time news "Dnevnik" on 19 November.

The Ministry of Culture has finally realized the significance of the project recently, and wants to disseminate the idea of agricultural libraries in other libraries in Serbia.

Beyond Access 2013: Asia

The Jagodina Library became a member of Beyond Access in April 2012. As one of ten member, the Jagodina Library team- the director of the library-Vesna Crnkovic; Miroslav Cvijetic, an agricultural advisor to the Mayor of Jagodina and Jelena Rajic, a librarian, participated in the Conference in Washington DC in October the same year. On that occasion, the Library was awarded by Beyond Access $10,000 in the category Economic Opportunity.

A year later, i.e. from 20-23 October in Bali, Indonesia, Beyond Access hosted a regional gathering Beyond Access 2013: Asia. The Jagodina Library team was invited to participate in this event.  Teams from libraries, community partners and government officials from Jordan, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mongolia, Myanmar, Bhutan, Georgia, Nepal, Serbia, Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan were the participants.

It was a unique opportunity for the BA members to share their innovative ideas and future objectives; learn ways to promote and advocate for libraries to development practitioners, explore new technologies; engage in activities that address local community’s needs, etc.

The workshops such as Idea Fair (Poster Session), discussions during lunch, coffee lounges, action plan development and IGF Mock Sessions were organized in a way to give everybody the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences, as well as to hear the stories of libraries from other countries and what they were doing to address the needs in their local communities.

Friends of Beyond Access led workshops covering very important topics such as open government, access to information and technology and women’s empowerment. Once again, they proved that, since they were development practitioners, they understood very well how libraries could contribute to social and economic development.

The last couple of days belonged to Beyond Access 2013 Asia delegates’ participation in Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2013).  The diversity of workshops relevant to libraries, with topics such as open data, local content development and copyright policy were covered.

Information and Media Literacy workshop

. In April 2013 in Uzice, the workshop Training the Trainers in Information Literacy was held for librarians from Central Serbia. The speaker was a professor Albert Boekhorst, UNESCO expert and a member of IFLA Information literacy section.

The participation was by invitation as recognition of the achievements that the Public Library Radislav Nikcevic has had in recent years- development of information and communication technologies and affirmation of library and information profession in the country and abroad. A good knowledge of English was necessary for participation in the workshop because it was held in English. Our representative was Ivana Pesic, a coordinator of the project AgroLib Ja.

Participation in this prestigious seminar was a good starting point for the Jagodina Library to organize a workshop of the same model in order to enhance information and media literacy of librarians in public, school and village libraries.

The seminar-workshop Information and Media Literacy was hosted by the Jagodina Public Library on 17 October. The participants were librarians from Jagodina, Rekovac, Despotovac, Cuprija, and from secondary schools as well as village libraries, a total of sixteen of them.

 The workshop consisted of three one-hour blocks. First, they had theoretical work and then practical work. Discussions during the practice were very constructive and librarians shared experiences and ideas from their own libraries. In the first part we talked about the concept of information and media literacy, which meant definition, how to become IT literate, and literature to study this area.  Then we talked about social networks and their use. In the second part we discussed the mission and vision of the library, so we could talk in the third part about guidelines for introducing information and media literacy in libraries. After each segment, the participants were able to do the exercise in the context of their own libraries and to talk about that in order to highlight problems in their libraries.  It was a challenge for me as a leader of this workshop to have different types of participants.

After the completion of the training, all participants were given certificates for successful participation in the workshop Information and Media Literacy.

It was not easy to organize the workshop and I had to wait for a couple of months for some colleagues to confirm their participation. Also, I waited for some colleagues to confirm who will represent their libraries; therefore, I did not give them preparatory exercises. One more reason for not giving them preparatory exercises was that there was no possibility to buy books used for the research in this area, so they could not find tips how to do the exercises. As it is probably known, in Serbia libraries have not been purchasing books due to the complicated procurement procedures, so the libraries were not obliged to have these books.

First online library conference in Serbia

On Tuesday, 15 October 2013 the branch of the library Milutin Bojic in Ovca hosted a gathering Small conversation about big library events in 2013 which, according to the Agreement on cooperation in the development of digital agenda of Serbia, was realized by the University Library Svetozar Markovic and the Internet club from Ljig. The biggest library conferences in 2013 were presented at the gathering-IFLA, LIBER and ARBIKON. These significant events were presented by the librarians from Serbia who had prominent roles there.

The presentations had live streaming.

http://media.amres.ac.rs/component/content/article/211-mala-pria-o-velikim-bibliotekim-dogaajima-u-2013-.html 

 This was the first online library conference organized in Serbia. The director of the Jagodina Public Library, Vesna Crnkovic, talked about IFLA. Also, she talked about introducing the project AgroLib Ja at the IFLA Conference.

This conference was seen by the entire library public in Serbia. The recorded conference will be uploaded soon on Youtube.

The participants of the conference were welcomed by the President of the City Assembly of Palilula (one of the municipalities in Belgrade).

There were participants from the Belgrade City Library, National Library of Serbia, representatives of the Internet club from Ljig who were very interested in the conference topics.

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