[the text in portuguese goes below]
March 12th we celebrate Librarian’s Day in Brazil.

It is always a festive day, with many actions across the country. Librarians motivated to work for more and better libraries, as well as promoting the continued learning of professionals.

In this year – on March 2022 – the Brazilian Commission on Copyright and Open Access of the Brazilian Federation of Associations of Librarians, Information Scientists and Institutions (CBDA3/FEBAB) held a webinar for the presentation of the “Guide to libraries: copyright and access knowledge, information and culture”.

The event was a success, with the participation of more than 150 participants simultaneously.

This guide is to answer professionals about the many questions regarding the balance between the libraries’ mission and the guarantee of copyright. Thus, the content of the guide was built with day-to-day work questions from the Brazilian community of librarians that were sent to the Commission, and answered by it.

The Guide is a fundamental instrument, helping with the uses and practices that can or should not be done by libraries. It gives them – the libraries – security, about compliance with copyright and the guarantee of access rights to information users, and thus they can fully fulfill their noble mission of promoting knowledge and culture.

These actions, by CBDA3/FEBAB, are contributing to goal 16.10 of SDG 16, “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”.

The guide can be donwloaded from the Federation repository at this link

http://repositorio.febab.org.br/items/show/6214

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Dia 12 de março comemoramos o dia do bibliotecário, no Brasil

É sempre um dia festivo, com muitas ações pelo país.  Bibliotecários motivados por trabalhar por mais e melhores bibliotecas, bem como promover o aprendizado continuado dos profissionais.

Neste ano de 2022, a Comissão Brasileira de Direitos de Autor e Acesso Aberto da Federação Brasileira de Associações de Bibliotecários, Cientistas da Informação e Instituições (CBDA3/FEBAB) realizou um webinar para o lançamento do “Guia para bibliotecas: direitos autorais e acesso ao conhecimento, informação e cultura”.

O evento foi um sucesso, tendo a participação de mais de 150 participantes simultaneamente.

Este guia, é para responder aos profissionais sobre as muitas dúvidas quanto ao equilíbrio entre a missão das bibliotecas e a garantia do direito de autor. Assim, o conteúdo do guia, foi construído com questões de trabalho do dia a dia, da comunidade brasileira de bibliotecários que foram enviadas à Comissão, e por ela respondidas.

O Guia e um instrumento fundamental, no auxilio sobre os usos e práticas que podem ou não devem ser feitos pelas bibliotecas. Dá a elas – as bibliotecas – a segurança, sobre o respeito aos direitos autorais e a garantia dos direitos de acesso à informação para os usuários, e assim podem cumprir plenamente sua nobre missão de promover o saber e a cultura.

Estas ações, da CBDA3/FEBAB, estão contribuindo com a meta 16.10 do ODS 16, “Assegurar o acesso público à informação e proteger as liberdades fundamentais em conformidade com a legislação nacional e os acordos internacionais”.

O donwload do guia pode ser feito no repositório da Federação neste link http://repositorio.febab.org.br/items/show/6214

Today’s national borders, certainly, pose no obstacle to the development of a single cultural and information space where universal human values are preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

Libraries in border territories have been known for their great contribution to strengthening inter-State socio-cultural ties, preserving the local cultural heritage and fostering the exchange of contemporary cultural achievements. These libraries instill greater respect for the national history in the younger generation. They encourage local people to take part in international cultural projects, which promote tolerance towards other cultures and ways of life and prevent conflict.

Library for Foreign Literature (LFL) in Moscow has been acting as an international activities methodology centre for the libraries in Russia’s regions. LFL has paid great attention to cultural projects involving the CIS countries.

On 18 February, 2022, LFL hosted a meeting entitled “Library Dialogue of the CIS Countries and Border Territories” to exchange professional experience, discuss best practices and work out methods to bolster cooperation between libraries in the border territories.

Over 70 managers and experts from federal and regional libraries in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan participated in the meeting remotely. By inviting Russian libraries which have counterparts in the Nordic and Baltic countries, East Europe and Asia, the hosts have deliberately gone beyond the geographical scope of the Commonwealth of Independent States so that the cross-border cooperation, its practices and opportunities, could be viewed in a broader light.

The main purpose of the meeting was to create a methodology for the development of the international cross-border cooperation for different libraries – from municipal to national ones. That’s why the meeting’s programme was split into two blocks – theoretical and practical. The first block discussed trends in the cross-border cooperation over the past 20 years. The participants listened to presentations by experts from Russia’s leading methodology centres: LFL, Russian State Library, Library Assembly of Eurasia and Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. The second block highlighted best practices of the cross-border cooperation in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

The programme was structured as a dialogue between librarians from the CIS countries: they discussed joint projects and analysed their impact on various aspects of the social life in the cross-border communities.

Prior to the meeting, LFL prepared and sent out to the participants a special presentation template to structure the presented factual information:

1. The title of the project realized by the library in the framework of the cross-border cooperation.
2. The project’s goals.
3. The project’s description.
4. Partners
5. The results reached in 2020 – 2021.

The presentation’s time limit was 5 min.

This timing mode helped to build a dynamic and well-structured pattern to summarize the practices and identify trends in the cross-border cooperation, taking into account:

• the region’s history and geography;
• the project’s political, economic and social background;
• social and ethnic compositions of the local population, their cultural and educational needs that can be met by the project.

The Library Dialogue meeting allowed its participants to see how the cross-border and, in a broader sense, international cooperation can help strengthen socio-cultural ties. It showed how libraries in the border territories could share their information potential and achieve significant progress in providing library and information services to their ethnic minorities. It also demonstrated opportunities for revitalizing international professional exchange and introducing innovations in the library field.

To summarize the results of the Library Dialogue meeting a methodology document is being prepared to be used as guidelines for developing and implementing international library projects in the cross-border territories.

​Daria Beliakova,

Head, Center for Library Science and Professional Interaction, M. I. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia,

SC Member of the CPDWL IFLA

Maria Bereslavskaya, Leading Specialist,

Center for Library Science and Professional Interaction, M. I. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia

My work as a coordinator in the Tampere City Library’s regional development task includes duties like supporting the professional competence of library staff and promoting the cooperation between the libraries in our region in Pirkanmaa and Central Finland.

Jarkko Rikkilä, coordinator, Tampere City Library – Regional Development Task

I think that in achieving these goals we could benefit a lot from the change of ideas with the educational organizations that provide training of library and information science (LIS). There can be various ways to get a job from the library. In Finland the field of librarianship can be studied for example at a university or the university of applied sciences. We’ve been working on the relations actively towards library educators for a couple of years now to strengthen this.

The collaboration between the working life and training organizations is crucial when we think about our profession in the future. In our case, we have regular meetings with the Tampere University to discuss themes like up-to-date thesis subjects, library trainees and qualification matters. We’ve also contributed to round table sessions in the creation of new library programmes in the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences. Thirdly we’ve been sharing findings of the library customer service and of our concept called The driver’s licence to library customer service with the Turku University of Applied Sciences.

Within this framework I contacted Associate Professor Tuomas Harviainen (Tampere University), Lecturer Satu Salmela (Seinäjoki University of Applies Sciences) and Senior Lecturer Kati Haanpää (Turku University of Applied Sciences) to find out, what kind of skills are needed in the future and how the education should answer the challenges libraries face in the coming years.

Soft skills and qualifications

The very useful and accurate 2021 IFLA Trend Report Update points out multiple trends that are linked to librarian skills in the future. The trend #4 is The rise of soft skills and trend #17 Qualifications matter. Firstly I asked Tuomas, Satu and Kati how do they agree with these and how these two trends are taken in to account in the educational programmes in the Finnish library education?

Tuomas Harviainen: “The issues are highly relevant, and we’ve included several elements of this in the curriculum. As the report notes, useful soft skills may be tied to eg., several types of cultural knowledge, which is why a connection exists to for example information literacies. And as pointed out in #17, these are in turns parts of the expertise that form the wider whole librarianship nowadays. We try our best to guide our students to gather such expertise from also other disciplines during their studies.”

Satu Salmela: “Soft skills are sort of expertise in our field and to our students, perhaps easier to embrace than within some other fields. Without soft skills, I think it is difficult to reach your full potential in the working life. In our education these matters can partly be found in our general competencies and therefore they are taken into account throughout the whole curriculum. Teaching methods, pedagogical approaches and learning tasks of course also contribute. It’s clear that Qualifications matter, but we also try to teach the importance of multiprofessional co-operation and expose our students to it during their studies. Exactly because of the complexity and rapid changes, we need more co-operation and understanding of what our own core expertise is and when we should find strong alliances and benefit from other fields.”

Kati Haanpää: “Soft skills and competencies matter now and in the future. The ongoing pandemic with its restrictions forced libraries to adjust their operations and the services moved online. Digital skills, flexibility and problem-solving skills playing a very important role making transformation possible. Innovation pedagogy is in the core of our teaching methods. Competencies consist of five areas: creativity, critical thinking, initiative, teamwork and networking. Students learn these skills with teamwork and co-operation with the working life.”

Collaboration of LIS educators and professionals

One of the fundamental questions of this article is, how the collaboration with the public library sector and library educators should practically happen? What kind of co-operation would be needed? What would be the best practices of this collaboration from the perspective of Tuomas, Satu and Kati as LIS educators?

Tuomas Harviainen: “Co-operation with libraries is crucial for knowing how to best prepare our students for the needs of the working life, and while we cannot completely integrate all wishes (because our students graduate to many professions, some of which have very different needs), many of our key developments are conducted in dialogue with major employers such as public and academic libraries. Making coordination and cooperation meetings a regular part of our work here has in my opinion been a very wise move.”

Satu Salmela: I’m very proud of our good connections with the library community. Not just public libraries but other library sectors, other educational institutions and associations. Especially for us the continuous dialogue is the requirement to succeed in our basic task. Co-operation has found some settled forms during years but new ideas are also explored. Our curriculum is one way to ensure the co-op as studies include for e.g. long practical training period, work life based thesis, real life project work topics as well as case materials for courses and visiting guest lecturers. In the end it’s the wide networks that strive to continuous and diverse dialogue – but also organizing enough time for this is needed.

Kati Haanpää: “Cooperation is important as it gives education a perspective on where the field is progressing and what kind of expertise is needed. Libraries develop services with students in project collaboration and theses. Libraries provide internships, which means they get trainees interested and qualified experts in the future. We would like the libraries talk more about their own activities and vice versa. Students participate in organizing real events in libraries. Now that libraries provide a lot of training in the field – could they also be open to our LIS students?”

Three qualities of the future library professional

Because we all love to make scenarios for the future (don’t we?) I discussed the quality issues of the future librarian with our LIS educators. If Tuomas, Satu and Kati would have the chance to decide, what three features or qualities the future library professional would have – what would those be? What are these three important elements of professional development?

Tuomas Harviainen: “Future librarians should preserve many of the skills and qualities that they currently have, such as a customer-oriented approach, a thorough understanding of findability, and expertise in recommendations. A field of expertise I see growing in importance in addition to them is data management, which in this age of disputed privacy is of increasing importance to also public libraries and not just academic and research librarians.”

Satu Salmela: “I would say that continuous learning is very important. Because change is inevitable, curiosity to forecast important changes for our field and adaptiveness to learn new support learning. In addition the librarian needs interpersonal skills, such as ability to both listen, understand and communicate, take people and stakeholders into account. You could say the previous, soft skills. Thirdly the librarian needs innovativeness. You should know our history and goals but at the same time have the ability for problem solving and creating new solutions in this context.”

Kati Haanpää: “The three qualities could be pointed out as the following. First, the future librarian should have the flexibility in the multiple changes working life requires. Secondly the interaction and collaboration skills are important, for example in the library customer service. Thirdly the future professionals need pedagogical skills, that they can use and develop when interacting with the customers and colleagues.”

Conclusion – Future Looks Good!

Tuomas’, Satu’s and Kati’s answers draw a clear picture that the library educators in Finland follow the library trends and issues very closely. It’s great to see that especially the rise of soft skills is noted in the curriculums of LIS education. Qualification matters are a fact, but also multiprofessionalism and the wider scope of librarianship is taken into account. It seems that co-operation with the libraries is seen as highly recommended thing – which gives the educational organizations information of the working life, real life topics and certain kind of practical credibility in their work. I think this goes both ways – the libraries benefit of the dialogue later on when the new professionals are seeking job opportunities.

Finally a list of the qualities the future-looking-good librarian should have! Here’s a set of the important skills the librarian should have in his/her toolkit.

1. Continuous learning
2. Customer-oriented approach
3. Data management expertise
4. Expertise in recommendations
5. Flexibility in the multiple changes
6. Innovativeness
7. Interaction and collaboration skills
8. Interpersonal skills
9. Pedagogical skills
10. Understanding of findability