Category Archives: General

Football Makes Reading Fun

By Guest Blogger,
Eric Boekesteijn

Score a book! is a reading project for primary school pupils aged 8-10. Encouraged by players from Dutch professional teams, the children read as many books as they can during a period. A formula that catches on.

‘Jolanda, come see this!’ It is Saturday morning and when entering the Library Veendam I am called over by Henk, or as I know him better: Mr. Henk. Henk works at a primary school nearby. He buzzes with energy and is even livelier than a class of thirty children. Today, as ever, he is beaming from ear to ear. I walk over to him and look in the direction he is pointing. At the reception desk I see my colleague Henny. Next to her is a boy with his father. ‘This is Kevin’, Henk tells me enthusiastically, ‘a pupil of mine. Poor reader. He joined the library today. Thanks to Score a Book! How cool is that?’

This week, we kicked-off Score a Book! again. Mr. Henk’s class has been participating since the beginning in 2012. A few days earlier, Henk had already sent me some pictures through WhatsApp. These pictures showed his pupils ‘scoring’ books. The children were lying down all over the classroom floor. Yes, lying down because with Mr. Henk you are allowed to read in the strangest places.

An hour later I am talking to my colleague Henny, trying to tell her about Mr. Henk and the boy from his class. I am interrupted immediately. ‘Kevin! Yes, he joined the library and picked out some books right away.’ Henny’s eyes light up. ‘I asked him what he liked. ‘Football’ was his answer, but he was not so keen on reading. Do you know what I told him? ‘Ask me if I like reading?’’ Kevin has asked Henny. ‘‘No’, she had said, ‘I don’t like reading the way most people do’’. Kevin and his father were surprised. How can you work in a library then? Anyone who knows Henny, knows about her love for particular books. Like no one else, she knows how to find those children’s books that are just slightly different and therefore very popular with children. “I then selected a few books with Kevin’, Henny continues, ‘Afterwards, I asked his father what he liked.’ ‘I don’t like reading’, Kevin’s father responded. ‘That’s not what I asked’, Henny said ‘I asked you what you liked’. After some hesitation he answered that he liked to cook. ‘Then I also gave them an Italian children’s cookbook. Now they can cook together!’

Thanks to the extraordinary effort made by people like Mr. Henk and my wonderful colleague Henny, as a library, we are able to make children experience the delight of reading. Because, as Mr. Henk wrote to the parents of his pupils: ‘He who reads, conquers the world!’
Score a Book! 2018

You can score anywhere! With this in mind, the Library in association with the Dutch Premier League is carrying out a unique reading project for pupils aged 8-10: Score a Book! In six regions across the Netherlands, from February until April, 11,000 pupils will be reading (‘scoring’) as many books as they can for nine weeks. The children are encouraged through video messages by players from famous soccer clubs such as AZ, FC Groningen, Go Ahead Eagles, Heracles Almelo, NEC, and Willem II. Score a Book! will be expanded to more regions in the Netherlands over the coming years.

Score a Book! doesn’t just happen in the classroom. In 2018, the libraries will also be inviting families to ‘score’ books, newspapers, and magazines at home as well. The whole family can join in. For this, the libraries are organizing many fun (football) activities.

More information: Jolanda Robben, coordinator Score a Book! at Biblionet Groningen.
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.scooreenboek.nl

Are we solving a library problem or not?

An friend told me to read a blog from Susan Brown, Chap Hill Library, North Carolina USA.

The titel was:
Are we solving a library problem ? Or are we helping solve a community problem?

This is so close to my how my work has been the last months .Talking to the police, guardians, social workers and politicians. Sometimes the librarians are very worried about that the adolescens dont visit the libraries .How can we make the library attractive to them.? Now in my case the library has around 30-40 youth coming every day after school because we are a good place in the city. And they dont have anything else to go to. Of course we also have
the homeless and drogs addicted also? And all ordinarie visitors as babies and order people. Thats our
Strenghness in the libraries.
Our library is not built for this large groups of youth so we have to start thinking of how the visitors use our libraries nowadays.

Some other subjects I’m thinking of and discussing with others are:
If we are solving a lot of community problems is this maybe a way for us to show us in the community and for politicians? We are a place who works with helping the community to solving problems.But do we have the right people for this or do we really need people with other education ?

IFLA Public Liibraries Section are going to have a
meeting soon and I really would like to dicuss this
Issues with my collegues in the Section.

The Public Libray of the year award launched on 2018, March 1st !

 Awarded by the IFLA and the IT company Systematic which sponsors it,  this award is presented to the best new public library anywhere in the world in terms of focus on community needs, local culture and digital development.

The award goes to a public library that is either newly built or set up in premises that have not previously been used for libraries. To be considered for the award, the library must have been completed in the period from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017.

The IFLA Public Libraries Section has been part of this award form the very beginning in 2014 in cooperation with the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces (Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen).

The previous winners have been

Public Library of the Year 2016: Dokk1, Denmark
Public Library of the Year 2015: Kista Public Library, Sweden
Public Library of the Year 2014: Craigieburn Library, Australia 

After a short break, the award is back on the libray field, still sponsored by Systematic.

Jan Richards, chair of the IFLA-PLsection:

“The IFLA Public Libraries Section is delighted to be part of this award, which celebrate excellence in library planning and design. Public libraries are an essential part of a strong community, and being able to acknowledge and share best practice examples helps us ensure that we create great environments for our citizens,”

The award is accompanied by a prize of USD 5,000 that goes directly to the winning library, which will be selected by an international professional jury on the basis of an overall assessment of the libraries entered for consideration.

The winner of the “Public Library of the Year” award for 2018 will be announced at the end of August during the 2018 IFLA Annual Meeting, which will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Applications for consideration for the 2018 Public Library of the year award will be open from March 1st to May 15th.

https://systematic.com/library-learning/awards/public-library-of-the-year/

Bookstart in Sweden – Bokstart

Last week I have been to some nice, inspirng and interesting meetings. On meeting  was about literacy in Sweden comparing to the Netherlandes. Adriaan  Langendok from IFLA s Section for Literacy and Reading talked about Bookstart works in the Netherlandes.To representatives from the Swedish Art Council spoke about the new possibilities to work with literacy for children. Now its possibilities to search  for new foundings to begin with Bookstart in Swden.

Bookstart is aimed to children up to three years old and their parents.The goal is to stimulate  the youngest children’s languages development and interest for reading.The strenght of this project are that it will be in  cooperation with Child  Carecenter and preschools and the Libraries.

A few Libraries in Sweden are already trying modell for this work.

www.kulturradet.se

Similary project are going on in UK and Japan and other countries too.

www.booktrust.org.uk

www.bookstart.or.jp

So now we are discussing in my Libraries  what kind of model of Bookstart we will  try to search money for. We really want to cooperate with Children’s Care center.

How many of you has Bookstart in your countries?

Anette Mjöberg

Library Director  Hässleholms bibliotek , Sweden

 

 

Strenghten up the Public Libraries in Sweden with 225 million Swedish crones

Hello

Here in Sweden the government has unexpectedly decided to

make a committment to strenghthen  the Public Libraries for 3 years.

The Swedish CulturalCouncil is commissioned to allocate SEK 225

million.This is still great news among Public libraries that offer great

opportunities for strenghthen and developing our libraries.

I,m a Library Director in Hässleholms municipality and we have not yet decide what we want to do and what to write in our application.But I,m thinking about developed on more branch library to a library with self- service and open 77 hours  every week.We just have one library

with this service. We will se but I,m sure that many new good library

activities will come. It will be exting to follow this development in our Public Libraries in Sweden During the next  3 years.

Anette Mjöberg , Hässleholms Public Library, Sweden

 

 

The campaign for the new City Library building in Zagreb

By Ismena Meic

The City of Zagreb strategic plan for 2020 finally includes a new City Library building. The Zagreb City Libraries network expert team was assembled to elaborate on the existing project idea “New City Library in Zagreb” and assist in preparation for public urban planning and building tender. Expert team has prepared a document “New City Library in Zagreb: Library Programme” based on the statistics, elaboration of the new and functional work integration in the central library for The Zagreb City Libraries network and reflections on the functional space organization for providing quality service to the population of Zagreb. Main purpose of the Library Programme is to point out that the new green City Library building needs to be green and sustainable, built on an adequate location, but also ensure a quality study for public urban planning and building tender.

One of solutions for permanent location of the City Library is Paromlin. Paromlin is on the map and in the memory of the city as one of the most important monuments of industrial architecture in Zagreb. Transforming Paromlin into the new City Library will contribute to efforts to transform neglected industrial architecture into public spaces or to transform a neglected area in the city centre into a living public space, with dominantly public contents.

More information: New City Library in Zagreb: Library Programme

Check This Out

By Anette Mjöberg

I work as a Library Director in Hässleholms municipality in Sweden.

Last summer at WLIC in Wroclaw me and my collegue Lo Claesson got the opportunity to speak in one of the sessions :
Check me out! Human libraries and unique circulating collections, from art to technology petting zoos (with Acquisition and Collection Development and Public Libraries)

 

I choose to talk about the possibility to borrow this things:

-Energy measures in all Libraries in Hässleholms Libraries
– Borrow seeds at Hästveda branch Library at Hästveda branch library in Hässleholms municipality.
– Borrow clothes, tools and the library for meetings in Garaget branchlibrary in Malmö municipality.
– An electric bike at Tyringe branchlibrary in Hässleholms municipality

The library has a cooperation with the energy adviser in our municipality The visitors can borrow it for 3 weeks but has to pay a 20 Euro in security but will get it back if the bicycle is not damage at the return. The amount of electric bikes in Sweden has increased and this a good way of trying to see if you want to buy one.

Hästveda branch Library has a little seed library. You can leave seeds from you garden and you can change seeds and take something new to try. A very nice way without costs to develop you garden and the visitors really like it. After the session a librarian from Borneo came and spoke to me about the seed library.

This is one of the most interesting and charmig thing about IFLA.
The possibility to discuss and listen to and get inspired about
libraries all around the world.An advantage we all must be aware of and of course use to our best.

Now I,m curious about your Libraries. What kind of special things do you have in your Library? Should be fun if YOU can give me some examples just to inspire me and other libraries.