Voices from the workshop

Salome Dzidziguri, student at the Information Management Program, Lela Tsutskiridze, children’s books author and Nino Chekurishvili, librarian at Library No 33, Tbilisi:

Lela: This is exciting, I have heard so much about Swedish children’s litterature, and so far this has meet all my expecations. There are so many impressions and new ideas.

Salome: I wanted to come out of professional reasons – I am going to work in libraries in the future, so I want to know what they do in other countries. I also have a personal interest, since I have childrens myself and am very interested in reading. I have had so
much inspiration these days, so now I am going home to practice some of the ideas on
my own children!

Nino: All librarians all over the world are kind people, and feel strongly for their work
and do it with joy. These days have confirmed my gut feeling that I am on the right track.
Since I don’t have the opportunity to travel, and only can see what is done in other parts
of the world in internet, a workshop like this is very useful, and it made me think ”yes,
Nino, you think the right way!”.

Nona Bendeliani, head of the Children’s Libary in Kutaisi:

– A day like this is very important, it’s something completely new. It’s very stimulating to do new and exciting things. As from today, I can always relate to both the seminars and this workshop, to how things are done in Sweden, when I talk to the authorities about
what needs to be done. This will help me to persuade the authorities to spend more on the children’s libraries, I haven’t had the arguments before. Now I can say, this has been done before, in other countries – and it worked! I was only supposed to stay for the seminars, but I insisted that I’d get into the workshop as well and stayed in Tbilisi for one more day.

Naira Verulidze, librarian at the Cultural Centre of Kobuleti:

Why did you want to participate in the workshop?

– I wanted to learn more about what’s new in in our occupation, and new ideas to use in our library. We are doing quite a lot of new things today, like activities for families or games for children. We don’t usually do these kind of things.
It’s all new to us. It was really great to do the Dream Library Activity, but we still have to think to much about the money to actually make the dreams come true. But on the other hand, the writing game we tried doesn’t cost anything…