Seminar about children's librarys at the Palace of Youth

Tuesday the 5th at 11.00 the director of the Youth Palace will welcome us all and talk a little bit about the youth palace.
11.15 Katarina Grundsell will talk about the childrens library, the room, the design and the content.
Coffeebreak
13.30 Librarian Lena Thunberg from the library 10-13 about the pedagogical plan for their library in the house of culture in Stockholm.
Lunch
Irakli Garibashvili talks about news about librarys in Georgia.
Three librarians from different parts of Georgia talks about their work and their libraries.
Program in Georgian here: Kartuli programa

A new seminar and workshop in November

There has been a long time with not so much new of this project. But now - the 5th and 6th of November there will be a seminar about the room in the library. It is about designing librarys for children and how children can take place in a library and what activities can be done in a library. A more detailed program will be posted here soon. The seminar and the workshop will be held at the Youth Palace in Tbilisi. The seminar is open but for the workshop you have to apply since it is a limited number of participants. The seminar and the workshop is free of charge.

Field trip to Stockholm in October 2012

In October a group from Tbilisi visited Stockholm and made visits to all sorts of librarys for children and young adults. The participants were Nino Kaiaja from Tbilisi City Council, Lia Maganishvili, director at the Youth Palace, Rodami Tsomaya, assistant to the director, Ketavan Kalandadzem, head librarian at the Youth Palace, Tamar Machavariani, librarian at the Youth Palace, Lili Jeladze, journalist (from the Georgian magazine On education) , Natia Gvianishvili, researcher and interpretor, and Georg Ivanishvili, from the Departement of Sports and Youth.
The purpose of this study trip was to give the librarians working in the Youth Palace and the leadership of the palace inspiration and new ideas that might be fruitful when discussing the plans for a new library. Our aim was to give a broad picture of what a library for children and teenagers could
look like, many different ways of working towards children, parents, teenagers and families. We also wanted to give the group a chance to meet different persons who had designed libraries for children and teenagers, to see different perspectives and ways of approaching such a task.

The interior of the childrens book's bus, a bus with a childrens library, which goes to kindergardens and other daycare centers. Lia Maganishvili listening to interpreter Natia Gvianishvili. 

Librarian Ylva Håkansson shows how to make small children interrested in books at Luma library. Luma library is located in an old lightbulb factory.

Project coordinator Marie makes new friends at Junibacken, a cultural center designed to childrens books and Astrid Lindgren. Below, how can you advertise when you are a library?  Exampel from Uppsala.

A tea break in a hectic program. Librarian Tamar Machavariani and an interresting teapot. 

Below: librarian Anne Dehaim tells about the program for teenagers and young adults.

At Sävja, a mulitcultural suburb of Uppsala, where we met enthusiastic librarian Nino Dawod who talked about how to make the library a community center.

Happy Summer to All Our Friends in Georgia and Sweden!

All of us involved in the childrens library project wish you all a great summer with lots of happy reading. It has been a very exciting 2012 so far and there is more exciting things to come!
In the meantime: check out the medialinks from May from the seminar and the workshops days:
(most of them in Georgian)

TV:

Myvideo.ge

ITV Moambe: on workshops: Irakli och Helena

Agencies and Newspapers:

24saati.ge

bpi.ge

news.boom.ge

psnews.com

If you see anything written or broadcasted about our project, please feel free to email them to me:
helenabergendahl@gmail.com

 

 

 

Visits for the Swedish lecturers

The last day in Tbilisi for the Swedish speakers at the seminar and workshop was a very hot (temperature around 30°C) and intense day, with visitis to three different children's libraries. Librarian Ingrid Källström, children's books writer Eva Susso, professor Lena Kåreland and project manager Marie Oskarsson first visited the school library at School No 1 on Rustaveli, a school with 1.800 pupils. The school librarian showed the library, two big rooms with mostly old books sorted by genre, language and age groups. She told the group that most of the books were donated by a family, since the whole library and all the 23.000 books in it burned down during the civil war. She also gave an idea of the working terms for a librarian in Georgia – her monthly salary is GEL 280, which is approximatly €140, and she works Monday to Friday 09-18.
The group continued to the neighbouring Palace of Youth on Rustaveli, where 7.000 children and young people from all over Tbilsi come every day to take part in cultural activities like dance classes, art school, theatre groups, film project, chess groups. The palace also hosts a library, with an old reading hall and a stock room with high shelves filled with mostly very old books. The passion for books, reading and children was something that quickly started the conversation between the visitors over the language barriers.
And last, the group visited the newly renovated children's department at the Tbilisi City Library. The room was filled with new, brightly coloured furniture, and behind the glass doors in the pink bookshelves you could find only new books, but the manager stated that the biggest problem was to find enough books by Georgian writers.

Swedish librarian Ingrid Källström talked to colleague at Georgian library, despite the language barrier. Librarians can talk "librarian" said Ingrid after the visit.

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…

Workshop 29th of May

The atmosphere in the seminar hall was quite different from the previous two days. This
was the day when the children’s books author Eva Susso and librarian Ingrid Källström
were going to have a workshop for Georgian collegues, and people had come from all
over Georgia to participate.

The 30 Georgian childrens’s books authors and librarians started off by drawing and
writing about a Dream Library. The presentations showed visions far beyond today’s
libraries with examples like a tree house in the library, possibilies for children to play in
the library or a library situated in a parc.

During the day the Georgian participants also got new inspiration for activites that could
involve the whole family in the library, like a game where parents and young children
can write a story together.

It was quite a joyful day, with lot’s of laughter and spontanious applauds , as Eva Susso
and Ingrid Källström showed different ways of working with very young children like
infants and involving the whole family in the library activities.