Thursday, April 14, 2011

Library Fair in Kyiv


My counterpart at the library, Nadjie Yagya, and I were invited by the Peace Corps to take part in a presentation about Peace Corps Volunteers working with libraries at the first annual Bibliomist Library Fair in Kyiv on Monday, April 11th. We eagerly accepted and arrived early Monday morning accompanied by another Crimean Peace Corps Volunteer, Cheryl Pratt, from the Sovetskiy rayon library and her counterpart, Lena Ivanchenko.

We gather with other Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts.

The Library Innovations and E-Governance Fair attracted over 500 participants. Forty libraries with Bibliomist projects had booths at the fair, including the Orlova Children’s Library in Simferopol where I work one day a week. Besides the information booths at the fair, there were a number of concurrent workshops. Nadjie and I attended a workshop on grant opportunities for libraries, and even though I understood little because it was conducted in Ukrainian, I was pleased to see Nadjie busy scribbling notes about possibilities for grants.
In our workshop, four Volunteers and their counterparts talked about our work together in our libraries and the possibilities for library cooperation with Peace Corps Volunteers. It was well attended by very interested librarians, and afterwards many talked with the Peace Corps office representative about how to apply to have a Volunteer at their library.

Nadjie and I describing the work we do together at the Gasprinskiy Library.


After returning to Simferopol, Nadjie tells library colleagues about the Bibliomist Fair.

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