Ji Yun Jeong and Seo Hyon Kwon with the National Library for Children and Young Adults in the Republic of Korea donned their yellow vests to promote the library’s Read Me a Book program. Children at the library are encouraged to choose a book and take it to a volunteer in a yellow vest who will read it to them. “It’s a win-win situation. Teenagers get to read a book, and children get read to,” Jeong said.
Mikkel Hellden-Hegeland and Thomas Thomson, both with Copenhagen Public Libraries, talked about the system’s program to increase usership. “Forty percent of the population is not using libraries,” Hellden-Hegeland said. “We need more users.” Strategies they are trying include increasing self-service at libraries so that staff can be moved to more targeted positions.
Alison Kinengyere, a library and information scientist at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, explained the university’s project to digitize deteriorating records. The medical notes they are preserving are part of the Sir Albert Cook Archives and are handwritten, some dating back to the late 1800s. The project is ongoing, but Kinengyere hopes the archives will be accessible online by November.
Luz Márquez de la Plata Cortés, director of the Biblioteca Escolar Futuro at the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile, heads a program that brings books to underserved children across the nation. The school libraries at each university campus open their doors to low-income children and have special collections to encourage them to read. They also work with a women’s prison. “It brings them freedom,” she said.
Louise Eltved Krogsgård with the Brønderslev Library and Brian Stephenson with the Vesthimmerland Public Libraries, both in Denmark, are working to identify ways libraries in rural areas can help with social problems. “We are reusing resources that were already there in new ways,” Eltved Krogsgård said. The programs are aimed at low-income, elderly, and refugee populations. One successful program has been a café for elderly men, many of whom are retired farmers who did not have a chance to make connections through an office or more social workplace.
Kayo Denda from Rutgers University in New Jersey wants to bring cartonera books to a global audience. The books, which started in Argentina as a response to an economic crisis, are handmade from salvaged materials. Denda sees them as a way to promote communication through a hands-on activity. “It’s a different modality of communication,” she said. The Cartonera standing committee is working on a website as well as seeking collaborators.
Ender Bilar, director of the Urban Memory Museum of Edirne, Turkey, presented a poster session on this new library and museum of local history and culture.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Professor Kate Williams and her student Noah Samuel conducted statistical research on Little Free Libraries and their users nationwide.
