Monthly Archives: August 2017

More to a library than ‘just books’ – Conference Report

PLS Member, Lo Claesson was one of the presenters at Check me out a one hour session at the WLIC 2017  developed by the Public Libraries Section together with Metropolitan Libraries and Acquisition and Collection Development. Here’s Lo’s report:

Lo and Anette talk about projects in Sweden

The session had four speakers from PLS : Jan Richards, incoming chair, who gave her top ten from a list of 113 things you could check art from the library, that wasn’t books.

Lo Claesson and Anette Mjöberg, new secretary, who presented some things you can  borrow at the library from a human right’s and environmental perspective.

Marian Morgan-Bindon, outgoing chair, showed different kinds of aids for children with special needs that parents could borrow from one library in Australia.

All presentations, not just ours from PLS, seemed to be appreciated as there were many questions. Especially about the electric bikes Hässleholm Public Library lent.

Conference Report: ‘Public Libraries as Place Makers in Today’s Cities’

PLS member Joe Siegrist  attended MetLib’s  ‘Public Libraries as Place Makers in Today’s Cities’. The session was one of the last on the WLIC 2017 program but as Joe wrote ‘leaving the best until last’.

Steve Dickson explained how he come to a building as a creator and how a library is become a place to meet – the third place.

 

Sujin Huggins than showed how the needs of persons with autism can be served by considering space, service, programs and advocacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saara Ihamäki from Helsinki concluded her experience to involve the people the beginning of building a library: “it is hard to hands over the power!”

 

Paulina Milewska learn more about what people really from libraries want because of the experience of mystery visitors in libraries.

 

In Philadelphia Joel Nichols and Christine Caputo designed an early Childhood library playspace and the climbing wall is now a real attraction.

 

In Copenhagen the library is everywhere – not only inside of the building.

 

All the examples showed libraries play an important part in the daily life and make live a little bit better!

 

Report from Wroclaw – Environmental Sustainability

Members of the Public Libraries Standing Committee are actively participating in the WLIC program in Wroclaw. Lo Claesson reports:

I was invited as a speaker at the session Libraries’ Commitment to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – Environmental Sustainability and Libraries SIG. It was an offsite meeting at the Center for Scientific and Technical Information in Wroclaw.

My  presentation was about The Green Corner at Vaggeryd Public Library. I gave a background to why we started it and also some examples of activities we do in connection to the information on sustainable development.

Our Green Corner is connected to the municipality’s environmental strategy and we partner with different actors in the municipality, for example schools, the environmental department and the recycling plant. We make exhibitions, have lectures and every year we take part in Earth Hour.We try to integrate the work with the Green Corner in most library work and I tried to show you can do this at a very low cost.

About 50 people attended and I got some interesting questions.