Serbian librarians on the road 2019
There’s less than one month to IFLA WLIC in Athens this August, which means that Serbian Library Association (SLA) bus trip has to start soon! As it was for WLIC in Wroclaw in 2017, a bus will start its journey from Serbia, pass a couple of countries (Northern Macedonia and Greece) and stop for library visits along the route. We are proud that the number of colleagues who will be in the bus has doubled this year compared to 2017!
With great pleasure we can inform global library community that SLA has got necessary support from IFLA, Association of Greek Librarians, and the Serbian Ministry of culture (not as expected, though) for the new trip of 1000 Kilometers which should provide similar number of ideas through networking, contacts and visits to other libraries. We hope that our members will benefit in many positive ways from this trip and WLIC participation, not to forget the beautiful environment, historical and cultural legacy of Athens.
We have 34 travelers who will share a bus which will connect librarians from institutions based in the following Serbian cities (in alphabetical order): Belgrade (Belgrade City Library, Faculty of Philology, Library “Milutin Bojić”, National Library of Serbia, University Library Belgrade), Čačak (Public Library Čačak), Jagodina (Public Library Jagodina), Kragujevac (University Library Kragujevac), Kraljevo (Public Library Kraljevo), Lazarevac (Public Library Lazarevac), Niš (University Library Niš), Požarevac (Public Library Požarevac), Sombor (Faculty of Pedagogy), Vrnjačka Banja (Public Library Vrnjačka Banja), Vršac (Public Library Vršac). Most of these cities and institutions are not familiar to global community, but it is necessary to congratulate librarians and to these libraries for making possible their participation at IFLA WLIC. Also, we are happy that a well-balanced mixture of national, university, public and faculty libraries are represented. We hope that international community will also benefit from this trip and conntacts to be made.
SLA has negotiated the visit to Veria Central Public Library (https://www.libver.gr/) along the route, thanks to support from the Association of Greek Librarians and colleagues from Veria. This splendid library among other things was a recipient of Access to Learning Award 2010, so it is expected that visiting it will benefit our members. We hope that maybe one more visit outside Athens will be possible, regarding the route and time schedule of course.
IFLA WLIC in Wroclaw was the Congress with most representatives from Serbia, until this year. Athens will surpass it! In both cases the SLA’s initiative “1000 Kilometers to 1000 Ideas” was/is the biggest contributor to this success. We are proud that our idea got support both nationally and internationally, so thanks to all colleagues and institutions for their support!
News from this trip will be published on the webpage https://bds.rs/2019/07/serbian-librarians-on-the-road-2019/, as well as on the SLA’s Facebook page. There you will find a poster of the action, so please share it.
