Innovative intersectoral partnerships best practices of the Belgrade City Library

Marjan Marinkovic Assistant Director

Belgrade City Library marjan@bgb.rs

The Belgrade City Library

is the largest lending library in Serbia. It is a parent library for a network of 13 municipal libraries and their branches.

Its holdings consist of almost 2.000.000 items, kept in 70 facilities with a total area of 13.000 square meters. BCL has more than 150,000 users.

The Library has 240 employees.

The Belgrade City Library network

The Library has 70 facilities: 1 central building with 4 dislocated facilities, 13 municipal libraries with 50 branch libraries, and 2

separate children's departments.

The Belgrade City Library - Central building

Since October 1986, the Belgrade City Library has been located at 56 Knez Mihailova Street, in the former building of the hotel Srpska kruna. The hotel was constructed around 1867 and at that time was the most modern, elegant and best equipped hotel in Belgrade.

The Gallery

Press conference hall

Reading room

Periodical department

BCL - Central building

Municipal library Petar Kočić – one of the most beautiful libraries in the

BCL network

BCL - Central building

The Roman Hall - one of the most popular cultural sites in town

The Roman Hall is a unique space with an

archaeological site in situ and a collection of stone fragments comprising sculptures, altars, Roman tombstones (stellas) and other stone art originating from the territory of Singidunum and the Danube-region of the province of Upper Mesia, created in the period between the 2nd and 4th century. The antique ambiance of the Roman Hall is a representative gathering point, where our citizens may attend numerous cultural programs that take place every day.

The idea of duality in the Mexican literature and rituals

Shakespeare behind the mirror

Monodrama

Promotion of Kenneth White’s

book House of Tides

String Quartet Concert

BCL partnerships The BCL has built partnership with various institutions and

organizations: • City’s and municipality’s governments, • libraries in Serbia and abroad, • library associations, • educational and cultural institutions, • publishers, • foreign cultural centers and embassies located in Belgrade, • media houses, • city’s public companies, • student associations, • civil society organizations, • faculties, research institutes…

Intersectoral partnerships best practices of the BCL

We will speak about good practices in establishing intersectoral partnerships by referring to three successful projects that the BCL have implemented:

1) Technoteka 2) Strengthening Citizens’ Financial Literacy 3) Cherish the Serbian Language

Technoteka

With support from the Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information, BCL established a so called Technoteka.

Serbian word for library is ‘’biblioteka’’, which comes from ancient Greek (biblion – book and theke – shelf). Thus, ‘’technoteka’’ (techno+teka) literally means a shelf with technological devices.

Technoteka Technoteka is a creative space at the Children department „Neven” intended for children and youth and designed according to the latest library concept – makerspace. It is a specially designed space within the Library, equipped with various digital devices and educative tools, in which users acquire new skills and knowledge and create various projects through joint work and play and the use of modern technology.

Technoteka

Technoteka is equipped like similar spaces at the most developed world libraries. The users have on their disposal 3D printer, 3D scanner, 3D pencil, Lego Education robots WeDo2 and EV3, Lego story starter, virtual reality glasses Samsung Gear VR, computers, tablets...

Technoteka

So far, we have implemented a series of workshops for primary and secondary school children and the evaluation showed that children and young people who attended these workshops are thrilled with this space.

Technoteka Since we do not have librarians with expertize to work at the Technoteka (who know to work with Lego robots and are experts in 3D modelling), we secured human resources in two ways:

• by training our librarians, • by attracting volunteers through partnerships that we

established.

Technoteka The librarians attended two trainings:

1. For working with WeDo2 and EV3 Lego robots This training has been implemented through our partnership with the EduLab (association of citizens that deal with education of school children and educators in using Lego Edu didactic devices; this organization organized the First Lego League for Serbia). EduLab president held for several days a training for librarians and created a curriculum for workshop on this topic.

Technoteka

2. For using a 3D printer This training has been implemented in partnership with a company Voxellab that we bought this equipment from. They provided free training for working with 3D printer and 3D scanner for librarians.

Technoteka We attracted volunteers to run workshops on 3D modelling and printing through cooperation with the Faculty of Applied Arts – Department of Industrial Design. Two students run this workshops on a voluntary basis.

We found volunteers to run workshops on Lego Mindstorms EV3 through partnership with the EduLab. Their participants from the First Lego League run these workshops.

Partnership with the EduLab

Benefits for the BCL: - Training for librarians - Created curriculums for workshops - Attracted volunteers to run these workshops Benefits for the EduLab: - Free space for workshops, presentations and competitions - Promotion of the organization - Promotion of Lego robots among Serbian libraries and schools

Partnership with the Faculty of Applied Arts – Department of Industrial Design Benefit for the BCL: - Secured human resources to run workshops for 3D modelling and printing Benefits for the Department: - Enabled the use of 3D printers for student training. - Enabled free printing of student works.

Technoteka benefit of the partnership

Technoteka benefit of the partnership

Partnership with Voxellab Benefits for the BCL: - Free trainings for working with 3D printer, 3D pencil and 3D scanner - Technical support

Benefit for Voxellab: - Promotion of their products among Serbian libraries and schools

Cooperation with volunteers Benefit for the BCL: - Secured human resources for running the workshops Benefits for the volunteers: - Free library membership - Certificate on volunteering that can be used in a CV - Free use of all digital tools at the Tehnoteka - Free printing on 3D printer

Strengthening Citizens’ Financial Literacy Project

The project has been realized since October 2009, in partnership with the USAID. It consisted of two segments:

• training for librarians to hold financial literacy workshops and • development of a website for citizens’ financial education.

The main project goal was to improve financial literacy of Serbian citizens.

Financial Literacy Project workshops

The primary target group of the first project segment, that is the workshops, were high school students. So, fifteen librarians from BCL network passed a two-day training in the basics of financial literacy and methodology for working with high school students. The training was led by USAID’s financial experts.

Photos from the Training

Financial Literacy Project workshops

The goal of these student workshops was to introduce basic financial concepts – common financial products (deposits, loans, shares, insurance...), the importance of saving, risk and return in investment, the right to receive accurate information while investing, et cetera.

Education also involves two specially designed budget

planning exercises. In the end of the workshop, educational brochures are

distributed to students.

Around 190 workshops were held, for some 3,800 students (20 students per workshop, on average).

The workshops attracted high interest among students, who

found them unique and very useful.

Financial Literacy Project workshops

Financial Literacy Project website www.novcici.rs

The family Novčići (Coins) takes the visitor on a tour through a world of financial services and products. The main structure of the website follows age categories – there are special sections for teenagers, students, the employed youth, family and pensioners. Each section contains different menus for the specific age group.

On the website there are also different types of calculators – time deposit calculator, deposit calculator, loan instalment calculator, credit card calculator… These calculators are very useful tools that provide concrete assistance in different financial calculations.

Also, the visitor can register and get additional online tools for creation and management of his/her own family budget.

Financial Literacy Project website www.novcici.rs

The project (website and workshops) left a strong impression and is still making some impact in the community. Website has become very popular, creating interest not only of citizens throughout Serbia and region, but also of many stakeholders (Association of Serbian Banks, consumers associations, and other libraries in Serbia).

Numerous calls to national and international conferences show the value of the project. The project was presented on several international conferences: among others on ALA Annual Conference and IFLA Annual Conference.

Two large public libraries joined the project and expanded the realization of financial literacy workshops on the territory of Novi Sad and Niš.

BCL won EIFL-PLIP innovation award 2012 (Economic wellbeing) for website Novčići.

Financial Literacy Project impact

Benefits for the BCL: - Launched new service – financial literacy for the citizens - Had a free training for its staff - Received a curriculum for workshops on financial literacy - Got a free website

Benefits for the USAID: - It reached its target group - Suceeded in building sustainable capacities for providing financial literacy to Serbian citizens

Financial Literacy Project benefit of the partnership

Cherish the Serbian Language

The project dedicated to cherish and promote the culture of speech and writing through large-scale campaign and organized lectures and workshops around the Serbia.

The initial project partners have been the BCL, Faculty of Philology, Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade and local TV “Studio B“.

The project now expanded from a local to national level, and hence the current partners are also Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education and Serbian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cherish the Serbian Language Over the last twenty years, as the result of the 1990s wars that Serbia went through, the general cultural level has dropped significantly, and along with it the culture of speech and writing, both with publishers and the media, educational and public institutions. Consequently, the culture of speech and writing of the entire society has decreased.

Cherish the Serbian Language Since no one had seriously addressed this issue, we launched the initiative to cherish and promote the culture of speech and writing in March 2015 and it is still ongoing. It includes:

- Large-scale campaigns through educative posters, TV videos and a large exhibition;

- A series of organized lectures for local government officials and journalists;

- Workshops for primary school children.

Cherish the Serbian Language The campaign was designed by the Department for Cultural Programs of the BCL. The main means of the campaign’s implementation are educative posters that have become its trademark. The campaign gathered 30 prominent public figures – the most famous Serbian actors, musicians, sportsmen and writers. Each one of them was photographed with one or more books related to culture of speech and writing (the Serbian Language Dictionary, the Orthography, the Serbian Grammar, etc.). In every poster, next to the photograph of a famous person, there is one common language error – a solecism or misspelling, at first written incorrectly and afterwards correctly.

Cherish the Serbian Language The common language errors had been chosen by a team of professors and research associates from the Faculty of Philology and the Serbian Language Institute. They had been designed to be appealing and related to the person in the poster, i.e. to their profession.

Cherish the Serbian Language Apart from 30 different posters, 18 educative videos were filmed, with famous persons and actors participating in them. The videos were directed by a prominent theatre director and produced by the Cultural Institution „Vuk“.

In addition, besides 30 well-known figures, 50 respectable people from Belgrade were photographed (with the mentioned books), the Mayor among them. A large exhibition with these photographs and posters was set up and it is visiting towns around Serbia at the moment.

Cherish the Serbian Language A special curiosity is that all the participants in the initiative are volunteers – the prominent public figures, the professors and the research associates, the photographer, the poster designer, the director and the actors and actresses in the videos, the videos producer, the media, the librarians, etc.

Cherish the Serbian Language

The posters have been printed in 10,000 copies. Sets of the posters have been distributed to primary and secondary schools in many Serbian cities, to libraries, the community health centers, police stations and other public institutions, where large numbers of people usually gather. The posters can be downloaded from the BCL website, printed or shared on social networks.

By numerous billboards around the Belgrade and by “branding” the interior of the city public transport the whole city has been “branded”.

The videos are broadcasted on two televisions and they have become viral on social networks.

Cherish the Serbian Language The campaign has become extremely popular overnight. Many organizations and media have joined and numerous activities have been implemented in cooperation with them:

- The national television has started broadcasting the videos free of charge and is preparing a special program;

- The main city television (TV Studio B) broadcasts the videos and provides media coverage for all activities within the campaign;

- The most influential daily newspaper in the country has introduced a column concerning the topic;

- The city’s public companies have financially supported the printing of the posters and distributed them in their premises (public transport, all city car parks and public garages, etc...);

- Telekom Serbia, the leading Serbia’s mobile operator, has financed the large exhibition of the photographs and poster. The exhibition has so far been hosted at the International Belgrade Book Fair as well as in 7 cities across Serbia

- Two prominent publishing houses presented TV viewers with 300 books on the culture of speech and writing on the occasions of the campaign promotion on TV.

- ...

Cherish the Serbian Language

The main result of the Project is that it has raised the awareness of the importance of proper writing and speaking with citizens, institutions and the media at the city level, as well as at the whole state level.

The Project has even been supported by the Hollywood star Monica Bellucci.

Cherish the Serbian Language benefit of the partnership

Partnership with the Secretariat for Culture Benefits for the BCL: - Logistical support for the entire action - Securing free ads in public transport, billboards... - Involving a number of actors in this action – Belgrade schools, local media, public companies, Cultural Institution „Vuk“ ... - Promotion the action on the top City level - Help in securing funds for printing posters and making video spots

Benefits for the Secretariat: - Free campaign design - Free poster design - Political incentives: due to the positive image of the library this action attracted a number of celebrities that otherwise would not take part in an action promoted by the City’s politicians

Partnership with the Faculty of Philology Benefits for the BCL: - Securing language experts - Increasing the reputation/seriousness of the action

Benefits for the Faculty: - Advertisement for the Faculty - Increasing the Faculty’s reputation

Partnership with the TV stations Benefit for the BCL: - Nation-wide promotion of the action

Benefits for the stations: - Increasing the reputation of the TV stations - Help in producing educative programs

Marjan Marinković Assistant Director

Belgrade City Library

phone. +381 11 20 24 023 e-mail: marjan@bgb.rs