Vernadsky National Scientific Library, Acquisitions Department

On Friday June 27th, I gave my last presentation at Vernadsky National Scientific Library.

During my Fulbright grant period, I was lucky enough to be invited on a regular basis to present to the acquisitions department. These lectures mostly centered on new library technologies, but also included general lectures on library trends.

During this last visit, I spoke about Web 2.0. Over the last 10 months, we have gotten to know each other and I was sad to say good bye. Of course I will not miss the commute out to Vernadsky (see picture), but hopefully the city of Kyiv will soon doing something about the construction mess they have created at Moscow Square.

National Parliamentary Library, Rare Book Digitization

On Thursday June 26th, I visited the National Parliamentary Library building in Podil /Podol (lower city), not to be confused with the main building which is located on European Square. With 7 floors, primarily this building is used for storage however there is also a small reading room. The building next door is under construction and will be the location of a new reading room.

For a while now I had been looking for a chance to meet with staff and tour after reading about their project digitizing rare books. Also I have been in contact on several occasions with Deputy Director Olga Barkova. We have met several times at seminars and I have been impressed with her presentations. Olga has been involved with other digitization efforts including an early project which took place at Vernadsky National Scientific Library.

We toured the rare books division, and took a look at some gems in the stacks area including historic Ukrainian language newspapers. During the 50 years of the library's existence, it has collected a large collection of early prints, rare and valuable books. Some high demand materials are quite fragile (crumbling acidic paper) and so handling is a very urgent concern. Staff showed me the one book scanner that they are using to digitize rare books. As of now, patrons can view a small selection of digitized books inside of the Parliamentary Library and hopefully this fall they will be accessible online.
The Parliamentary Library has rich collections, enthusiastic and knowledge staff, but unfortunately at this time is lacking funding for digitization on a larger scale. From what I understand this library receives funding (meager funding) for the Ministry of Culture.
A special thanks to Olga, Oksana and Lena (Баркова Ольга Валентинівна, Шолох Оксана Миколаївна, Лазарєва Олена Володимирівна)!

Міська спеціалізована молодіжна бібліотека «Молода гвардія»

Riding the Kiev metro I have noticed advertisements for the city's children’s public library, «Молода гвардія». It has been my observation that this type of promotion is unusual for Ukrainian libraries and to my thinking it is progressive for a Ukrainian library. I was quite pleased when the director of this library introduced herself to me after I spoke at the conference in Sudak. I spoke about how libraries might build better websites. Now after visiting this library’s website, I have to say I think it might be the best Ukrainian library website that I have yet to see! As you first enter the site you see clear categories which give an indication of a well-developed information architecture. The navigation is clear and main navigation is for the most part global (available throughout the site). Their look and feel is consistent so that the user is not confused that he or she has left the library website. Content is all up to date, relevant, and concise. Materials and services are given priority over who’s who in the library staff, and most importantly the link to the online catalog is front and center. Bravo!!!

Fifteenth Jubilee International Conference “Crimea 2008”

Title: Libraries and Information Resources in the Modern World of Science, Culture, Education, and Business
Location: Sudak, Feodosia, Koktebel, Novy Svet, Simferopol, Stary Krym -- Autonomous Republic of Crimea
Date: June 7-15, 2008
Wow and what a conference it was. I can honestly say that I have NEVER attended a conference like this one. The English version conference program can be viewed online.

Organized by Yakov Shrayberg, who should have perhaps considered pursuing a career as an actor in addition to librarianship, the International Conference was the liveliest and most event filled conference I have yet to attend. As well as sessions that were of interest to a wide audience, there were many sessions addressing current technologies.

Approximately 2,000 librarians, publishers, and other professionals attended the conference. Given the scale of this conference, it was extremely well planned and managed. Most attendees are Russian or Ukrainian but the conference also attracted participants from a number of countries including China, Jordan, Germany, USA and Turkey.

I gave a talk entitled Building Better Library Websites in which I discussed problems commonly found on library websites as well as advice for improving the quality of content, architectural infrastructure and navigation. In my section two Americans spoke about Google in relation to library activities. Google representative, Christian DiCarlo, discussed Google Scholar and how university libraries can better expose their electronic resources in Google searches. Brooklyn College Reference Librarian, Jill Cirasella spoke about uses and advantages of several different Google tools in reference interviews. Dr. Maurice Freedman, library consultant and former ALA president, moderated our session.

Festivities were plentiful and included fireworks, live theater, drinking and dancing in the ruins of a Genoese fortress.

"Ukrainian Libraries through the Eyes of an American Librarian"

A short summary of my impressions of Ukrainian librarianship is available online in the June issue of International Leads, an American Libraries Association publication.

Crimea!!!

Well the blog was quiet until now because I was traveling around Crimea to give talks and attend a conference. Crimea is a magical place. The landscape is outstanding -- mountains, cliffs along the Black Sea, ruins of Greek temples and fortresses, vineyards, prairie steppe areas, and Tatar mosques. It is an amazing region.

In Sevastopol, home to the Russian navy and much smaller Ukrainian fleet, I met with Natalia L. Rzhevtsevah head of the Sevastopol Technical University Library. Natalia graciously showed me around the city.

Later that week, in the library of the Crimean Institute of Archeology and Center for Information Technology in Simferopol, Galina Yadrova arranged a symposium on library web-related technologies. I spoke about planning and managing digitization projects. Other speakers also spoke about digitization efforts and especially interesting was a talk by Ludimilla Greenenko from Chersonese. This was fun because I was just recently at their site taking photographs (one pictured here taken at night). Ludimilla spoke about a digitization project that is taking place collaboratively with the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the University of Texas at Austin. There was also an interesting talk by the library director of the Center for Marine Biology located in Sevastopol. Galina the host of the seminar talked about their work in digitization and developing library websites.
Thank you to Galina (pictured here with Misha and archealogy student who showed me around Simferopol). Galina not only put together an interesting symposium but also arranged entertainment for me and was kind enough to let me stay with her in her apartment.

Харьковского национального университета радиоэлектроники

Kharkiv is an interesting city in that it is largely a university city. Local librarians informed me there are more than 30 universities (both public and private) in Kharkiv. The streets are full of young people and I saw more foreigners in Kharkiv than in any other city which I have visited in Ukraine including the capital Kyiv. There are students from the former soviet republics as well as from various countries including but not limited to Turkey, India, Pakistan, China, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ethiopia and others.
At the Kharkiv National University of Radio-electronics “Харьковского национального университета радиоэлектроники” I presented on creating library websites as well as planning and managing digitization projects. This photograph was taken during our coffee break.

During my stay I also had a chance to visit the library of the Karazin National University of Ukraine. I was impressed that unlike many libraries which I have visited in Ukraine, their online catalog is integrated with a circulation module and their user cards have machine readable barcodes, meaning that all patron records are in electronic form not paper.

Tamara Borisovna (Тамара Борисовна) the Library Director of Kharkiv National University of Radio-electronics was a warm and gracious hostess! I enjoyed our time together and look forward to meeting again at the Sudak conference in June.