Czech Republic: “I´m a reader!” Project

I am a reader! This is the title of a periodic project of the promotion of reading announced by the Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (SKIP). The full title is: I Am a Reader –The Book for Abecedarians. Schools in cooperation with public libraries enter in this competition with the pupils attending the first classes of the primary schools. The competition starts in December; at that time children already have essential knowledge of reading. The library prepares at least one excursion and other rich programme in addition (common reading, exhibitions, writer-reader meetings etc.). The award for children after a successful passing through this programme is a book. The book is exceptional, because it is the original Czech novelty that cannot be bought in a bookshop for the next three years.

More information in Czech: http://www.skipcr.cz/akce-a-projekty/akce-skip/projekt-uz-jsem-ctenar-2013-knizka-pro-prvnacka, about this latest competition (1.12.2011-30.6.2013).

Eva Bartunkova
Department Head of Information Centre for Librarianship
Czech Republic

Application for augmented reality: 8,215 Spanish libraries on your mobile phone.

The Subdirectorate General of Library Coordination of the Ministry of Culture presents an application for mobile phones that offers a free service of geo-referenced augmented reality in real time about Spanish libraries, for Smartphones ANDROID, IPHONE or SYMBIAN.

Through Layar, it offers a layer of digital information about national and regional libraries, public libraries, academic libraries and special libraries locations in the Spanish territory and abroad, overall 8,215 libraries.

Once you have selected the layer and maintaining the mobile phone in front of you, the view of the camera will appear with overlaid information about libraries on a 5 km radius. Turning around, you can point the mobile phone towards the interest points. If you click on a specific library, basic information as name, address, e-mail, web, videos, etc. will appear in your screen.

Moreover, the geo-referencing characteristic places the user’s position via GPS and gives him the best path to the library by foot, public transport or car.

Subdirectorate General for Libraries Coordination
Ministry of Culture
Spain

300,000 New Pages at the Spanish Virtual Library of Historical Newspapers

The Ministry of Culture has just digitised 300,000 more pages that have been integrated into the Spanish Virtual Library of Historical Newspapers.

The project is the result of cooperation between the Directorate General of Books, Archives and Libraries (through the Subdirectorate General for Library Coordination) and Autonomous Regions and scientific and cultural institutions including universities, municipalities, foundations athenaeums and even newspapers publishers with origins dating back to 19thand the beginning of the last century. Its aim is not only to preserve, but also to offer access to bibliographic materials that are denoted for being unique copies and, therefore, not easily accessible.

It is harvested by Hispana, through which it contributes to the Europeana project.

As of November 2011, it includes 5.713.462 titles from 1971 newspapers that cover a wide chronological period between 1777 and 2009. These newspapers were printed in 160 Spanish towns.

This year the Ministry of Culture has signed an agreement with the Association of Spanish Cultural Magazines that is allowing to include current contents in the database.

A new version of the library was launched recently, with an important new function: the ability to search for any word on any page of any digital newspaper.

Here you can watch a video presenting the library:

More information can be found in its website.

Subdirectorate General for Libraries Coordination
Ministry of Culture
Spain

Video: Spanish Libraries

Would you like to see what Spanish libraries are like? Here you can watch the video that was presented in the 4th Leipzig German Congress of Libraries and Information that took place in Leipzig in March 2010, where Spain was the guest country.

The video is available at  the Spanish Ministry of Culture Youtube Channel and also in Travesía, from which we informed in a former post.

Subdirectorate General for Libraries Coordination
Ministry of Culture
Spain

IV Meeting on Libraries and their Municipalities

IV Meeting on Libraries and their Municipalities

This meeting is organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the FEMP –Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces- every two years since 2005 with the objective of consolidating the cooperation between local government and public library service.

To accomplish this goal, during the meeting, good practises developed in local libraries will be presented. They constitute the result of the cooperative work of librarians and politicians. Later, a round table will be held in which they will speak about the present and the future of this cooperation.

Each edition is dedicated to a different topic. In this fourth edition, the topic is Local Memory and it is aimed to speak about the role of libraries in the recuperation, preservation and widespread of local memory, and the importance of local libraries as agents in the process of social coherence in their municipalities.

This IV Meeting on Libraries and their Municipalities will take place next  17^th November 2011 in the Ministry of Culture Auditorium in Madrid. You can read the full program following the next URL:

http://www.mcu.es/bibliotecas/MC/2011/IVEncuentro/index.html

And here, you can see the minutes of the three previous meetings:

http://www.mcu.es/bibliotecas/CE/Cooperacion/CongJornadas/EncuentroBibMunicipio.html

Subdirectorate General for Libraries Coordination
Ministry of Culture
Spain

Prague: Reading Statues

Some statues in Prague  have received books to read  in the next three weeks, within the framework of the project Prague, the Town of Literature.

Book for the statue. Photo of reading statues (Babies, artist D. Černý) in the park of the isle of Kampa

Eva Bartunkova
Department Head of Information Centre for Librarianship
Czech Republic

Spain: Libraries Day

24th October is in Spain the day dedicated to libraries. The Spanish Ministry of Culture sponsors this initiative of the the Spanish Association of Friends of Children and Young Adults Books, which started back in 1997.

Each year a diferent Spanish region is selected to hold a celebration event, and an author and an illustrator from that region are selected to make the promotional poster. This year it has been celebrated in collaboration with the Basque Government.

Poster in Basque

 

Poster in Spanish

This year’s poster authors are Elena Odriozola (illustrator) and Patxi Zubizarreta (writer). Both of them presented the poster at this year’s celebration.

Here you can see some of the posters from other years.

Prague: E-books in All Libraries

The Municipal Library of Prague launched a project “E-Books in all libraries”.

The new service enables users to read e-versions of later Czech production. The objective of the project is to promote cooperation between libraries and commercial sector in an emerging e-book market.
According to the agreement, publishers offer e-copies of their books in preparation to facilitate digitization. Libraries guarantee the legal using. Libraries also offer statistics with interesting data for publishers (interest and use of titles).

Libraries are represented by one library, Municipal Library of Prague, in the workflow between publishers and libraries. At present, reading is limited: e-books are accessible just inside the library and on dedicated display terminals. Parts of documents can be printed, not stored.

The pathfinder partner on the publisher size is Academia, The Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Included libraries are, apart from the Municipal Library of Prague, Academy of Sciences Library, National Library of the Czech Republic, National Technical Library and Moravian Library
Source:
http://www.mlp.cz/cz/projekty/on-line-projekty/e-knihy-do-kazde-knihovny/

Eva Bartunkova
Department Head of Information Centre for Librarianship
Czech Republic