Romanian Summer School for Young Librarians [cross-posting]

While it’s winter here in DC, reading about one of our favorite summer events is a happy reminder of the warmer months. Biblionet’s Anca Rapeanu and Cristina Vaileanu wrote this piece for the Latvian Librarian Association’s Youth Librarian blog explaining how the Summer School came about, what happens there, and what the librarians have accomplished so far. Thanks to LBB JSS for allowing us to excerpt it below.

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Library Grows with me! Summer School for Young Romanian Librarians

The Summer School for Young Librarians is a joint initiative of the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries in Romania (ANBPR), funded within the Biblionet Program. It started in 2010 and this year we organized the second edition.

Romanian new librarians, foto TIBRO (Tineri bibliotecari din România)

The aim of the Summer School is to identify young librarians from public libraries across Romania who are able and committed to the profession, and to encourage their involvement in the development of a modern public library system in Romania. We had 3 main objectives:

• to encourage proactive and innovative initiatives of young professionals in public libraries;
• to encourage young professionals to be active in professional associations;
• to create a proper framework for networking and sharing, innovation and collaboration among young professionals.

But, before describing in more details why and how it was organized, we want to provide some context. While libraries around the world are reinventing themselves, in Romania many libraries are only now beginning this journey. Also, cooperation and collaboration among library professionals is an aim not yet achieved. The new professionals, after being exposed to obsolete LIS curricula, armed with very few practical applications, enter into hierarchical and rather conservative organizational cultures, where experimentation is rare and promotion very difficult. This debut can result in loosing motivation and changing professions.

It’s not easy being a librarian in Romania. Especially if you work in a public library! And especially if you are young – in spirit or body! Public libraries in Romania are facing a lot of challenges: lack of proper buildings, legal framework is sometimes a burden, resistance towards new technologies and innovative approaches among librarians and the list can goes on and on. But the most relevant in this context are related to hierarchical and conservative organizational cultures and resistance to change. Given all these challenges, you can imagine it’s quite difficult for young librarians (and not only for them!) to accommodate the profession. For a young professional being librarian is a difficult job, with many challenges related primarily to one’s own mentality, but also to the collective perception. One must overcome the fears about her/his professional abilities, then attempt, through continuous professional training and consistency to evolve.

To find out how the summer school addresses these issues, read the full post on the LBB JSS blog.