From November 20 to 22, 2024, the All-Ukrainian Conference of the Ukrainian Library Association (ULA) was held at the Denysenko Scientific and Technical Library. It worked in a mixed format and gathered almost one hundred participants in person and 170 online from 23 regions of Ukraine. The theme of the conference was symbolic from all points of view - “Ukrainian Library Association - together we can do more”.
This forum of Ukrainian library professionals discussed the directions and results of the Association's activities in 2022-2024; the election of the President and the Presidium of ULA and amendments to the Statute, as well as the award ceremony for the winners of competitions and winners of ULA awards. Among its strategic decisions, a special document was approved - the Program of Advocacy of the Ukrainian Library Association for 2025-2030 “Modern Library - the Power of the Community”. The draft of this Program was prepared by the working group of the Advocacy Section, in which the staff of the Denysenko Scientific and Technical Library also participated.
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For reference: The Ukrainian Library Association (ULA) is an open and effective community of professionals united for the development of human potential and civil society through the development of librarianship. It unites more than three thousand members, almost one hundred official partners and 14 regional branches. Today, ULA offers active librarians and managers who are ready for change an innovative platform for cooperation to mobilize efforts and overcome the consequences of the war, to develop and realize professional capacity and achieve a new quality of librarianship.
At the conference, the heads of the ULA Presidium and Executive Office, together with partners from the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine, also announced the winners of the “Success Stories of Libraries - Digital Education Hubs” competition within the framework of the project “Acquiring Digital Skills in Libraries - Digital Education Hubs”. The competition was held in October this year with the support of UNDP in Ukraine as part of the “Action Support Project”, funded by Sweden and in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
A total of 50 awards and honors were presented: including 4 diplomas of winners and 22 laureates of the Library of the Year competition, 8 honors, 5 special awards, diplomas, certificates and one personal award from the ULA President - “Best Young Librarian of the Year”. It is worth mentioning here that this year the Denysenko Scientific and Technical Library of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” was again included in the group of winners of competitions and awardees of the ULA Presidium. Our library was awarded the honorary title of “Library of the Year 2024”. This is the second time it has received this title since 2018, when our project “Grether and Kryvanek Educational Studies” was recognized. This year, the project “Modern Educational Safe Space CLUST Space” won - the first safe multifunctional space in Ukraine - a smart shelter based on a library with all the features of a coworking space and a reading room, where it is comfortable to study, work, develop or relax in the face of military threats. The space is certified by the State Emergency Service, equipped with a ventilation and air conditioning system, fire safety system, video surveillance system, Internet, and Wi-Fi.
The success of our project is the result of the collective work of many participants - designers, architects, librarians, builders, university administration, and our students. Therefore, the victory in the All-Ukrainian competition is, first of all, the victory of the people who created this project in the shortest possible time: it took only a year and a half from idea to implementation. Among the authors of the space are professionals from various fields - Anastasia Voitkevych, project manager from CLUST, Pavlo Pecker, chief architect, Yulia Koryan, chief coordinator from the Library, project manager, and many others. It is worth recalling that at the beginning of all the construction transformations, it was necessary to free the 600-square-meter premises of the former book depository from books and shelves. Then polytechnic students came to the aid of the librarians. In the fall of 2022, during massive attacks on Kyiv and stabilization blackouts, our students moved about 400,000 books from the bookstore, dismantled and unloaded stationary shelves, etc. This project has really proved the unsurpassed strength of the KPI community, its strength and readiness for challenges. Therefore, we won the title of “Library of the Year 2024” together with you, dear polytechnics!
As the Library of the Year, our library received a large selection of books from the Helvetica and Ranok publishing houses and the German Cultural Center Goethe-Institut in Ukraine, which are already available in the public domain. But our librarians decided to use the main prize - a certificate worth UAH 10,000 - to subscribe to the RDA Toolkit (https://www.rdatoolkit.org), an integrated browser-based online product designed to provide access to the rules of descriptive cataloging “RDA: Resource Description and Access”. RDA, first released in 2010, is the successor to the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules AACR2. They provide instructions and guidelines for creating metadata that conform to international models. The rules cover all types of resources and are intended for use in libraries and cultural heritage organizations. A library is always a system, and it must comply with international rules.
By the way, this year's personal award of the ULA President “Best Young Librarian of the Year” also remains in KPI. It was awarded to Yevheniia Zuieva, head of the PR sector of the KPI Scientific and Technical Library!
This is how the STL team completes the year 2024 and looks forward to 2025.