The Program

In the past year, the Martin County Library System has been fortunate to host Russian Librarians on two separate occasions as part of the Open World program, a federal grant project involving the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and the Library of Congress.

Towards the end of their visits we asked them what they thought about America, and they all had very good things to say about the community and it’s libraries. Depending on their interests and on the role each of their libraries served, they all had something they wanted to do in their libraries based on their experiences here.

Realizing that this would be a golden opportunity for the community to become involved and to help these Russian librarians with projects for their libraries, we embarked upon a program that would help them make progressive changes, while continuing to grow relationships with our Russian friends and colleagues.

Both Anna at the American Center in Moscow (who was the facilitator for both Russian groups that traveled to Martin County) and Masha at the Academy for Educational Development were excited to hear about our program, and our desire to continue to work with those who previously visited Martin County. With their encouragement we decided to go ahead with the program, and our initial project involves 4 of the Open World delegates and their libraries.

Mariya Prokhorova (2003) was one of the first to talk about making changes to her library, and instituting some American ideals. Her library is the farthest east, in the Siberian region of Yakutia, and she was most impressed with the Friends group at the St. Paul Public Library that we visited with, and also with the many volunteer groups right here in Martin County. Her idea was to encourage people in the community to create a “Friends of the Library” group that would help sponsor the library and assist in fundraising and special projects.

Kozlovskiy Provincial Library

Marina Soldatikhina (2003) was also very interested in making changes to her library. She loved the openness of our library (not as many walls), and also the quality of the collection (books, CD’s, movies, etc). Her proposal is to acquire new books that are health related, specifically dealing with AIDS and other infectious diseases, a problem in Russia, and also to purchase some additional books in English.

Marina Goncharova (2004) is on the administrative staff for the National Library of Chuvashia Republic, located in their capitol of Cheboksary, and she was very impressed with the work that a Library Board can do for a community library. Having local governing boards is a new concept in Russia, and with our help, the National Library of Chuvashia Republic would like to create a Library Board that would work to advocate for the library and help in the budgetary process.

Lyudmila Katasheva (2004) is the Chief Librarian at the Central Children's Library in Nizhniy Tagil. She was most impressed with our children's programming, including our story hours, and with the arrangement of our children's area of the library. She also liked the idea of pairing puppets with books, creating a kit which allows children to explore their creativity as they read the stories with their parents. Her project will entail adding these kits to her library, allowing children to check them out of the library, while also using them to promote reading programs and projects at the Children's Library.