Biblionet: The World in Your Library!
The Biblionet program (2009–2013) aimed to facilitate free access to information through public libraries. By equipping the libraries with information technology and by training the librarians, the public library system in Romania has been essentially updated. Between 2010 and 2014, the public libraries in Braşov County benefited from this program.
Value: 1,130,403 RON
Biblionet also included other financing sources for projects won by some of our branches (Children and Youth Branch No. 6 and Branch No. 2), which resulted in new library services. At the same time, Braşov was selected as a Center of Excellence for Library Services for Children (0–14 years old) and as a Regional Training Center. Thus, the Digifolio project pursued the development of digital skills in Brasov education, creating a platform at http://digifolio.weebly.com/. Currently, the site is no longer functional. Other projects, such as Summer Kindergarten and preschool SMS (Sports, Movement, and Health), offered alternative non-formal education and leisure services within the Center of Excellence for Children within the Children and Youth Branch No. 6. They have become services offered permanently or periodically, depending on the season, every year, responding to ever-increasing needs.
SENSE: Services for Seniors was the project developed by Branch No. 2, located in the Noua district, close to the Elderly Home. The branch addressed these users, to whom it now provides permanent library services.
The value of these projects is 147,455 RON.
Financial sources: Global Libraries, IREX Romania Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Editorial Projects
Between 2014 and 2015, the “George Bariţiu” Braşov County Library won editorial projects for the volumes ‘Legends, Fairy Tales, and Stories from the Schei Neighborhood and from Other Romanian Realms’ and the ‘Atlas of Enchanted Lands and Magical Places from Romanian Fairy Tales’. The stories were collected and retold by Alexandru Stănescu and illustrated by Lia Stănescu, a graphic artist who was inspired by the architecture and traditional art of Bârsa Country. The publication was accompanied by public readings and attractive non-formal education activities.
Value: 97,000 RON from the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
More recent are the publishing projects Nihon Made: Illustrated Culture for Young People (2017) and the volume ‘Și animalele sunt omeni’ (Even the animals are humans) by the poet Alexandru Mușina (2018). A comic magazine about the cultural experience of learning about Japan by a group of young Romanians was published, and the volume of poems by the Brașov poet Alexandru Mușina, with original illustrations by Alina Marinescu, was republished.
Along with these, we mention the cultural project ‘Arts. Memory. Restitution’ (2015), a partnership with the Brașov Artessentia Association and CRESC—We Increase Romania’s Equal Opportunities for Children at the Library (2017) The first started as a result of the people who didn’t know the meaning of traditional symbols anymore, which it made known again and gave back to the community by means of contemporary art. The traditional motifs were reused in contemporary artworks in a dialogue that conveyed the symbolic message of the past to the people of today.
The second project made known the significance of the union of Transylvania with Romania on December 1, 1918, and addressed the disadvantaged categories of young people, offering cultural services for them and strengthening in this way community cohesion. The library organized innovative activities, such as interactive workshops on history, film, correspondence, and interviews.
Value: approximately 250,000 RON through the Administration of the National Cultural Fund
EEA Grants
In 2015, the project Braşov: The Capital of the Old Traditional Games had as its objective the knowledge, revitalization, promotion, and valorization of the children’s games as part of the intangible cultural heritage and multiculturalism of South-Eastern Transylvania. Information about this traditional heritage is available on the website of the project, www.capitalajocurilor.ro. Through large-scale events, such as the interschool competitions and the Festival of the Traditional Games, the children found out and learned by playing about this heritage, involving and attracting a large number of participants and beneficiaries, young people and adults, family members, and educators. The project became a permanent library service.
Value: 65, 156, 50 RON
European projects
The ‘Lady Café’ Project—Motivational Activities for Women 45+ (2012–2014) was a partnership between ten heterogeneous institutions that developed and supported a series of learning activities (minimum 3 sessions per institution) to meet the varied needs and expectations of women over 45 years old (depending on the context and area of residence).
The aim of the project was to contribute to the personal and professional development of women over 45 (the age of the target group) in order to improve their self-esteem as people and women and, ultimately, to ensure active participation in their social environment. More data on the project website http://ladycafeproject.eu/
Total budget: €15000 – Grundtvig Program
LinkINjob: job-hunting with the help of librarians, project developed in partnership with Mestna Knjiznica Ljubljana – Slovenia, the ‘Petko Rachev Slaveikov’ Regional Public Library from Bulgaria, the Monaghan County Council Library Services – Ireland, Volkshochschule-Stadtbibliothek Linz-Austria, Vantaan Kaupunki from Finland, Kauno Apskrities Viesoji Biblioteka from Lithuania, between 2014-2016, financed by the European Program Erasmus +.
The aim of the project has been to strengthen professional training and strengthen the innovative capacity of the unemployed, thus supporting the Europe 2020 Strategy, which aims to increase the employment rate of the population (between 20 and 64 years old) from 69% to 75%, including a greater involvement of women and the elderly and a better integration of emigrants in the labor market. More data on the project website http://www.linkinjob.eu/
Total budget: €12,805 – Erasmus+
As an accredited institution in the Erasmus+ Mobility Program from 2021, the library offers professional opportunities to librarians (2021-2027) and, as a partner in European projects (DigiPrior, 2021-2023, Digital Restoration Lab, 2022-2024), contributes to research and studies of interest. The DigiPrior project aims to establish priority criteria in the selection of documents for a digital library and to promote digital content in an attractive manner. In this sense, the project team created a methodology of selection, an online educational platform for specialists and those interested in the cultural memory of communities, and a video educational package (https://digiprior.eu/). The Digital Restoration Lab Project brings together the expertise and innovative spirit of the partners from Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania, and Türkiye in the field of old photographs and their digital restoration, a technique recently applied to heritage collections.
In 2022, the Braşov County Library was the beneficiary of funding granted by the EOS Romania Foundation for Digital Centers in the ‘Together in Digital Romania’ Project, which aimed to develop digital skills and reduce inequality in society and on the labor market. Another new project is ‘Libraries as a Support Hub for Refugees and the Community’, funded by the International Rescue Committee and implemented in Romania through the ‘Noi Orizonturi’ Foundation and the Future Communities Association. The aim of the project is to offer support to the refugees by organizing and running in the library various community initiative clubs, programming and robotics courses for children, and Romanian language courses for Ukrainians.
Innovative Projects
Here are just a few examples. The openness, involvement, and creativity of our librarians are visible both in the much larger number of projects carried out and in progress, and especially in the applications created. Thus, projects such as iZiLIT: The Diary—Portal Towards Culture and CLIP[L]IT—Book in 7Arts from 2018 actually meant library apps in the form of a daily book recommendation on a mobile phone, or an augmented reality on a manuscript dated 1885–1887, along with audio and video files, and a book trailer platform.
iZiLIT meant ‘Daily Meeting with Literature’, a cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, implemented by the ‘George Barițiu’ County Library Brașov, together with the National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries from Romania (ANBPR) and the Union of Editors from Romania (UER) in 2017.
The aim of the project was to create an innovative form of promotion and communication of contemporary Romanian literature among young people. An application was developed for Android and iOS mobile phones, available for free on Google Play and the App Store until 2020. The application sent, every day, a reading recommendation directly to the user’s phone with the following information: the image of the book cover, a short note about the content, expressed by an authorized person, and a short biography of the author. The application allowed the integration of written culture into the cultural consumption practices of the younger generation. It is currently nonoperational due to copyright restrictions.
Also in 2017, our library carried out a project called ‘The Diary: A Portal to Culture, a partnership with the National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries in Romania (ANBPR), with the financial support of the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). Starting from the interest of young people in writing based on new technologies—the blog—and from the benefits that the journal genre gives to young people as a form of confessional literature, the library developed this editorial project. It consisted of creating multimedia content that can offer a new alternative to the traditional way of promoting written culture while at the same time supporting reading in an attractive way.
We turned to Valeriu Braniște’s manuscript, ‘Jurnal de licean’ (High School Diary) (1885–1886), from the library’s Special Collections. It is the diary of a 17- to 18-year-old student, in which classes, teachers, and colleagues, readings, debates, performances, parties, and trips from the past are described. We have chosen from this journal 20 relevant and interesting pages for the target group—the teenagers could easily find themselves in them, they could resonate with the experiences of the various characters, and they could instill in them values and models valid in contemporary society—for which we have created new media contents: audio files in which the content of the diary pages is rendered by an actor, and graphic illustrations that visually complement the same content, made by a contemporary cartoonist. The original pages of the manuscript have been digitized and can be accessed freely, together with all other media products created and the transcription of the original text through this web application: http://jurnaldelicean.qulto.ro/#/page/1. The media platform also presents a set of postcards with the illustrations in the diary, with augmented reality applications. Each postcard has a QR code printed on it, which can be read with the mobile phone camera. In this way, young people can listen to the audio files and see the drawings.
In 2018, the library team designed, won, and put into practice the CLIP[LIT]—’Book’in 7Arts’ Project, co-financed by AFCN, in partnership with the Faculty of Letters of the ‘Transylvania’ University in Braşov and the cultural associations Control N, BookLand, and KunSTadt. The project aimed to promote the book and the written culture among young people through creativity, combining the specific techniques of cinematography, literature, and IT, creating a collection of 20 video clips about books written by contemporary Romanian authors, and providing a dedicated platform with valuable resources. Screenwriting and directing workshops were organized, 20 screenplays were written, and 20 book trailers were produced, all uploaded to https://cliplit.ro/. Currently, the site is no longer functional.
The innovation was also applied to our collections, as long as the paintings in the art gallery have been animated with gifs. More information about this project is available at https://bibliotopiabv.wordpress.com/proiecte.
Connected to the needs of the community, the library accessed funding from various sources for financial education (Banca Comercială Română, The Romanian Commercial Bank) or for children’s education in programming (Progress Foundation and Romanian-American Foundation) through the Code Kids Program—Program the Future of Your Community!
The CODE Kids Project—Kids Are Coding in Public Libraries—was developed in 2017 by the Progress Foundation and aimed to create a coding and STEM space where children, young people, and librarians from rural and small towns could develop their digital skills and get involved in the life of the community they come from by solving creative digital challenges. Since 2019, the library has joined the project through the libraries in different towns and villages in the county (Dumbrăvița, Mândra, Racoș, and Râșnov). The training has created opportunities for children, aged between 10 and 15, to get actively involved and even pursue a career in technology. After intensive training with exercises and assignments, the coding clubs were challenged to create products that solved a need in the community and participate in county competitions, then regional and national science and technology fairs. The benefits have been gratifying: they have qualified for the national stage, they won awards, and the experience has already helped the professional careers of some former club members. After becoming high school students, they were admitted to robotics clubs in Brașov and Odorheiul Secuiesc. Their activity in the Code Kids clubs in Dumbrăvița and Racoș was counted in their CVs.