The Swedish Embassy in Moldova and the Swedish Institute in partnership with the Novateca Program facilitated a visit of a group of library leaders to Stockholm, Sweden. The three-day visit was organized as a follow-up to Inga Lunden’s recent visit to Moldova, a library expert from Sweden that came to Moldova to share her experience in helping develop the new Swedish law on libraries, and enabling Swedish libraries become modern public institutions that foster the development of a democratic society.

Armed with a number of key questions and issues for investigation, the five library leaders representing the National Library, National Library for Children, Chisinau Municipal Library, Balti Municipal Library and Telenesti Raion Library jointly along with the State Secretary from the Ministry of Culture, visited ten Swedish libraries, including Stockholm International library, the National and Municipal Library, and Kista Library.

During the study tour, the group also had the possibility to exchange views with high-level representatives from the Swedish Ministry of Culture and Democracy. The head of the International Cooperation Department of the Swedish Ministry explained the ministry’s role in coordinating the Swedish library system development with the support of 27 agencies and about 70 NGOs and associations that implement projects and initiatives. Additionally, he stressed that the Swedish Ministry of Culture has a wide range of areas to oversee besides libraries such as media, democracy and human rights, language and minority rights.

New library services

In the course of the visit, the participants visited Kista Library, which won the "Best library in the world" award in 2015. The Swedish side shed light on its new library services addressing community needs such as storytelling sessions for kids, art workshops, homework assistance, language cafes, reading clubs, digital exhibitions and many others.

Swedish libraries pay special attention to programs that are building early literacy skills in their communities. All the visited libraries have had great success in providing services, such as storytelling, reading clubs or even a Philosophy club, to involve kids in reading and literature, and decisions related to new library activities. Library service development is based mainly on the feedback they receive from their users, especially kids.

“We do not have a special training system for professional development of librarians, so we focus on sharing each other’s experience, because each of us has special abilities that can be used in development of the library services,” mentioned the manager of the Kista Library.

Library spaces

Most of the libraries had a range of fabulous working spaces, offering both an exciting study environment and exploring commons to spark creativity and innovations.

At Stockholm Municipal library the group visited an innovative “kitchen library,” a space that allows kids to cook together with librarians and learn more about cooking. Additionally, the librarians visited “baby library”, which enables mothers with small kids to come to library and spend time, reading and playing with books. This service helps citizens develop a relationship with the library for an early age.

IT and modern devices are used not only for promotion of digital literacy, but also for the promotion of communication building between young people. Whether supporting job hunters, students, older adults, or anyone seeking new technology knowledge, the Swedish trainers in libraries are using resources, and tools to help people in their communities advance their digital proficiency.

Art, music and handcrafts are part of the daily activities in Swedish libraries, and a majority of them provide spaces for creativity and exhibitions for local artist. Digital display, theatre plays, music, concerts and poems, occur in almost every library.

Data Collection and Advocacy

In order to get acquainted with the programmatic and statistical element of the library system in Sweden, the Moldovan group visited the National Library of Sweden. In addition to being a world-class academic and public library, the National Library is the main library statistical body collecting data and releasing annual reports on the development and current trends in library field. “In Moldova, the National Library is only at the beginning of the implementation of statistical analysis of gathered data from libraries, but we are happily surprised that our data collection system very much resembles to the Swedish one,” added Elena Pintilei, Director of National Library of Moldova.

Building democratic societies

The Moldovan librarians also learned about the role that public Swedish libraries have in building of a democratic society by ensuring inclusiveness of all groups of population, literacy programs, the free formation of opinions and transfer of knowledge. At the end of the study tour, the library leaders identified possible activities and practices, which could be applied to the local context in order to modernize the Moldova libraries, especially library services, interaction with the users, advocacy, outreach, and other.

Novateca appreciates the support from the Swedish Government and hopes this study visit will bring added value to the process of library modernization in Moldova and inspire librarians to share new approaches with their colleagues and users.