So, today, we are happy to welcome you to join us on 28th of July in Vilnius, and arrive by bicycle in Tallinn on 7th of August! Mark your calendars!

The three Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have a very vibrant and fascinating libraryworld and there will be a lot to see, hear and discuss. The Baltic States are also known as some of the best bicycling destinations in Europe, so they are the perfect setting for our forward-looking, innovative and informal unconference for all libraryprofessionals and librarylovers. On our journey from Vilnius to Tallinna via Riga and Tartu, we will bicycle about 600km and this long event (longest professional libraryevent in the world, by the way), will be filled with relevant and challenging content like workshops, discussions, excursions and encounters with colleagues.

Registration will open on the website http://www.cyclingforlibraries.org during early spring. This will be limited to 100 people, so keep your eyes open!

Looking forward to seeing you next summer!!

Mace

Jukka

Pathfinders Mace Ojala and Jukka Pennanen, on behalf of the international network of organizers,

Meanwhile............

Prior to the IFLA Congress 2012 in Helsinki, Finland, the NPSIG welcomes you to IFLAcamp, the first genuine IFLA satellite unconference ever! IFLAcamp is a two-day satellite meeting in the mode of an unconference. It will provide a place for New Professionals and the wider LIS community to meet, share experiences and create new ideas. The bar camp style will allow for active participation of all attendees and the inclusion of all kinds of topics related to New Professionalism, emerging technologies and innovation in libraries that prey on your minds!

Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap -organizer Mace Ojala recommends you to attend IFLAcamp!

The Hämeenlinna City Library is a meeting place of culture and knowledge. It’s known in Finland as a pioneer and innovative developer of library’s web services. The Library has had several development projects, in particular web 2.0 solutions and social media since 2007. In addition to the main library there are seven branch libraries and two library buses. The amount of personnel is 54. Annual amount of loans is 1.3 million, more than 20 loans per inhabitant. New services are developed according to the following divisions:

• Supporting different activities, participation and studying
• Culture and media education
• Preserving cultural inheritance
• Culture and literature events

The Hämeenlinna City Library is one of the Finnish Regional Libraries. It supports the information services and interlibrary loans in the area’s public libraries and develops the information services about the area of operation. Perhaps the most important regional duty in Hämeenlinna today is familiarizing library personnel in the new form of activities and development projects of library work in the area of operation.

WebOpac

Library as the open learning environment for knowledge and culture

The Hämeenlinna City Library aims to discover and implant novel working practices. The objective is to improve the services for library customers, and to reach new library users. The vehicle for deploying qualitatively new art of library work is training of library personnel and candid deployment of new media technologies. The library has implemented training programs in web writing, production of digital stories, digitizing, image processing, video editing, and social media platforms. In November 2010 the library launched its newest web-service: Virtuaalipolku.fi

It’s based on Google maps and presents cultural objects and events in Hämeenlinna. The users may also create and attach their own maps. The service may be used with mobile devices. It also uses augmented reality technology: QR-code tagged signs have been distributed around the city. Reading these signs with smart phones the users can access interesting media files associated with the sign locations.

The librarians are active content producers in the open regional wiki, Häme-Wiki, where inhabitants can tell their stories and knowledge of their own domiciles. The librarians provide assistance in material production in editing rooms. Through new skills and new interactive services, the library has found its role as an actor in the information society, and has also found new partners and new kind of customers. The development project is funded by the European Social Fund.

The latest national pilot project based in the newest technological solutions is an open library consept of the Jukola Branch Library. It’s a modern self-service library situated in the lively suburb of Hämeenlinna. It’s open every day from early morning to 22 pm. The customers are available to use the services by themselves, without personnal. There will be a librarian on daytime and a net connection to the information service of the main library.

Hämeenlinna, the city of lakes, history and culture

Hämeenlinna is an idyllic provincial city in the middle of southern Finland. This Finlands’s oldest inland town has grown on the shores of Vanajavesi around a medieval castle built in the 13th century. It’s a traditional as well as dynamic city with 67 000 inhabitants. Today Hämeenlinna is experiencing a very positive period of development. In many ways it is the engine of Häme province and a target of interest.

The three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are the perfect place for contemplating and workshopping about libraries, cycling around the fantastic countryside with colleagues and seeing beautiful cities both medieval and modern. We are truly excited about creating this unconference together with our enthusiastic colleagues from the Baltic States.

Also, as many of you are aware of, an Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap post-conference called IFLA 2012 will take place in Helsinki, Finland.

Details about the 2012 challenge such as the route, schedule and registration are to be announced later. Keep your eyes peeled and get in contact with us for opportunities to get involved in organizing this unique unconference for librarians and librarylovers.

Jukka Pennanen and Mace Ojala. Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr too. This website, http://www.cyclingforlibraries.org will be redone

The Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap crew are proud and happy to announce that the documentary film premiere is today, Friday, September 16th at 17 CET at the Finnish Film Foundation’s movie theater in Katajanokka, Helsinki.. The film ends the Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap 2010  season to start a new one. Make sure you follow the news on this site!

Yet another epic photo by Jonas Tana

One of the (numerous) frequently asked questions to us Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap -organiser has been: why bicycles and libraries? What is the connection between these two, seemingly unrelated things?

Any connection might be hard to see. Admittedly even to us organisers Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap was initially a semi-random mash-up, based on intuition. We couldn’t be sure what would the outcome be. However our intuition was correct, and the connection has become very clear now: bicycles and libraries represent exactly the same values. Democracy, accessibility, egalitarianism, pragmatism, efficiency, humanism, individualism, maintainability, sustainability. And movement of course.

The operation principles of bicycles and libraries are understandable to any observer, without hidden magic. Both are practical tools of travel, expanding the reaches of the body and the mind.

A cyclist and a librarian both have an intimate, two-directional dependency on their tools, the bicycle and the library. The spinning wheels form two gyroscopes, which keep the bike from falling. Two similar perpetually rotating processes in the library might be collection management and customer service. They work together as one, and travel the same path together. And like a bicycle, a library must stay on the move or it will fall.

Interestingly enough, especially public libraries also share a political history with bicycles. Both have been important tools in the emancipation processes of the labourforce, women and other oppressed groups. They are the tools of equality.

Both bicycles and libraries are easy to sympathise with. If you talk to any person in the world, they surely love both bikes and libraries… both concepts are universal and easy to understand. This easiness to sympathise with has helped us in organising the Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap -project. Any sensitive person can imagine the connection between cycling and librarianship.

During Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap of course also travelling and the the road itself were important symbols. The road represents the future of libraries. It is repeatedly interrupted by intersections. Each of these is a moment of a decision. By remembering the core aim (get to Berlin) and plan (follow the Ber-Cph radweg), all the decisions were easy to make. By being loyal to our own decision to ride together and keeping an eye on each other, we could guarantee that everybody reached our common goal.

Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap was a temporary, amorphous, pop-up library-organisation with a clear goal and strategy. It was beautiful and it worked perfectly. Thank you all.

Lap of Honour, photo by Jonas Tana

The Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap unconference (28th May–7th June 2011) is now over. There are a million videos, photos, tweets, blogposts, news-stories, This Week in Libraries -episodes, articles, gossips, stories, anecdotes and vibes to experience and to share.

Surprisingly enough, everything went better than expected. The thanks belong to the unbelievably awesome group of Viagra Discount Suppliers, Take 50 Mg Viagra ** Discounted Cheap -participants, plus to everyone in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere who helped make this happen! Cheers, and keep in touch.

Julia and Jukka, photo by Jonas Tana

After the smashing kick-off party last night at the Copenhagen main library, we are totally ready to ride. Thanks copenhagers for organizing it. I loved the wagons, and so did everybody else. And the awesome Orkestar Baxtalo really got us up in the air.

It was fantastic to see you all there. With support like this, we will definetely make it to Berlin, and solving some of the libraryworld’s toughest problems will not be hard for us. Cheers!