Next Library 2011 Scholarship Grantees/

More information about the scholarship grantees can be found on this page.

We encourage contact to the grantees – Expand your network, share knowledge and ideas and learn from each other!

Erzsébet Nyitrai

Erzsébet Nyitrai is a librarian with the Széchenyi István University Library

Erzsébet wishes to learn more about introducing technology into the mediation of Web 2.0. services for library users. Also, she is interested in strategies and theories about how libraries can become information centres, providing quality citizens' services.

Erzsébet says: "I would like to catch some ideas about organization, as we have to coordinate our services between public and university users. One of our dreams is to build a kind of communication system in the library between experts/departments/reseaerchers and librarians."

Bawaya Elisée Sare

Bawaya is a librarian and the national representative of Friends of African Villages Libraries.

He wishes to meet people working in the same field and discover new ideas that will help him professionally. He will certainly leave the conference with new-found knowledge and practices to share with his colleagues in Burkina Faso.

Bawaya says: “Burkina Faso’s literacy rate is very low, about 35% for men and 20% for women. Sharing and learning new strategies to increase this low rate would be of great benefit… Libraries are a great way to learn about good democratic practices. For us as Africans, democracy is still a quest. Therefore, any way to encourage democracy in my country is of great interest to me.”

Irina Vyalih

Irina is Chief Librarian at Fergana Regional Information-Library Centerin Fergana, Uzbekistan.

Irina says: “Innovation, partnerships, democracy – that’s what we need now in Uzbekistan libraries. Innovations are crawling slowly into our work as we don’t have much communication with the “outer” world. Linkages to other libraries, hopefully partnerships, are what I’m looking for. Meeting counterparts from the same countries as mine will help me to learn how they face challenges and how they understand democracy.

She is interested in all spheres of librarianship and library management, and her responsibilities range from administering computers, local network, and library software to serving users and searching information. “I’m hoping the conference can help me to share experiences with like-minded people.”

Omar Abdullah Abdi

Omar is a librarian with KNLS (Kenya National Library Services).

Omar will be attending the conference in order to gain experience by seeing and sharing ideas on the improvement of libraries, and wishes to share the challenges that their own libraries have been facing, in order to realize their prospects for improvement.

Omar says: “As a librarian in a third world environment, I expect to learn from the sharing of knowledge with other librarians. Attending the conference will make me more informed, and add value to my librarianship”.

Yu Zhang

Yu Zhang is Program Director at China Evergreen Rural Library Service Center.

China Evergreen aims at promoting information literacy in rural China, by enhancing the services of public and school libraries to support learning. They are in great need of innovative ways to empower the students and the community, and ensure that they receive proper services.

Yu Zhang says: “I hope that by being exposed to various ideas and best practices, and by participating in the active discussions at the conference, I can learn methodology, experience, and pitfalls for co-creation and user-centered service development… Information literacy in rural china (…) lays the foundation for democracy and is crucial for achieving social equity. I expect the Next Library conference will provide enlightenment, and allow us to learn from the experts gathered there, in order to help our organization pursue this direction.”