Although the last week of April was short, it was full of events – that’s how you can describe the National Lithuanian Libraries Week celebrated every year. This is perhaps the most important week of the year, during which various activities took place every day in the libraries of the Panevėžys Elena Mezginaitė Public Library network, bringing together friends: readers of various ages, librarians, library friends and like-minded people.
We had guests during the week. The Smēlynė library organized a seminar by the writer, linguist Liudmila Petkevičiūtė “The goodness and beauty of the Lithuanian language. Poring in the colors of the sun. Raudona”, intended to help educators, librarians teach children eloquence, express thoughts fluently, expand their vocabulary, introduce them to national heritage, folk creativity (songs, games, proverbs, proverbs, riddles, quick words). Ethnologist, storyteller Laimutis Vasilevičius was a guest at Šaltinėlis library, who expressively and cheerfully followed the tales to the gathered schoolchildren. During the meeting, students tried to think of riddles, answer questions and explain the words of the Highland dialect.
There was no shortage of fun educational activities. In the public library, an unconventional English lesson “Book detectives” took place, where students improved not only foreign language knowledge, but also cultural, cognitive and other competencies. After dividing into teams and receiving questions, they had to find specified books or certain information about writers and other famous people. The Smėlynė library organized a unique educational tour of the world of books for the students based on the exhibition of posters and prints “Anatomy of a book”, where it was possible to get to know the book from a somewhat unexpected side – through the human anatomy. Library “Žiburėlis” invited children to observe three-dimensional images with book characters that come to life in smart books and to participate in the creation of these images themselves – to color the drawings that come to life. In the “Židinys” library, the play “The book finds its friend” was presented by the members of the theater studio of M. Karka’s primary school.
Library visitors were delighted by various promotions: “Šaltinėlis” library invited them to read newspapers in the morning while enjoying a cup of coffee, and children, taking books here, took part in a surprise lottery. “Žiburėlis” library surprised visitors with a “Blind date with a book”: you could choose a book as a gift that you can’t see, can’t read and don’t even know the name of, because it’s packed. In “Židinio” and Šiaurinė libraries, the Wheel of Fortune rotated, giving away prizes. Another interesting thing was waiting on the library’s Facebook account – the virtual calendar savaitėEuroposšeimaje was active here, where we asked a new question every day. 11 participants provided answers to them. Jelizaveta Piskunova was the only one who answered all the questions correctly and won Marius Jovaiša’s album “Neregėta Lietuva”. Another promotion for readers is the solution of the literary crossword “European family”, in which 30 people participated, the winners also received M. Jovaiša’s album “Unseen Lietuva”.
During the week, library visitors were greeted by unconventional and interesting exhibitions. The public library was surprised by the unique exposition of the personal collection of pens from travels of Panevėžys art school teacher Rima Keršienė: there are so many of them that it is impossible to count them, and such a variety, for example: pen-hair, pen-pizza, etc. The children’s literature department “Green Owl” was pleased with the exhibition of a huge collection of frog figures collected by Jelizaveta Nakrošienė from various countries in the world “Frogs in the World”. And in the “Šaltinėlis” library, the opening of the exhibition of abstract art paintings by the employee Vilma Tamošiūnaitė’s “Dance of Colors” took place, during which the participants of the event themselves ventured into the world of painting full of discoveries: spontaneously, stroke by stroke, they created a collective work of abstract art.
In other libraries of the network, various events, creative workshops, educational tours were also organized, the most active readers were awarded, and the drawing competition “From A to Z: I draw a Lithuanian letter” for students of grades 1-4 of the city educational institutions held in the Children’s Literature Department “Zhalioji pėleda” was announced. laureates of the 120th anniversary of the lifting of the ban on the Press.
Celebrating library week, we also visited other collectives and traveled around Panevėžys. The Northern Library’s initiative “Book chest trip to kindergarten” visited preschools and told many beautiful stories to children. Jolanta, an employee of the park library, visited the Panevėžys Region People with Disabilities Union, where she introduced its members to Dalia Teišerskytė’s work. And so, the Public Library, together with the group of Art Lovers of the University of the Third Age of Panevėžys, organized a public reading of the poem “Eglė zalčių karalienė” while traveling through the unique Molainii Street Park, which has no analogues in Lithuania. Although bad weather prevented the ceremonial opening of the library week in Laisvė Square, the planned important mission of the event was to present book bags to our social partners who have librarians – the Panevėžys branch of the Lithuanian agency “SOS vaikai”, the Panevėžys Republican Hospital, Panevėžys Prison, St. For Joseph’s care home – we implemented it later.
This is how we celebrated the 24th National Library Week of Lithuania in such a colorful way.
Indrė Rapkevičienė
