Bibliotheken und Commons in Südosteuropa

Mariana Harjevschi, Claudia Șerbănuță: Chișinău on Commons with the help of librarians

13:30-14:30
Lecture and Presentation

 

©Claudia Șerbănuță Claudia Șerbănuță is a library specialist with international experience in advocating for modern library services in support of community development. She has a PhD in Library and Information Sciences from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between 2014 and 2016, Claudia was the interim director of the National Library of Romania. For the past four years she has been working at Progress Foundation Romania as a Community Development Manager in national and international projects promoting democratic access to education. Claudia Șerbănuță is one of the main organizers of Occupy Library international conference and a member of EduCaB Romania. She was recognized as a Change Agent in the Library Journal’s 2021 Movers & Shakers class.
Since 2022 she is a member of Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova Working Group and in the past four years she has been involved in training for and promotion of Wikipedia Romania. Her main research interest is understanding how information cultures are transformed by prolonged and severe information control and censorship practices. Her publications include articles on information history, public librarianship and the usage of new technologies at the community level.

©Mariana Harjevschi Mariana Harjevschi, joined the “B.P. Hasdeu” Library in 1997, after graduating librarianship at the LIS at State University from Moldova. Following her passion for library management, she managed to open in 2001, through a project supported by the Soros Foundation-Moldova, the first public library specialized in jurisprudence – the Public Law Library. In 2012, she was elected as the president of the Librarian’s Association from Moldova and continued to serve for a second mandate until 2019.
In the last years, with a group of librarians from Municipal Library from Chișinău joined the 1Lib1Ref campaign inviting for the first time on to participate in the Wikipedia project, specifically improving articles about libraries, writers and notorious persons from Moldova.



Chișinău Municipal Library has been offering guided tours of the city as a library service for a number of years. The last couple of years forced the library to close these tours. Instead the librarians started on the road of becoming Wikipedia editors and, as such, the tours of the city were also moved online with the help of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia articles on Chișinău local landmarks were updated and, where was the case, created by librarians in partnership with the Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova user group. Join us to learn more about Chișinău, Republic of Moldova and the librarians' passion for their city and community.