Day 15

Day 15- That's right! we are now on the downward slope. More than halfway through, and we're all still alive. At this point we have visited 4 different places (Prague, Pilzen, Cesky Raj, and Ostrava), we have learned alot of words, and we are all still (pretty much) getting along.

Today was our vocational days. I started out by visiting the Municpal Library in Ostrava (that is the equivalent to the Public Library). They have a HUGE system. Keep in mind that Ostrava metro is around 310,000 people. They have one Main branch and TWENTY SIX branch libraries. That's right, i said it: TWENTY SIX branches. Holy cow. That's like HMCPLx2 plus more. To help handle all of this, they have it split up into five districts. Each of these districts answers to one district leader, who is directly under the Library Director. Unfortunately, the library director was not there today, but I did get to meet with one of the District Directors who spoke very good English.

It was very fortunate that I was able to meet with this director, because she is responsible for a project that is very much like what i do in Outreach. One of the biggest social problems Ostrava faces is that of the gypsies. They estimate that there are around 30,000 gypsies living in the Ostrava area (that's 10% of the total population!) The gypsies are mostly migrant workers who were put out of a job when the coal and steel mines in the area shut down. So there is a lot of unemployment and low literacy among gypsies. To make the situation even worse, they band together and form ghettos, where they elect a gypsy king and refuse to cooperate with city services. So. What can a library do about this? Well two years ago, this library director i spoke to, opened a small branch library in the biggest of the inner ostrava gypsy ghettos. This library focuses primarily on the gypsy children. It hosts programs such as storytimes, lock ins, field trips, and classes for the children. And this is librarianship on a personal level: one field trip they had planned was scheduled for a saturday morning. They told the parents, and promoted the trip. Then the saturday morning rolls around and no children were at the library. So they go to the houses of the children. The parents are smoking and drinking on the front porch, and they ask them where the children are. The gypsy parents told them that the kids are inside asleep, and if they want them to come on the trip the librarians can wake them up themselves. So house by house, these librarians woke these children up, washed them, got them dressed and put them on a bus for a field trip. She said that they are also teaching them basic lessons like "how to wash your hands" or "How to blow your nose" or "How to use a public bathroom" because the parents are not teaching the children these things. They are not sure of the success of this program, because the outputs they are looking for (like personal hygiene and cultural awareness) really can't be measured by statistics. But they think it's working because the children keep coming back to the library, day after day

Another thing I thought was cool was the way they order books. Every Tuesday morning, their vendor shows up at the library with a pile of new books. Then the five librarians spend all morning pouring through the books deciding if they want it for the collection. Then they give the vendor the list of books they want to keep (and possibly order more) and give the other ones back. While it may not be the most time sensible thing to do, i thought it was neat that they got to look at the books before they ordered them.

After my visit at the Municpal library, I visited the state scientific library. It was pretty cool: it was like an academic library, except that anyone could use it. They are hoping to move into a new building very soon.

After all the library visits, I got to visit with the vice-mayor of Ostrava, and he presented our team with many Ostrava gifts. Then we went to the coal mining museum (which is housed in a real historic mine. It was trippy!) and after that we had a rotary club meeting with all the rotarians in Ostrava. It really was a wonderful, but full day.

I was so busy, I didn't have time for a word of the day. BUT! I started listening to Czech, and I started understanding some of it for the first time today. Most of it was contextual clues, but still. Im proud of myself.

Tommorow we leave for Valtice. I'm not sure what our internet situation will be like as we will be staying in a castle (that's right, the library princess is staying in a castle, BOO-yah!) so I don't know if i will have interent or not. I guess it depends on how recently they've renovated the castle. However, don't worry. I'll keep writing posts and put them up as soon as I get a chance.