Hungary Conference - July 2004

From Poland to Norway

I grew up in the middle of Poland, but my library education and my practical experience comes from Norway. For the last six years I have been the head of the public library in Ask, about 20 miles north of Oslo. But I worked in many different types of libraries, for nearly ten years, before that. Here I learned much about handicapped users.

My periods at two health libraries helped me understand the needs of patients. I have also worked at the Norwegian National Library for the Blind and at a regional Centre for Technical Aids to Disabled People. Every Norwegian county has a centre that gives advice and lends out specially adapted equipment to people with special needs. These jobs brought me into direct contact with handicapped users.

I must also mention community projects. I came to Norway in 1974 and lived for many years on the Atlantic Coast. In the morning, I could just walk down to the shore, throw out a fishing line and haul up cod or mackerel for dinner. (Fjord 1) There I organised a project for Solidarity, which made it possible for Polish farmers to work as trainees on local farms.(Fjord2)

The trainee project started in 1987 and is still going on. But I moved to Oslo in 1995 and am not engaged in that project any more. For a couple of years I headed an organization for women entrepreneurs. I believe in concrete, practical, local action – and in the power of women. Last year I helped to establish a Special Interest Group on Public Library Policy within the Norwegian Library Association. And now I am very happy to be here.

Equal opportunities for everybody - is a main topic for this meeting. I am going to talk about experiences from Norway. I will describe how we try to realize this goal at our library. And I shall show some pictures from the library. These are my own experiences with equal access.

Welcome to Ask!

Ask is the administrative and commercial and cultural centre of our municipality, which is called Gjerdrum. The municipality has about 5 000 inhabitants. That means we are small, but not one of the smallest places in Norway. By law, every municipality must have a library – even the very smallest, an island in the North with about 250 inhabitants (Utsira).

If you travel to Oslo by plane, you will fly over Ask just a few minutes before you land. The airport is quite new and has brought economic growth to this region. Gjerdrum used to be a typical rural community. (Gjerdrum) Now young, highly educated families are moving in. Some of them are working near the airport, while others have jobs in the capital (about 30 minutes travel by car).

Ask public library

I was offered the position as head of the Ask library in 1999. The library had been neglected for many years. It still used a traditional card catalogue. The average public library has two employees for every 5.000 inhabitants. Before I was recruited, the library in Ask had only one – and she worked only three days a week. The library had short opening hours and very limited grants to buy books and other media. We had a single PC connected to the Internet, but the public had no access. The old library shared a factory building with a repair shop for agricultural machinery. And finally the community had decided to act.

As you all know, libraries are complex institution. To modernize or to develop a new library can easily take 4 to 5 years of hard work. Libraries need attractive public spaces for customers – and friendly rooms for children. We need practical offices for our staff and efficient storage space for books and archives. We need lamps and cables and flexible furniture. We need a lot.

Planning a new library

Ask already had a Cultural Centre. The Centre had been planned as a three stage rocket. The first part, with a couple of meeting rooms and a cafeteria, was built before I moved there. We started to plan the new library in 2000. The library was supposed to move to the Cultural Centre when the second building stage was finished in 2002. (Construction) But nothing had been finalized. The decision to relocate had to be taken by the local politicians. The political process was complicated. But you can read more about that in a paper I wrote last year, for IFLA in Berlin. Here my topic is access.

Moving around

From the very beginning I had decided that the new library should be suitable for disabled persons. Because of my experience at the regional Centre for Technical Aids to Disabled People, I was very concerned that our library should be open to people with disabilities. (Entrance)

All doors in the library are one meter wide, allowing people in wheelchairs to move easily around. (Door) The doors do not have doorsteps. (Door2) Our library can be used by handicapped employees as well as customers. For the same reason, we try to limit the amount of furniture.

Our library is placed on two different levels. (Library) The best would be to have the whole library on the ground floor. But we have a lift to the upper level just outside the library entrance. We also have two toilets for the disabled in the building

Some things we have already realized. Other things are planned for the near future. We shall install an automatic door opener. We plan to put a spesial pattern on the floor which makes it easier to navigate for people who are visually impaired. Even the floor must be designed with disability in mind.

Hearing loss

Many library users are hard of hearing.(Service) The acoustics must be tested to avoid echoes. The service desk should have a wire loop, a hearing aid.()Here we will need expert advice. We have a special public organization - the Delta Institute - which gives help and advice about accessibility. After they have tested for echoes, we will place special plates in the ceiling to filter out problematic sounds. It is best to make such tests after all the furniture is in place. Every object – chairs, shelves, books or curtains - helps to reduce the echoing.

Visual disabilities

The blind and the visually impaired get free audio books from the National Library for the Blind. That is why we seldom meet such users. But sometimes their family members come and borrow audio books. In our collection we also have some books with exceptionally large fonts. Many elderly people find it hard to read ordinary books and prefer these instead.

We also try to mark our books with large-size capital letters, to make them easy to find on shelves. In my experience good marking of books and bookshelves is very important.(Mark) We also identify different sections and category og books in the library with different colors. Everything should be well marked and easy to find. Here you should not trust your intuition. Ask real users to test your system!

Allergies

We think about people with allergies, so we have postponed to buy the flowers to library until we know which flowers are good for allergics. We can also use plastic flowers.

National standards

Two years ago Norway started a national project in order to test and certify public libraries with regards to their accessibility for disabled. We are going to contact the project to find out how far we have come and how much is lacking.

The handicapped in Norway have their own organisation. They send people around to control different public buildings for their accessibility. They also have their own Web site where they report from their inspections.

But it is important to be focus on accessibility for the disabled from the very beginning, especially when one can influence the building process. Adapting a library late in the process will often take more time and money.

Some special cases

A while ago we had a user with Down`s syndrome. We let her use our library also outside ordinary opening hours, as long as somebody was working. We also had a young user in a wheelchair who worked as a “library trainee” in connection with school work. We know that such people, especially the young ones, are limited in their life possibilities. We always try to give them extra services in our library. In our library, all barriers for the disabled should be as low possible.

Elderly users and patients in health institutions

The old and the sick are other people with special needs. Many Norwegian communities have organized volunteer services for people who need help with daily routines. We have recently started to collaborate with the local volunteer centre. We have deposited a small collection of books at the local Home for the Aged and the volunteers handle the lending.

We also plan a transport service. Volunteers will drive house bound people from their homes to Ask and back, so that they can visit the library and also do some shopping. The fee will be nominal – less than an ordinary bus ticket.There are, in fact, many possibilities. We have only explored a few. In some communities the health service collaborates with the library. Nurses bring books when they visit the homes of their patients. I have even heard of a community doctor who used to give to his patients a “library prescription”. They were asked to go to the library and borrow books on “doctor`s orders”. I really like this idea. I can just see the depressed patient who is forced by his doctor to walk to library. (Activity) (Poetry)

Refugees

Public libraries can provide a good space for community building and social integration. Through the library people can establish new links to the local community, to the national culture and to the social institutions in Norway. Many refugees need to be integrated. We take special care and provide special services to users with a refugee background.

Here we cooperate closely with the advisor for refugees in our municipality. The advisor has sponsored the purchase of dictionaries for refugees and given us funds for 3 personal computers. Refugees have priority access to these PCs, which they can use to learn Norwegian from CD-roms. We help them with Internet and other types of data support.

When the computers are not used by refugees, they can be used by other people. In this way we have been able to increase the number of computers for the public. We are always short of funds, so it is very important to be creative in order to find money to the library.

Life long education

Some of our users study beside their job. We often borrow technical books for these students – usually from academic libraries. Public libraries do not stock the more technical literature.
Those students are not really our responsibility. All educational institutions are supposed to provide library services for their own students. But the system does not work. People who are working often study far from their institutions. They cannot visit the libraries in question. The public library at home is much more convenient.

Who are these students? Most of them are teachers, and some study community health services. Last year we had two students who studied physiotherapy (long distance studies) in Germany. During the summer, when they approached their final exams, they occupied the library at all hours in sommer time. We even gave them the keys to use the library on weekends. At the end we felt they were our students. (Students)

This is also a form of access. Our public library is more than a local service – it is a link to the whole world of learning, teaching and education. We use quite a lot of time to help these students. They come to us with long book lists from their syllabus, but the entry are often incomplete or full of mistakes. The average academic teacher does not take the need for precise bibliographic entries seriously. He feels he has better things to do – and sends the problem to us. But one of these days he will get a letter from Norway...?

We also have users who take up their studies after they retire. Many universities offer special courses for seniors. We have retired people who study mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. Some of them just borrow books from us, while others use our reading room.

Exams in the library

One could almost say that Ask public library is becoming the new University of Ask. Our library is now certified for exams. This means that adult studying at home can sit for exams in the library. Last year we arranged twelve individual exams – in various technical subjects.

The exams are conducted through the internet. We get the name of the candidate from the institution that organizes the exam. The person calls us to set a suitable time. When he or she arrives, we have to check their identification. Then they get a PC, read the questions and write the answers online. We serve as supervisors – no visitors, no mobile phones, and so on. For each such exam we get a moderate fee.

Access and design

I feel that in the last years we have become more aware of the users and their concrete needs. During the planning we worked closely with a library architect and spent a lot of effort on small details. And I see that furniture, color and interior design are very important for public libraries. (Firstfloor)

Our users report that they like the style and the atmosphere of the new library. This means that access is not a purely technical issue. People want to feel welcome. (Children) To be accessible we have to be friendly and helpful as persons. And we also have to express our care through the physical environment. (Secondfloor)

Library staff

Let me finish with a few words about our staff. When I say that everybody should be welcome, I am also thinking of the people we employ. In Norway, the labor market is more and more competitive. Employers select people who are experienced, educated, healthy - and 100% fluent in Norwegian. This means that many people find it hard to return after a period of illness or unemployment – or to get a job in the first place. People who really want to work are excluded because they cannot compete – and end up on welfare.

This has become a real problem. The government gives many types of support to organizations that will employ such people. In my library I see this as an opportunity. We collaborate with several social agencies – and have engaged a number of persons as trainees. Some work part-time for a short period, others work full-time for several years.

If you come to visit us next year, you will meet a very mixed group. At the moment we employ one Vietnamese, one Kurd - from Iraq, two Norwegians – as well as a talkative Polish librarian. Earlier trainees include a lady from Iceland, a student from Spain, a woman from Palestine and two more Iraqis. Some problems must of course be solved. I have discovered that some Muslim men are not accustomed to female bosses – or Bozenas. But this is a global world. If we work together, plan together and tell lots of jokes, people from all countries can learn to work as a team.

I hope this has given you a picture of our work – and thank you for your attention (Teddy)