The Šiauliai County Povilas Višinskis Public Library (ŠAVB) stands out in Lithuania and beyond for its international strategy focused on mobility, partnerships, and innovative education. Through EU-funded programs like Erasmus+ and Creative Europe, library staff continuously expand their competencies and bring fresh ideas to life, ultimately helping reshape libraries into inclusive, dynamic community spaces.
ŠAVB holds two Erasmus+ accreditations – in adult and youth education. These have enabled over 20 mobility activities in countries such as Italy, Hungary, Finland, Greece, Denmark, Malta, Spain and others focusing on AI in learning, emotional intelligence, and sensory education. Returning participants share their knowledge and often redesign services or even institutional priorities.
For youth, ŠAVB organizes international trainings on inclusive reading, special needs support, and gamified education. In 2024, the training Let’s Play: Empowering Librarians with Gamification Strategies for Youth Education brought librarians from six countries to Šiauliai to explore how gamification can engage young readers. Earlier projects, like Dungeons and Librarians: the Quest for Gamified Reading; Dungeons and Librarians: Quest for Gamified Reading Promotion II, inspired escape rooms and meme games across Europe. Slovenian librarians even created a new board game based on ideas from Šiauliai.
In May 2025, ŠAVB hosted the training Bridging Gaps: Empowering Librarians to Support Youth with Special Needs which emphasized the library’s mission to be emotionally safe and inclusive. A key method introduced was sensorine reading, developed by ŠAVB since 2018 and now used across Lithuania. Inspired by U.S. libraries, it helps neurodivergent youth experience stories through touch, sound, smell, and visuals. The 2025 project Heroes Unleashed: Implementing a Sensory Reading Program in European Public Libraries brings it to libraries in Slovenia, Portugal, and Ukraine, including war-affected children.
The library acts as a platform for contemporary art and cultural critique. The 2024 artist symposium Book Transformation gathered 11 professional creators from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Sweden to turn discarded books into installations exploring overconsumption and sustainability. The ongoing project What Connects Sosnowsky’s Hogweed, a Raccoon, and Artificial Intelligence? explores AI as an invasive species through an ecological and cultural lens, sparking dialogue between artists and scientists.
What is more, ŠAVB develops services inspired by successful European models. Its Library of Things, the first in Lithuania, allows users to borrow items like telescopes and instruments. The board game Populistas, adapted from Latvia, teaches media literacy and critical thinking. Meanwhile, their Battle of the Books reading challenge—based on a U.S. model—has already inspired hundreds of students to read and compete.
By combining international collaboration, social responsibility, and creative risk-taking, ŠAVB redefines what a library can be: a cultural, educational, and societal innovator.
Photos and text by Šiauliai County Povilas Višinskis Public Library
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