Public Library in Aleksandrów (Poland) and Viana Public Library (Spain) have been engaged in a sistership for six years now. This is one of the most succesful sisterships in the program, having developed a wide range of activities in cooperation throughout these years. We’ve asked Iñaki Suso and Justyna Bździuch, responsibles of the libraries engaged, to share their experience.

Iñaki Suso, Public library of Viana (Spain)

“Public library of Viana has been actively collaborating with the library of Aleksandrów for more than 6 years in different activities to encourage reading and using libraries. This collaboration has enabled the knowledge of our libraries and our cities by our respective users, through photographic exhibitions and children’s drawings, reading suggestions, etc. In these years, Viana’s public interest in Polish literature has increased significantly, for example, thanks to the creation of a permanent point of interest, regularly fed with new works by Polish authors, such as Zygmunt Miloszewski, Andrzej Sapkowski, Olga Tokarczuk, etc.

This collaboration, developed thanks to the NAPLE Sister Libraries program, has been very important in the internationalization process being carried out by the public library of Viana (Erasmus + program, etc.). This is one of the cornerstones of the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan of the public library, which intends to continue in the coming years, since it is a very beneficial collaboration for its users.”

Justyna Bździuch, Public Library in Aleksandrów (Poland)

“Public Library in Aleksandrów (Poland) cooperates with Viana Public Library (Spain) under the NAPLE Sister Libraries program. Our joint activities are for example photo exhibitions on various topics (with picturs of the towns of Viana and Aleksandrów, exhibition of children’s art works “My favourite book”, photo exhibition “Animated books” – “sleeveface” photos, about cultures of our regions). Our next joint activity is presenting statements made by Polish and Spanish readers in different ages and and from different professions starting with the words “I like read books because…”. It turns out that everyone reads for similar reasons.

Thanks to our cooperation, we can exchange experiences and ideas for new activities for readers. Notes about our activities are posted on the Internet and local press. Thanks to this cooperation, the users of the Public Library in Aleksandrów read more books from Spanish authors and our library bought some new books. We also promote the artistic talents of our users (mainly children and young people) and we can see art works from Spanish children. Cooperation with this Spanish library also allowed our library for greater progress and increase in the number of readers.”