PINEHAS NAKAZIKOLETTA Shivute (29) was one of the young librarians from Africa selected to participate in the Initiative for Young African Library Innovators (IYALI) 2020 conference, which took place in the United States last year.
Sharing her experiences and the many plans lined up for the year, Shivute says she will use the knowledge she gained from the IYALI conference to implement several programmes and activities. She wishes to develop local libraries and attract more children to start visiting libraries more often.
Shivute was among the successful participants from four African countries of Namibia, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, who took part in the programme in partnership with the Public Library Association (PLA).
According to Shivute, the initiative aimed to expose emerging public library innovators in Africa to professional learning experiences and new ideas from other countries.
“By attending the IYALI conference, I have grown knowledgeably. I captured from other fellow participants that African library young leaders should not expect libraries to develop to the level of developed countries in a short period, but what we need to change is our attitudes and the way of doing things,” says Shivute.
This year, Shivute plans to visit different communities to identify challenges facing public libraries or librarians.
She also wants to look for specific groups with interest in libraries that she can work closely with to implement different library programmes.
She adds that as much as she had many lined up programmes and ideas that could benefit all the communities, she would like to know if community members have resources such as money to implement programmes needed to develop the community and the country.
“We need to find ideas on how to market and advocate our library activities with dialogue videos by using the devices that we already have. This is by formulating videos using software to create quality videos, and creating a YouTube channel to reach out to many viewers,” explains Shivute.
She adds that most libraries now capture videos and pictures to upload on different social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), which is a good platform.
Shivute is known for introducing a library at Hardap Correctional Facility, whereby she trained 38 officers and 36 offenders on basic computer training so far.
In 2018, Shivute was selected as part of the 17 librarians from 14 regions the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture selected to be trainer of trainees in Namibia.
She also created a manual card circulation for books, designed forms for statistics of books issued and registered members. She also trained two offenders and two officers on how to administer the library.
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