The National Library of Armenia (NLA) will join The European Library as a Full participant* in January 2008, along with 7 other National libraries of Europe.

The project FUMAGABA will be managed with financial support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation <http://www.sdc.admin.ch/en/Home> and will run until July 2009. A Sharing Knowledge Workshop, jointly coordinated by the Swiss National Library <http://www.nb.admin.ch/> and The European Library, is scheduled for March 2008; FUMAGABA ’s objective is to enlarge The European Library full partnership by adding the national libraries of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Azerbaijan.

We have taken this opportunity to ask David Sargsyan, Director of the National Library of Armenia, to report about this collaborative boost for his organisation and the NLA’s cooperation programme in general. David joined the NLA as Director in 1998 and currently manages 360 people in the library.

The European Library: “How does the National Library of Armenia cooperate internationally?”

David Sargsyan: “The partnership established between the National Library of Armenia and The European Library is, of course, very important to our organisation. The NLA has been a member of CENL since 2006, when it started its cooperation with The European Library as a Basic Participant. Joining as a Full Participant from January 2008 will be a great opportunity for us. It will expand our already existing programmes of cooperation across Europe and Asia; the NLA has been a member of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and institutions) since 2007, and the Library Assembly of Eurasia, which gives us a collaborative partnership with all Commonwealth of Independent States .

Additionally, the NLA also collaborates closely with the National Library of Iran and the Scientific Technology Library of Iran; the NLA has the password to the server of the Scientific Technology Library of Iran, which allows us to access the scientific information of more than 20 countries collaborating with Iran.

However, our collaborative activities remain within the library environment and the NLA does not have exchange programmes with archives or museums, which are different clusters under the Ministry of Culture of Armenia.”

The European Library: “How do you foresee the opportunities offered by the NLA full partnership?”

David Sargsyan: “The integration within The European Library as a Full participant is of course prestigious for the NLA; it increases our information field. Additionally, this partnership gives us a good opportunity to preserve both past and present cultural heritage and to improve our cooperation with some of the greatest libraries in Europe. It also gives us responsibilities, which we unfortunately have difficulties handling satisfactorily at the moment.”

Source: European Library Newsletter

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.