Libraries for children: Let’s share our experiences’ - library experience and reading in schools

The ‘Libraries for children: Let’s share our experiences’ event, jointly organised by the Primary Education Board of Athens, East Attica and Piraeus, the ejournal bookbook.gr and the National Documentation Centre (EKT), was held on 4 April 2019 at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF). The event was a unique opportunity for teachers to share experiences and discuss how the library and reading experience can be included in the everyday life of the school and the children.

The event was held under the City of Athens’ initiative "Athens 2018 - World Book Capital" and was attended by expert information scientists, librarians, sociologists and specialists from education and culture communities.

First to speak was Ioanna Sarantopoulou, Head of the EKT Digital Library, who presented the infrastructures and digital scientific and cultural content developed by EKT to meet the needs of the digital school and higher education. Teachers in Primary and Secondary education searching for focused digital content to enrich the content of their teaching can exploit the educational content repositories developed by EKT and the cultural portal searchculture.gr. Teachers with research concerns can use the National Archive of PhD Theses, EKT epublishing service and the scientific content portal openarchives.gr. These services can not only aid teachers in professional self-improvement and academic development, but also assist in the digital literacy of students.

EKT has developed admirable collaboration with the educational community, sharing its considerable expertise with school libraries for 20 years. To date more than 920 school libraries have been helped and utilise ABEKT, a software that helps in cataloging and managing library material.