Readers are Leaders at the East-Kazakhstan Regional Public Library!

Abstract

The East-Kazakhstan Regional Public Library named A.S.Pushkin is located in Ust-Kamenogorsk – an administrative center of the East Kazakhstan. There are over 11000 unemployed youth, most of them are representatives of villages and settlers from China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan. This youth don’t possess ICT skills, which reduces their chances of employment.

We wanted to train unemployed youth to use ICT for improvement of their lives. So was born the project “IT yurt”, realized in 2011-2012 in partnership with PLIP/EIFL (eifl.net). We performed basic trainings of MCWord, MCExcel, MCInternet, seminars "Using e-government", "Job searching", "Basics of business planning". We trained 244 unemployed and those who were under the dismissal, they got 483 teaching hours: 74 trainings/seminars (including in Kazakh). 54 participants found a job.

The project inspired us for its copying in the rural libraries. In 2012 started the project "Rural Library’s online centers" with technical support of UNDP in Kazakhstan. Were opened 32 rural online centers with necessary ICT equipment and established satellite stations in the villages where were not telecommunication infrastructure. Rural librarians received ICT trainings and became trainers for teaching of villages residents.

We strongly promoted the project in mass media, shared about successful stories, provided interviews on local television. The local authorities assured in the importance of project, became to open online centers in other rural libraries. So...