Libraries of Ukraine – Together We Can Do More!
Foreword by Nicolette A. Dobrowolski, Director of Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries
“On March 7, 2024, in a talk on the libraries of Ukraine, Dr. Tetiana Hranchak described the Ukraine libraries community as one that provides a safe place to seek out knowledge and informed conversation, two pillars that form a structure holding up the very soul of what a library is and should be. Preserving and providing access to information and cultural history can help people feel connected to their past, contextualize and value their present, and provide a grounding effect, a foundation, to participate in their own future and the future of humanity. Librarians play a strong role in leading such efforts to safeguard our histories and to provide safe and welcoming communities.”
by Dr. Tetiana Hranchak, member of the Board of the Ukrainian Library Association, D. Sc. in Social Communications, Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs in Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Ukraine is suffering. Our communities are being ruined. Our souls are devastated. But we are alive. On February 24, 2022, the Ukrainians suffered a powerful blow from Russia. Nowadays, the Ukrainian people are facing destruction and heavy losses. Our communities and people's lives are being destroyed, and we need support and protection more than ever. Libraries, created thousands of years ago to support the vitality of communities, nowadays help Ukrainians to survive in war conditions and provide physical, informational, psychological, and spiritual protection.
Here are the many ways libraries support the community:
- Libraries are bomb shelters. From the first days of the war many libraries are providing physical protection. For example, Central City Library for Children in Mykolaiv is a 24/7 bomb shelter that can accommodate up to 180 people at a time.
- Libraries are volunteer centers. Many have become hubs of volunteer activity. Librarians, library patrons and community members are cooking dinners for those who fought and are being treated at local hospitals. Together with volunteer organizations, librarians and community residents collect and make clothes and products for refugees and for the front. In this way, a community of practice is being built – providing new members of the community who left their homes to escape the war with a sense of unity, social integration, and security. Along with weaving camouflage nets people are creating social nets in library spaces.
- Libraries are territories of goodness. Since 2014, when the first forced migrants from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea appeared, libraries took a proactive position. The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine adopted an Order to launch the project "Libraries as community support centers in the conditions of a war threat: working with internally displaced people." According to the Order, libraries participate in helping those in need and actively participating in information, legal, and educational work.
- Libraries help displaced people. Cooperating with state authorities, charity foundations, state structures, employment centers, psychological, social and legal services, libraries help displaced people find temporary housing and work, get information about their rights and ways to use them, renew social ties, get access to the Internet and computer equipment to continue studying, attend language courses, improve and acquire IT skills, and more.
- Libraries are hubs of digital education. About 6,000 libraries joined the national digital literacy campaign in the Ukraine. Signing of the Memorandum on Cooperation between the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Library Association, many libraries have become digital education hubs.
- Libraries are media literacy training centers. An important direction of libraries is to increase the level of media literacy and the formation of critical thinking of the population, essential during this era of the information war. Many libraries organize lectures, trainings, webinars, and participate in media literacy weeks. Libraries joined the nationwide media literacy project from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine called "Study and distinguish info-media literacy." One of the latest initiatives supported by the Ukrainian Library Association is the recording of a series of conversations with famous Ukrainians about information hygiene and its role in everyday life through the lens of cultural, historical, and personal experience.
- Libraries are sites of remembering. It is where the memories of the past are housed. Ukrainian Institute of National Memory noted that this war has brought up issues related to cultural characteristics, spiritual values and ideals, which determine the uniqueness of a community and its identity. Library is a memory institution that collects and preserves documented historical and cultural heritage. As such, libraries are integral to the politics of memory, helping people protect their values and identity.
The libraries help to create a single coherent consensus of historical memory through their attention to both verbal and visual components of information. They use nation-building terminology and motivating symbols, sharing information in a balanced way. Librarians understand that language matters. For example, it was NOT a ‘Civil War’ but a ‘Ukrainian Revolution.’ It was NOT the ‘Great Patriotic’ but the ‘Second World War.’ Libraries have moved beyond the colonization discourse to recall these events using the correct terminology, not from the Russian imperial narrative, but from a life-affirming connotation.
Ideally, libraries' memorial, socio-political, cultural, educational, and other activities must be directed to the formation and establishment of national memory, contribute to information security of the state, and help its integration into the world humanitarian space.
In addition to the promotion of Ukrainian books and culture in general, there are numerous events of Ukrainian libraries which commemorate the Holodomor, those who died during the Stalinist repressions, and the Chornobyl tragedy. These events combat the myth about the USSR as a country liberator and pre-World War Two as a golden age and restore the truth. Continuing this work requires considerable effort and is part of the reason that libraries are under attack.
Ukrainian culture is under the gun. Many libraries’ funds were lost, and buildings were damaged. 700 public and university libraries are damaged or destroyed and more than 4,000 are under occupation. An important achievement of the Ukrainian Library Association was the establishment of interaction with partners for reconstruction and the preservation of library and information resources, assistance to libraries to maintain service, and organization of efforts to restore damaged library buildings and lost library collections. At the same time, the American Library Association, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Library Association, launched the Fund for the Support of Ukrainian Libraries.
The war changed the contours of our libraries, our spaces were transformed into virtual worlds. As evidence, one library in Ukraine, even against the backdrop of the others, has experienced a real mutation and was reborn into a new library. The wandering library. The Luhansk Regional Universal Scientific Library was twice under occupation and twice lost its building and funds. In 2014, leaving occupied Luhansk, the institution found refuge in Starobilsk. As a result of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation on February 24, the library was officially relocated and placed in the Cherkasy Regional Youth Library named after Symonenko. Librarians scattered across different parts of Ukraine and stretched to the West, to the Center, and a little to the South. Still today it remains alive as a wandering library project. The librarians recognize that where there are people, there is work. Their goal is to develop a model of library service that is flexibly implemented by migrant librarians in different parts of Ukraine.
I am proud to say that among all the changes, what remains unchangeable is the dedication of librarians to their readers and the library work, the belief in victory and the capacity of the library community.
Interested in learning more? “Resilience Against All Odds: Libraries in Ukraine” is an exhibit which will be hosted at Soule Branch Library, 101 Springfield Rd, Syracuse, NY from March 26 to April 23, 2024. It will feature the stories of 17 libraries from across Ukraine, drawn from surveys conducted with librarians from these institutions. It will showcase the ways in which they have been negatively impacted by the war, as well as how they have overcome these challenges to re-vitalize their collections, provide psychological support to their community, become volunteer centers, host refugees, and safeguard Ukrainian cultural heritage while it is under threat.
About Dr. Tetiana Hranchak:
Tetiana Hranchak is a historian with a Ph.D. in History, a Doctor of Sciences in Social Communications, a Professor, an expert of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and a member of the Board of the Ukrainian Library Association. Hranchak's research interests include issues related to political and cultural communication, libraries' participation in the implementation of the politics of memory, preservation and transmission of historical memory, formation of critical media literacy and countering information manipulation and propaganda. She is the author of the monograph "Library and Political Communication" (Kyiv, 2012) and a scientific and methodological guide "Libraries Participation in the Implementation of the Politics of National Memory" (Kyiv, 2021). During the Fall of 2023, Dr. Hranchak joined the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor. She is currently conducting research and teaching a course "History of Ukraine in European Context." Before joining Syracuse University, Dr. Hranchak was an Adjunct Instructor at the School of Information Sciences of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Summer 2023), where she taught a course "Library and the Politics of Memory." Before the University of Illinois, she researched for 20 years at the VI Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (2003-2023). She also has 10 years of experience teaching at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts.