Veria Central Public Library

Greece

Contact 

Ioannis Trohopoulos
Emmanouel Garoufallou
Rania Siatri

http://www.libver.gr
http://www.libver.gr/en/

The Veria Central Public Library was founded as a local public authority in 1952, and is one of the major Greek Public Libraries, legally known as ‘Central’ since it serves the whole region of Central Macedonia including via bookmobile services. It comes administratively under the Ministry of Education but is also linked with a large network of cultural institutions.

Veria has participated in a number of EU funded operations: MOBILE Libraries programme (1994-1996), Public Libraries Development Project-Phare programme (1997-1998), PUBLICA-Libraries programme (1997-1999), ISTAR (1997-2000) and PULMAN-IST (2001-2003). Veria also participated in the Co-ordination Action under FP6 (2003-2005), concerning digital best practices development for public libraries. In both PULMAN and CALIMERA, Veria was responsible, amongst other things for maintaining the project. Currently the library participates in projects UNTOLD (2007-2009), ENTITLE (2007-2009).
Veria was responsible for the development of a portal for all Greek Public Libraries funded by the National Information Society fund. The portal is currently live and acts as the main gateway for information on Greek public libraries with sections and contact information for many other kind of libraries. Veria was Lead Partner in the LIGHT Operation, funded under Interreg III C East, the overall objective of which was to provide Public Libraries and other relevant institutions with a platform of cooperation, methodologies and know-how in using ICT to contribute to their regional development policies in the area of cultural heritage. The library is experimenting with new social networking tools (use of Flickr, development of podcast stories for children etc) and has works together contact with a centre of expertise in the USA to develop its expertise in Digital Storytelling.

Key individuals

Ioannis Trohopoulos (ioannis@libver.gr), BA in Law, (University of Thessaloniki, 1982), MA in Public law (University of Thessaloniki, 1985) and in Library and Information Studies (University of Wales, Great Britain, 1990) has been Director of Veria Central Public Library since 1990. From 1991 to 1996 he was lectured (part-time) on Library Automation and Management at the Department of Library Studies, University of Thessaloniki. In 1996 through a scholarship from the United States Information Agency he went and worked for four months in the USA. He has been local coordinator for five EU projects, the MOBILE (under the Libraries program) the PLDP (under the Phare program) the ISTAR project (EU funded under Directorate-General XVI), PULMAN, under FP5 program and CALIMERA, under FP6. He has recently completed work in the role of Project Co-ordinator of on the LIGHT Operation, funded under Interreg III C East. Ioannis Trohopoulos participates actively in the debate for the development of a National Strategy for the Information Society and often, presents papers at national and international conferences.

Dr. Emmanouel Garoufallou (garoufallou@yahoo.co.uk), holds a PhD on Digital Libraries and Electronic Information Resources from the Department of Information and Communications at the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), UK and an MA in Information and Library Management focuses on the Internet from the Department of Library and Information Science at Northumbria University at Newcastle upon-Tyne, UK. He holds a first degree from the Department of Library Science and Information Systems (LSIS) at Technological Educational Institution of Thessaloniki (TEI-Th), Greece. He works as lecturer at the LSIS of TEI-Th. He has published more than 20 research papers, presented his work in more than 25 conferences, and has published various reports, teaching materials and handbooks on a variety of LIS issues. He was a guest editor at the peer-reviewed journal Education for Information, for a special double issue on LIS in Greece. He has been an Associate Partner with the Central Public Library of Veria since 2004. He is also director of DELTOS Research Group which currently carries out research on the use of libraries by migrant communities, minority groups and visually impaired people.

Dr. Dimitris Protopsaltou (dimproto@yahoo.com) is a senior researcher at MIRALab, University of Geneva. He received his PhD in Social and Economic Science (specialism Information Systems) from the University of Geneva in 2007. He is a University of Manchester (UMIST) graduate holding a B.Eng in Software Engineering and an M.Sc in Technology Management from the Manchester School of Management. He is an Associate Partner with the Central Public Library of Veria (since 1996); He contributed to the EU projects ISTAR, PULMAN, PULMAN XT and CALIMERA with the development of the web infrastructure.

Aspasia Tasiopoulou (aspasia@libver.gr), has a diploma from Department of Library Studies, Thessaloniki. She has been working in the library since 1994 and she was actively involved in all the EU projects described above. She is head of outreach activities and responsible for public relations.

Giorgos Bikas (geobikas@libver.gr) has a degree in computing. He has been working under contract with the library since 1999. He has been responsible for all technical work in developing the IT infrastructure of the library and also local technical coordinator for ISTAR, PULMAN, CALIMERA and LIGHT where his responsibilities have included web development, developing seminars on IT for the public. This year he joined the library as a permanent staff member and is currently working on the use of Web 2.0 tools in the context of web site development and the preparation of new services, based on social networking.

Dr Rania Siatri (rsiatri@yahoo.gr) holds a PhD on “Information seeking in an electronic environment” from the Department of Information and Communications at the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and an MA in Information and Library Management from the Department of Library and Information Science at Northumbria University at Newcastle upon-Tyne, UK.She holds a first degree from the Department of Library Science and Information Systems (LSIS) at Technological Educational Institution of Thessaloniki (TEI-Th), Greece. She publishes many research papers, presents her work in conferences, and publishes various reports, teaching materials and handbooks on a variety of LIS issues. She works as principal lecturer at the LSIS of TEI-Th. She was a guest editor at the peer-reviewed journal Education for Information, for a special double issue on LIS in Greece. She has been an Associate Partner with the Central Public Library of Veria. She also works for the research group of DELTOS. Her research focuses on lifelong learning, information seeking, information retrieval, evaluation of services, the use of libraries by migrant communities, minority groups and visually impaired people.