Nataliya Miroshnychenko is not your stereotypical librarian; she spends more time blogging then shuffling through the card catalog. Nataliya manages internet services for visually impaired people at the Kherson Oblast Universal Scientific Library. During her 25-year career as a librarian, she has worked at various library departments, from the main collection and periodicals sections, through the local history and marketing departments, to the regional information center. Nowadays, her most important tool as a librarian is the internet.
Nataliya uses new technologies to create information products with local content tailored to her library visitors and the community. Recently she created a blog called Bookcase where the visually impaired can listen to literary classics and works by local writers. She also created a Google map of locations accessible to disabled people in Kherson, Kherson Without Barriers [8]. Library patrons are also involved in keeping the map updated: they tag locations as they discover them and Nataliya moderates the whole process. “The library is a barometer of community life,” Nataliya says. “This barometer currently indicates that it is necessary for both librarians and patrons to master modern information and communication technologies.”
In addition to helping the visually impaired get the information they need from the internet, she also maintains her blog, Library Without Barriers [9], which she uses to promote her library and share library-related resources among her colleagues. “My experience in marketing helped me realize that blogs are an effective, low-cost information and marketing tool,” she says. Nataliya is a self-taught IT user. She learned by doing, first creating the library’s website, then mastering web content management skills. She is also involved in maintaining the regional information web portal ArtKavun [10], a blog about “book crossing” in Kherson (Free Book Exchange [11]) that promotes book sharing and exchange in public places, and also contributes to the blog The Architectural and Aesthetic Face of Kherson [12]. Nataliya is currently focusing on the technical aspects of podcasting, an important service for working with visually impaired visitors.
Nataliya not only uses information technologies in her everyday work, she also teaches her patrons how to use computers and the internet to achieve personal goals. “After they have gained computer skills themselves, patrons usually start bringing their friends and family to teach them, and soon everybody is benefiting. Then they start working together and organizing into special interest clubs and citizens’ organizations to benefit the whole community. All I have to do is give them the tools and the skills,” concludes Nataliya.