Library in the Lens: Event Location

The Central Library for Adults of the Uman City Centralized Library System has created an event location “Library in the Lens”, which is dedicated to the art of photography.

The event location has three photo zones, and also conducts weekly workshops on photo editing for library visitors.

Initially, the organizers were going to create a multimedia laboratory “Medi@-Libr@ry” on the basis of the Central Library for Adults, which aimed at developing users’ technical creativity and would include a large number of different services, from graphic design courses to cartography and video editing. But in the process of communicating with the community and coaches, the project team decided to narrow the idea to one area – photography.

“We decided to create a service prototype in cooperation with the participants of the youth center “Library is a territory of success”, who kindly agreed to test it. In the process, we decided to involve professional photographers in the project, as well as young designers and students of art faculties, who can help with the photo zone arrangement”, says a coach Lyudmila Chupryak.

Now the trainings are held separately for different age categories and groups both in the morning and afternoon. The service is free of charge from September 1, 2020, but users also have the opportunity to make charitable contributions.

Project results

Lyudmila Chupryak says, ”We wanted to help users and guests of Uman to increase self-esteem, improve perception of the world around them and teach them to edit their own photos and selfies taken in the photo zones in the library.

Our service is used by various people. Among them there are young people who strive for development and different opinions; professional photographers who know how to work with people; housewives and designers-to-be with a desire to participate in the creation of the photo zone design.

Currently, the Central Library for Adults has organized three photo zone for selfies in different formats. Due to quarantine restrictions, we decided to replace photo editing trainings with handouts. To do this, we have created three booklets: “How to take the right selfie”, “Top programs for editing selfies” and “Video as a library service”, which we give to users of selfie areas, and people both inside and outside the library.