During the IFLA World Library and Information Congress, on 27 August, the selection of videos for the IFLA Metropolitan Libraries Short Film Award 2018 were projected at the Expo Pavilion / Tech Lab, in front of about 40 people.

On the same day, the winner was announced:

Books in the Cloud

produced by Beit Ariela "Shaar Zion" Library (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Due to visa issues, the librarians which produced the winning video were not able to attend, but they will use the prize money – offered by the Free Library of Philadelphia and Pikes Peak Library District – to travel to the next World Library and Information Congress in Athens.

15 videos from 10 countries

All the concurring videos are available for movie nights in your library. The total length is about 70 minutes. You can watch them at the YouTube channel A Corto di Libri:

  1. Urban Art – Rome
  2. What do users say about library services for people experiencing homelessness? / Sto kazu korisnici knjižničnih usluga za osobe s iskustvom života u Beskućništvu? – Zagreb
  3. Books are my weapon – New York City
  4. The place of the stories / Il posto delle storie – Rome
  5. Rome City Libraries living culture / Biblioteche di Roma cultura viva – Rome
  6. Little moments big impact – Brisbane
  7. Bucsity – Milan
  8. Moment with a book – Prague
  9. Wanderlust – Milan
  10. Sing a song for public libraries / Halk Kütüphanem İçin Söyle – Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Eskişehir, Hatay, Istanbul, Konya, Şahinbey
  11. Project Library Planet / киноальманах планета библиотек – Oslo
  12. Libraries make Guangzhou a nicer place / 图书馆使广州在更好的地方 – Guangzhou
  13. Buccinasco Public Library / Biblioteca di Buccinasco – Milan
  14. Martin Luther King, the broken dream? / Martin Luther King, le rêve brisé? – Lyon
  15. Books in the cloud – Tel Aviv

From Turkey to Kuala Lumpur

Sing a Song for Public Libraries PosterOne of the participating video has a special story to tell.

The project Sing a folk song for Public Libraries was launched and completed in 2017 with the goal of raising awareness about public libraries in Turkish society, using the power of YouTube and video.

Inspired from the popular project Play for nature, the board members of the Public Libraries Platform and Erol Yılmaz, professor of librarianship with a passion for Turkish folk music, decided to gather and train a number of librarians to sing a Turkish folk song. They all entered the recording studio in the same day and the result is a fantastic video:

which was watched by over 11.600 people.

After participating to "A Corto di Libri" and being selected for the IFLA Metropolitan Libraries Short Film Award 2018, Erol Yılmaz (in the photo to the above) brought the project to the IFLA Congress in Kuala Lumpur as a poster.