Colombian writer Velia Vidal Romero was the special guest at the inaugural event of the first satellite library Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS). She participated in the meeting ‘Dialogues from the library’, with the conference of her work ‘Aguas de estuario’.
“I feel very excited to be here at the University, particularly in this satellite library. I think it is a wonderful initiative because, first of all, I am a promoter of reading and I celebrate every time books are brought closer to the public… there is nothing better than books to bring happiness and what a joy that my book is part of this collection!”, commented Velia Vidal Romero, writer.
The objective of this project is to create new spaces so that the experience of books can be enjoyed in other parts of the university campus and thus de-territorialize the library. The idea is to provide new alternatives for access to reading in other parts of the central campus. The satellite library is located on the fourth floor of the Bienestar Estudiantil building.
The satellite libraries will mark the rise of innovative ideas that bring readers closer to the experience of belonging to a library that offers different spaces for co-creation, group work with digital resources, workshops, reading rooms, music rooms, newsletters with updates and reading recommendations. In addition, it is the pilot to think about digital lending in other parts of the city, gamifying spaces and opening opportunities for literacy, love and passion for reading.
The collection with which the library was inaugurated is entitled ‘Latin American Narrators’ and its selection was part of a rigorous process to show literature from a feminine, ancestral, different point of view, a little outside the academy.
“We have a collection of living Latin American women narrators who will guide us to their predecessors. We have a collection that, as Virginia Woolf said, to answer the particular question of what makes a good novel, ‘has to put the knife between the seams of the leather with which most of us are covered. It has to make us perhaps uncomfortable and certainly alert’, because it is designed for a broad public that goes to books to think, to feel or simply to sit in them silently,” said Carolina Romero Saavedra, academic coordinator of the School of Languages.
Among the books in the satellite library are works by more than 116 authors such as Velia Vidal, Camila Sosa Bichada, Fernanda Trías, among others, as well as nearly 500 books, both digital and physical. The digital works are available through QR codes, which are housed in the booklets that are being distributed at the University or in the following pdf:
https://www.uis.edu.co/webUIS/es/rss/imagenes/noticia_1153_15229_2.pdf “This collection will be on display between February and June. It will also have an itinerant character, so that people will be able to enjoy it in other spaces. The loan of the books is the same as the loan of books in the central library, the person must only be identified as a member of the university community. For digital books must have to request the password to enter the library system,” said Pedro Antonio García Obando, director of the UIS Library.