Pasvalys Marius Katiliskis Public Library, Lithuania

Impact Assessment Results

Impact study results, January 2013: high resolution | low resolution [PDF]

Library’s ICT service for farmers attracts new funding

Pasvalys Marius Katiliskis Public Library’s Libr-A mobile information and business support service for farmers inspired the Pasvalys municipality to include the library in their plans for local business and e-government service infrastructure development, and attracted major new funding.

The service, which includes ICT training, a desktop publishing centre and agricultural web-portal, was one of 14 innovative public library services funded by EIFL’s Public Library Innovation Programme (EIFL-PLIP) in November 2011. Here we present results of impact assessment conducted by the library a year later, in November 2012.

Read more in the document titled Impact Study Results, above.

Previous project updates

Design, training, QR Codes - farmers excited by library's service

Fertile soil online - library launches website for farmers

Library service brings farmers into mobile information era

Background to the new smartphone service for farmers

Community need

The primary community the new service intends to reach is farmers, beekeepers and others engaged in agriculture in Pasvalys district in northern Lithuania. A survey of rural librarians and agricultural associations found that farmers are increasingly using ICT, including smartphones, but do not know the full potential of smartphones. They also found that although there are a variety of sources of information for farmers, the information tends to be unsystematic and repetitive. As a result, farmers find it time-consuming to locate the right information. Similarly, there are farmers’ organizations in Pasvalys that provide websites, but farmers lack a common virtual space for communicating and sharing experience. The do not have an online market to advertise and sell their products.

The new service

Pasvalys Marius Katiliskis Public Library will train farmers to make the most of their smartphones and create a single website through which farmers can locate and share agricultural information and news. The website will include an online market for farmers to advertise and sell their produce. One of the applications the library will introduce the farmers to, and train them to use, is QR Code (bar coding) for identification of their business cards and product labels.

The library will market the new service through a network of 32 rural libraries, which will also train farmers to use the new service and register farmers and distributors of agricultural produce on the farmers’ online market. The result will be that farmers will at any time, and in any place, have access to a single, easy to access source of information and marketing. To further boost farmers’ business, the library will set up a desktop publishing service where farmers can design and print business cards, product labels and marketing materials.

Working together

Partners include the Pasvalys District Municipality, which will help market the service to local media; the Lithuanian Farmers’ Union (Pasvalys Department) and the Pasvalys beekeepers’ association, Bičiulis, which will mobilize farmers and beekeepers. The Joniškėlis Research Station, which produces seeds of cereals, peas and perennial grasses and performs soil surveys, will provide scientific information for the website.

Replicating success

Pasvalys Marius Katiliskis Public Library is replicating the successful AgroLib-Ja service of Public Library Radislav Nikčević which serves farmers in central Serbia. Read more about the successful AgroLib-Ja service.

If you want to know more about this project, contact:

Rita Bedulyte
Pasvalys Marius Katiliskis Public Library
Vytauto Didziojo 6/1
39149 Pasvalys, Lithuania

Tel: +370 451 34319
e-mail: rita.beril@gmail.com

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