Kronborg Castle and Louisina Museum of Modern Art

The Entrance Through the Gates



Kronborg From The Top Roof of Elsinore Library



What a day!  By far one of my favorite days of the trip.  We began with a train ride north to Helsingor to tour the city library and cultural center.  This is an impressive place but the real sight is Kronborg Castle.  This is a UNESCO world heritage site and is absolutely amazing.  This is the place where Shakespeare set his magnificant play Hamlet and upon arrival one can see why.  From the medieval town you can look across the water and see Sweden right across the bay.  It is suprising how close and how clearly you can see Sweden. 



The Courtyard at Kronborg



The Chapel at Kronborg



After Kronborg a couple of us from our group headed down to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art which is probably the most beautiful art museum I have ever seen!  The grounds, the building, the sculpture gardens, the sea, Sweden, the art, the nature, all make this one of the most amazing places I have ever been.  It is just south of Helsingor and also sits right on the water where you can still see across to Sweden.  The outdoor sculpture garden that lies by the bay is just amazing and it would be easy to wander amongst the trees, sculptures, and trails for hours and hours.

Inside the museum is just as amazing.  This is a modern art museum so there are many artists recognizable since the early 1900's.  I saw a few Andy Warhol's, a Pollack, some Picasso's, and a ManRay.  There were also a number of amazing artists work that I was unfamiliar with but completely impressed. 

I was able to share these that I took on my camera but now I am officially down to only using phone for pictures so I won't be able to share those until back in the States.  It is Saturday now--been such a busy week it was hard to post--and we are winding down the trip.  We have today and tomorrow free so I will be trying to finish my long list of things to see :)

I hope all is well back home and I cant wait to see you all and share my experiences with you.'

Lots of love.

Library Tours

Copenhagen City Library

 This week we have reached the portion of the trip where we have begun touring libraries around Copenhagen.  Our tour is comprised of about eight libraries.  This is a real delight and treat because it is difficult to arrange these private tours since librarians are such busy people.  It's not all books like everyone thinks!  But the libraries here in Denmark are absolutely inspirational for a library student. 

Fun Chairs For Children

Elsinore Library and Cultural Center

Their focus on innovation and making the library serve as a "third place" is so interesting.  The third place concept basically proposes that the library should be as central a place in people's lives as home and work, and inbetween home and work or work and home the library is a place to go.  Upon entering many of these libraries you immediately get that sense and see that the library members are using their library space abundantly.

The libraries here for the most part keep an architectural and engineering consultant on staff full time and they have adopted the idea that the libraries should always be changing.  So an interesting thing about the libraries here is that they experiment with and change the space often. 

Unfortunately I started having camera problems and have had to start using my phone and I cant upload online from it.  So I dont have all the pictures I would like to share, but if you're interested I have a ton of library pictures so you can see how they differ from the states.

xoxo




 



Sjov Weekend

Our long week of lectures ended with a lovely relaxing weeking full of "hygge," the Danish word for ultimate relaxation.
   

The Spanish Tapas place where I had lunch at the Food Market

Saturday was full of flea market shopping and doing touristy things.  It is customary especially in nice weather for people to set up booths along a long yellow wall surrounding the cemetary in the Norrboro neighborhood.  You can really find little flea markets set up all over the city on Saturdays so I began my day with some shopping.  In the afternoon I went to the food market which was one of my favorite places Ive been by far.  After a nice long lunch I went to the round tower which is a very interesting place.  The view of Copenhagen from the top is breathtaking and also dizzying.  You have a 360 degree view of the city and can see all the way to the sea where there is the enormous bridge to Sweden and a series of windmills in the water.   


View of the bridge to Sweden from the top of the Round Tower



The Round Tower



Saturday evening we went as a group to Tivoli, the second oldest amusement park in the world.  This is a beautiful place where you feel as though youve stepped back in time when you enter. We had a nice group dinner and then walked around and watched people ride the rides.  



Tivoli





On Sunday morning we all woke up very early to get to the train station to take the train North out of town to go the beach.  We went to one of our lecturers summer homes from last week.  This is a quaint little house that sits near the beach.  We had a nice long walk to the ocean through the woods and it was spectacular.  It was very nice to get out of the city and see some of the countryside.

Ole Harbo's Summer Home

Lectures at the Royal Library School

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We Deliver Knowledge...Library!

The past three days we have attended very interesting lectures on the Danish library system and library education at the library school.  Our speakers were very informative as well as inspirational.

On Wednesday our lectures began with professor Nan Dahlkild's presentation on library architecture.  He just published THE book on Scandinavian library architecture and is the premier voice on the subject.  His lecture was titled, "Is there a Nordic library model? Trends in Scandinavian library architecture and design."  Tracing the changes over time of how library buildings have changed not only here in Scandinavia but around the world as well is very interesting and when you actually look closely, one can see that as a building, place, and space the library has changed a lot. 

In the afternoon we met with Gerda Landgreen a former English teacher here in Denmark and she discussed "Teaching Students of Higher Prepartory Examination." This is a test which is used in Denmark to initiate the course of a students future--whether or not they should attend university, stay in the high school level, or go into an apprenticeship program learning something technical.  This gave us an interesting insight into the upper levels of the Danish education system and what young people are dealing with following secondary education.

On Thursday we went to school very early for 8am lectures. We built upon what we learned from Nan on Scandinavian architecture and looked at "Libraries and Urban Developent: The New Model for the Public Library" with an adjunct professors at the school Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegarrd Rasmussen.  These guys also work as consultants for architects designing libraries around the world and they get to travel around the globe visiting libraries. 

After our lecture on public library building, the former Dean of the library school spoke to us on the education system in Denmark. This was more of an overall look into the priorities of educators and the government and how they essentially build and socialize their citizens to not only participate in but appreciate their welfare state.  Denmark is a country where people can pay upto 75% of their income in taxes, yet they get much in return--free health care, education all the way up to PhD school, security if you loose your job, and other things like that.  This was a difficult conversation for many of my American colleagues because not only do we have a drastically different system but we also do not think in these terms of consensus and social responsibility.

Dr. Abullahi (right) and the Dean of the Library School

This happens to be the fifth year that NCCU has gone to the library school in Copenhagen and we had a nice reception at our lunch break celebrating the anniversary.  Dr. Abdullahi presented the school with a very nice plaque and a record of all of the pictures and papers from the previous groups.

The Plaque We Presented to the School

In the afternoon we heard a lecture from another former Dean of the school, Ole Harbo.  He lectured to us on "Library and Information Science Education in Scandinavia" which was interesting to hear about the contrasts between the program here and Denmark and what we are doing in the states.

On Friday we had our last day of lectures which were probably my favorite.  In the morning we had a librarian from the Copenhagen Public Libraries, Christina Wandi, speak about public libraries in Denmark.  This was an interesting topic for many of us because we were able to learn about the issues facing librarians on the ground here in Denmark.  While library school is a wonderful experience there are some things you just cannot learn in class.  Her perspective on the challenges and opportunities for librarians and users in our changing digital environment were very insightful.

Our last lecturer was from a professor at the school, Michael Kristiansson, who spoke about an emerging issue for library students.  He lectured on "Entrepreneurship Teaching at the Royal Library School."

In the evenings after school I have been exploring the city and eating lovely dinners.  My new favorite thing is the CityBike which are placed around the city.  You only have to put in a 5 dollar deposit and can keep the bike as long as you like.  It is a great way to see the city and so much fun!

The Library School Library

Miss you all and am thinking about you all! xoxo

Constitution Day



Copenhagen



The Danes celebrate their Constitution Day on June 5.  It is a national holiday so we did not have to go to the library school for lectures.  Instead I began my tour of the many fabulous museums of Copenhagen.  There are many old palaces with museums and my first stop was to the ruins of the first castle in Copenhagen.  On the way to find the ruins we just happened to stumble upon a speech being given by the Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.  Of course the speech was in Danish but it was interesting to see because of the contrast of this type of event in the US.  There was hardly any security at all, maybe ten policemen, and on Constitution Day government officials go around the city giving speeches. 



Prime Minister's Speech



After the speech we went on back to finding the ruins.  They were discovered in the early 1900's and sit underneath Christiansborg Palace where the Queen conducts royal ceremonies, banquets, and state dinners. 

Delicious Fish Cakes

After the ruins, I just happened to find the National Museum right around the corner.  After an amazing lunch I was only able to get through the first floor of the museum before it closes.  I know I have to plan for a whole day next time.  The exhibits I saw though were ancient and really blew my mind.  For the first time in my life I saw a mermaid skeleton and this really shocked me and now I think I know nothing!



The Mermaid Skeleton



At the museum we also discovered a fantastic place called the Library Bar which was opened in Copenhagen Plaza Hotel in the 1960's.  The hotel is a hundred years old and it feels like you've stepped back in time when you walk in. 

This was a nice holiday because we will be in lectures the rest of the week...even though we're in Copenhagen its back to the grind tomorrow :)

Love you all!

The Royal School of Library & Information Science

The Royal Library aka the Black Diamond

 Part of our experiences of this trip are attending various lectures at the local library school on the library system in Denmark as well as Scandinavia in general.  The Royal Library is in the main part of Copenhagen, but the library school is a quick metro ride to the other side of town.  It is currently its own school but soon the library school will join the University of Copenhagen as a department.

The Royal Library School as it is known in Danish

On our first day at the library school we got a tour of the library school library or bibliotek, and heard a lecture on the cultural and ideological ways of Scandinavians.  The library is nice and small with many books in English as well as Danish.  In size it reminds me of the library where I work at NCCU.  The librarian is very nice and is a great advocate for our profession.  She wrote a beautiful kind of manifesto for us and how she views librarianship.  She said to us,

"We operate on the archetype of a stern and quiet purveyor of literature.  Society fails to see all the other tasks that a true librarian must fill.  We negotiate with the publishers, construct the databases, make the search engines, handle the printed material, we preserve the cultural heritage and display it to the public, we design the structures for information sharing and find the answers to impossible questions, we are the keepers of democracy and the mediators of critical thought.  We are the backbone of memory and the guides to intellectual freedom."  Hear, Hear!!

The Royal Library School in a different part of town with 800 students

After our tour one of Dr. Abdullahi's mentors spoke to us about Scandanavian culture and their concept of social captial and how they operate on consensus.  In Denmark the people really see themselves as the government and the government is really for the people.  The people here pay very high taxes but get so much from the government in return the majority of them do not find it a burden.  It is a refreshing take on the role of government and nice to see how everyone wants to ensure the security of everyone else!

Getting Acquainted

Hello everyone!  I hope you all are well and I am thinking of you here in Copenhagen.  Since we arrived on a Saturday it was difficult to try to use the computer at first, but now we are settled and have begun our lectures at school.

This is our hostel Hotel Euroglobe

The first two days we had free were wonderful and busy.  It seems we've walked all over this great city!  Its actually not too hard to get around...there is excellent public transportation and the maps and roads are easy to follow.  An interesting thing about this latitude this time of year is that it stays light most of the day.  It will not begin getting dark until about 11pm and it is completely light by 5am.  So the days are nice and long and which is great for getting in all of the great things there are to experience.  The architecture here is absolutely amazing...all of the buildings are very old and rather than build skyscrapers or new buildings in the downtown area the Danes opt for renovating the buildings that are there and making better use of them.  These are extremely practical and efficient people.

This is the local library branch right by our hostel

This is Nyhavn one of the most beautiful and popular areas of Copenhagen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen's most famous statue

Right now we are all trying to get a sense of the city and it will be nice to start to see the museums and explore the important sites soon.  Dr. Abdullahi has been very gracious and helpful and has done a great job showing us around the city.  There are many interesting neighborhoods in Copenhagen and there appears to be a thriving art scene with lots of graffiti and street art that is quite impressive.  Also the gardens and green spaces are amazing.  I just read that the city planners of Copenhagen are now working to make green space accessible to all of the people by a fifteen minute walk.  And they are doing a great job at it because the parks are everywhere and they are so beautiful!

There is so much to describe and so little time...next we are going to the library school.

Ahoy København

Hello my loved ones.  Welcome to my blog chronicling my trip to Denmark and Sweden.  For two weeks I will be attending lectures at the Royal School of Library and and Information Science in Copenhagen as well as visiting libraries around Copenhagen.  I am traveling  with 13 other NCCU students and one of our professors, Dr. Abdullahi. 

I will be 4265 miles away from my home of Raleigh NC over my 18 day trip, and I am ready for my adventures abroad to begin.  Please continue to follow my journey around the beautiful city of Copenhagen.

This is our fantastic group that is traveling together from NCCU

Love you all

xoxo