In September 2025, our Chief Executive Isobel Hunter attended the Lviv International Library Conference to express our ongoing support for libraries in Ukraine and to hear about the success of our library twinning scheme.

Here, Isobel explains five things she has learned from our work with Ukrainian libraries. Further information on the twinning scheme and our work with Ukrainian libraries follows.

1. Fun activities serve an important purpose

Fun activities help boost moods, bring people together, and provide relief from the difficulties of everyday life. This is particularly the case in Ukraine, where library activities help children and families escape from the wartime horror surrounding them. But it is equally true in this country, where many people face enormous challenges of health, poverty and isolation. Fun should not just be reserved for those living in prosperous or peaceful circumstances: library activities bring fun to everyone and those that need it the most.
 

2. Celebrating traditions can bring certainty in difficult times

Ukrainian libraries celebrate seasonal and cultural traditions – with book promotions, author talks, parties, creative activities and exhibitions. Doing this reinforces shared identities and invites newcomers in, reminds us of where we have come from, and helps us look ahead.

3. Kindness and gentleness are fierce values

Ukrainian libraries have been bombed, collections destroyed, library workers and users killed, injured and displaced. However, the library staff are determined to keep their library services running – powered by kindness and gentleness. They are determined to support those facing the most difficult conditions, reshaping their services to provide a warm and caring environment to help heal and provide hope in the future.

4. Sharing creates more

Library staff are incredibly generous in sharing with their peers: sharing ideas, resources, audiences, and time. Our twinning scheme has brought libraries together across two countries, and what is being achieved is far more than if the libraries were working alone. Books and presents have been exchanged, and new ideas have taken root to deliver joint festivals and celebrations which have delighted library users.

5. The healing power of nature

War brings utter devastation. Ukrainian libraries have been promoting environmental projects to help restore nature and restore people’s minds and bodies. Amidst destruction, nurturing seeds to grow or creating a library garden for reading and play is profoundly important. It brings a sense of hope, that each person can help build a brighter future and a better place to live. The cycles of nature also remind us that “this too shall pass”. After the bleak winter, comes spring.

Explaining our partnership with Ukrainian libraries

Our partnership with Library Country Ukraine began in 2022 when Executive Director Lyusyena Shum invited us to participate in an online conference with library organisations from across Europe. We followed this with a webinar to share ideas between UK and Ukrainian library services, with a focus on library work to support health and wellbeing. What we found so inspiring was that even though libraries were under attack, library staff still wanted to serve their communities and develop their services to meet wartime demands. 

We then invited Lyusyena to be one of our keynote speakers at our annual conference in 2023. At the conference, attendees wanted to know what they could do to help. This is how we decided to raise funds to buy a mobile library to send to Ukraine for use in areas without a library building. 

We wanted to do more than just the mobile library, so we also decided to set up a library twinning scheme. This was inspired by a twinning between the libraries in two great port cities – Liverpool and Odesa – which happened in May 2023. The scheme was the idea of a young Ukrainian woman living in Liverpool, Veronika Yasynska, who had found a welcome and a home in the city’s central library. The twinning was celebrated at a high-profile event attended by King Charles III and the Ukrainian Ambassador, with Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska joining online. 

Inspired by the Liverpool-Odesa twinning, we worked with Library Country Ukraine to set up 21 more twinning partnerships, with model agreements the libraries could use, and suggested programmes of activities. We were really heartened by the response from libraries in the UK, and we were able to establish 21 new library twinning’s. how proud they were of the new partnerships – often featuring them in local news stories.

We hope this is a sister relationship in the best possible way, where both parties can support and learn from each other, share poetry, literature and culture, develop new ways of working, connect their communities, and inspire each other. 

We have already learned so much from our partnership with Library Country Ukraine about Ukrainian libraries and the indomitable spirit of Ukrainian librarians. We are looking forward now to hearing more of the detail of the sister library scheme and the wonderful work they have been doing.