During the 28th Panhellenic Academic Libraries Conference, whose main topic of discussion was the “Green and sustainable academic libraries in the post-COVID era”, the Library & Information Center of the University of Patras was given the opportunity to carry out a train-the-trainer workshop and a paper presentation regarding Citizen Science activities in research libraries.
The topic discussed during the workshop was “Citizen Science and the role of Academic Libraries”. During the workshop, 20 participants/librarians were given an introduction to what Citizen Science is, how it fits into our libraries and how we all benefit from its induction into our lives. Examples of Citizen Science projects from inside libraries (to show how a library can become an even more vital part of the community) and outside libraries were presented. Participants took part in interactive sessions that focused on how to start creating a Citizen Science project and who could participate. They were active in the ongoing discussion that took place during the workshop and were interested in how to build a Citizen Science project and a network of collaborations. A brief introduction to CeOS_SE also took place, and the participants were informed of our efforts in making Citizen Science known in Greece. The reception was highly positive and there were talks about further training events in the near future.
The Library also presented a paper during the conference, entitled “The library as a knowledge hub for citizen science”. It received a warm welcome and some of the attendees were surprised to discover how they were already doing Citizen Science projects on a crowdsourcing level – they just had not fully realized it.
