ACCESSIT (ACCELERATE THE CIRCULATION OF CULTURE THROUGH EXCHANGE OF SKILLS IN INFORMATIONI ON TECHNOLOGY) 
Predrag Dxukicx, Belgrade city library 
Belgrade city library became a partner in a two-year project accessIt (accelerate the circulation of culture through exchange of skills in information technology) financed by eU as a part of the programme "culture 2007-2013". 
Invitation for partnership came as a result of long term engagement of Jasmina Ninkov, library director, in the projects connecting  europeans libraries, such as PUlMAN, PUlMANXT (2002-2003) and  calImera (2003-2004). 
The project begun on 1st may 2009 and ended on 30th april 2011. 
Project coordinator was MDR Partners from London, partners were PSNC (Poznan supercomputing and Networking center) from Poland, Hacetepe University from Ankara, Turkey, central Public library Veria from Greece and Belgrade city library. 
The project encourages the development of Internet-based services that offer end users the opportunity to select and view high quality, multimedia representations of works from a very wide range  of europe's artistic and cultural productions, in their own language and set within their historic, thematic and geographic context. 
Here are some activities realized through project: training of the trainers, national introductory conferences, as well as the study tour. 
Training of the trainers workshop lasted for three days in Veria 16-18 February 2010. The name of the workshop was: Building and maintaining local/regional digital libraries and metadata agreggators. 
Web page http://www.access-it.org/eng/training2/Feb-2010-Workshop delivers workshop programme and training summary. 
Serbia was represented by tamara Butigan Vucyaj and Dragana Perunicyicx from National  library of Serbia and Vesna Vuksan and Predrag Dxukicx from Belgrade city library. 
Study tour was organized in Poland, 27-29 april 2010. 
In three cities (Wroclaw, Poznan and Warsaw) participants had a chance to get to know specific procedures in certain phases of digitization in small and large institutions. 
Apart from libraries participants visited museums and archives. 
They visited in Wroclaw the Wroclaw University library (WUl), the silesia Public library (hosted in WUl) and the Ossolinski National Institute, in Poznan the Poznan University  library, the Poznan Branch of National archives and PsNc, and in Warsaw the National library, the National museum and the National Digital archive. 
Participants from serbia were Tamara Butigan Vucyaj from National library of Serbia and Milan Vasiljevicx and Predrag Dxukicx from Belgrade city library. 
In each of three countries represented in the project by libraries introductory conferences were held and their aim was to inform audience about project and its realization. 
Introductory conference in Belgrade was held in Belgrade city library on 15th October 2010 with more than 80 participants from Serbia, Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
Greek conference was held in athens as a part of the symposium "Europeana in Greece" on 19th October. 
Turkish conference was held in ankara on 25th October and representatives from major turkish cultural heritage institutions were present. 
The AccessIt project seeks to deliver a unique package of practical training and skills development, supported by clear guidance, to enable  smaller, local cultural organizations in countries where progress in this area is currently limited, to maximize the opportunities provided by the new technologies (combined with major policy  implementations such as the Digital  libraries Initiative) to deliver and disseminate arts and cultural offerings to the citizens of europe most effectively. 
Training is prepared by PSNC. 
All the procedures are according to ISO standards and practice from similar projects in the field. 
Participants decided to translate this courses (or part of it) to their own languages. 
Serbia decided to make full translation. 
In order to make them accessible to broader audience they are made on moodle platform and accessible online, both in serbian and in english, on e-classroom server of National library of Serbia. 
The first course "Digital repositories for small memory institutions" is devoted to all those who want to make its first steps in the field of digitization. 
The second course "cooperation with Europeana" explains to those that are already involved in digitization steps that are necessary to establish cooperation with Europeana and make their collections available through europeana. 
One of the expected results of the project is creation of national repositories (or at least making necessary conditions for it) which will be able to join european digitization projects (such  as europeana and europeana local). 
This project should engage 1,340 institutions (libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural institutions) in three countries involved. 
Planned contribution to europeana is 125,000 digital objects. 
On the basis of the cooperation in this project BCl signed agreement with PSNC which allows BCl to use dlibra software to create its own digital library. 
BCl will deliver localization of dLibra web interface on Serbian (Cyrillic). 
Final conference was held in Istanbul on 21st march 2011 with the presence of all partners in the project as well as of eminent Turkish experts in the field. 
Results of the project were shown, as well as next steps in the field of dissemination of the project's results. 
As a confirmation of the fact that it was a successful project its extension was announced to neighboring countries (Albania, Croatia, Republic of Srpska and Bosnia-Herzegovina) in next two years under the name  AccessIt Plus. 
