Vania Grashkina – Deputy President of the Bulgarian Library and Information Association

It is very difficult for me after 30 years of friendship and working with Snejeto, to put together in a few sentences, the emotions are still  moving me. Snejeto had worked for the library community not only from the time when she became the President, not from 2012.

Snejeto had worked since 1990 - always without compensation of any kind, voluntarily. The main thing that we, the library community, will remember about Sneja is that she was the source of ideas and vision. She had plenty of ideas; ideas which seemed to us in many situations very difficult to achieve, very distant. But she showed us how these ideas could and would turn into a reality. That is the case with the project “Global Libraries Bulgaria”. At that time, I was the President of the Library Association and she told me: “Let’s invite representatives of the Bill Gates Foundation!” I said: “How can we invite them? Who are we? Where is “Bill Gates” Foundation?” She answered: “Just write a letter!” And thus, the things started rolling - unexpectedly in 2007. And we had the project “Global Libraries Bulgaria” in 2009. I would say this still is the biggest investment, which changed Bulgarian public libraries during the last 30 years. Sneja made sure it developed in the right direction and as the Chair of the “Global Libraries Bulgaria” Foundation she kept the project on course. 

I would like to mention her contribution to the international status of our Association. Thanks to Sneja we built very close relations with the American Library Association. She was convinced that the changes in our libraries would begin with the people, with changes in their way of thinking and their motivation. That’s the reason why she assisted in sending dozens of our librarians to specializations in the USA. These specialists became the pushbuttons of the changes which our libraries underwent during the transition of Bulgaria to democracy. They created this contemporary, modern look of our leading public libraries.

Snejeto valued very much our representation at the International Library Federation – IFLA. Thanks to her efforts – she kept all the correspondence, but she never became a representative of Bulgaria – on the contrary, she launched our leading specialists, she worked for the other people to succeed. Her quality not to be front stage, not showcase her leadership, not to put an emphasis on her own contributions is something exceptional for our modern times. 

Extremely enterprising, together with generating ideas, she possessed great optimism, she didn’t put up with the status quo even in the darkest years of crisis for the libraries. She believed that there was a way out – by donations, by other initiatives - she really succeeded in every way to support the libraries. With all her qualities she has already left a unique footprint in the history of our Association.  She will stay in our thoughts and hearts.  May her memory live forever!

For the complete memory see “Video” section