Swets scholarship opens up new opportunities for Information Specialists in Finland and Sweden

As a global market leader in managing professional information, Swets is always looking for new ways to empower the use of knowledge to its full extent. To help support the professional development of information specialists and the progress of the industry, a Swets scholarship of 1500 euros is handed out each year in Sweden and, for the first time this year, in Finland. Swets co-operates with the local organizations for Information Specialists – Svensk förening för informationsspecialister (SFIS) in Sweden and Tietoasiantuntijat in Finland , and grants the scholarship for postgraduate studies, educational trips and projects abroad, collaboration with international organizations etc.

The lucky winners in 2012

“This is a unique opportunity for me to make an idea I’ve had for a long time come true!”, describes the thrilled winner, Pia Virtanen after receiving the first Finnish scholarship.

Virtanen works as an Information Specialist in the Library and Information Services of Yle, Finland's national public service broadcasting company. The Library and Information Services at Yle are a part of YLE Armi – Archive, media management and information services – with the task of searching background material for programs at Yle.

With the help of the scholarship, Pia Virtanen will study and work for two months  at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London, UK. Her goal is to learn more about the archiving and information services of another broadcasting company and to be able to use that knowledge to contribute more and find new ideas for her work.

In Sweden the Swets scholarship 2012 was granted to Sara Lind, a web editor in the Karolinska Institutes University Library in Stockholm.

The scholarship will give her an opportunity to visit the New York Public Library and other interesting locations in the U.S. and Canada. Her aim is to study inspirational and innovative solutions for merging the physical and digital spaces within a library, and to critically examine them from a user perspective.

Using the experience gained from her studies in the US, Lind  aims to implement a new strategy in her own university library that will boost the library’s operations and support the user's ability to influence and improve the digital tools and concepts in the physical space.

Giving back to the community

Since the first Swets scholarship was granted in Sweden in 2003, the program has made several interesting projects and trips possible. Winners of the scholarship have studied e-learning models, the EU's information services, digital resource management, open access questions and development of more user-friendly library services to mention, among others. The reports written by the Swets scholars are  shared with the whole Swedish information community, in order to inspire and share ideas and details on all past winners can be found at the SFIS website: http://www.sfis.nu/om/stipendier/swets

Details of the Finnish scholarship will be added, at a later date, to the Tietoasiantuntijat website: http://www.tietoasiantuntijat.fi/