Dr Ivanka Stričević takes office for her second term as NSK Director General
On 2 February 2024, Dr Ivanka Stričević took office for her second term as the Director General of the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK), following her appointment by the Government of the Republic of Croatia at its 271st session, held on 13 December 2023.
Before taking office as the NSK Director General for the first time, on 1 February 2020, Dr Stričević was the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Information Infrastructure at the University of Zadar. She received her MA degree in pedagogy in 1995, at the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, where she also obtained her doctorate in information sciences in 2006. Having distinguished herself at the beginning of her professional career by successfully organising and promoting innovative public library programmes for children and the younger population, Dr Stričević later chaired two sections of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) – Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section and Literacy and Reading Section – and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL).
Despite all the challenges that marked her first term in office, the COVID-19 pandemic and other global unfavourable developments in particular, Dr Stričević managed to successfully organise the Library’s work in fulfilling its tasks as Croatia’s national library and the main library of the University of Zagreb. Joining forces with the Library’s staff, she dedicatedly worked on completing formerly initiated NSK projects and launched new ones, making sure that all activities in this context were an adequate response to current issues on the national level with regard to research, culture, overall social development and the advancement of Croatia’s national library system. Being determined not to let NSK projects be reduced to momentary flashes, Dr Stričević ensured that they always be approached with careful deliberation and with keeping in mind the need for continuity, thus enabling their results to remain relevant and visible for longer periods. In her second term as the Library’s Director General, she intends to open new chapters in the Library’s activities by focusing in particular on sustainable development and further improvements in all the Library’s activities through the implementation of the Library’s current strategy, NSK Development Strategy 2026, which takes as its three-goal starting point the Library’s collections and its user services, the strengthening of all the Library’s capacities and its cooperation-oriented and innovation-focused activities.
During her previous term of office as the NSK Director General, Dr Stričević initiated activities aimed at developing new approaches to making fully operational CroAtrium, the Library’s new space envisioned as NSK’s multimedia lab and heritage interpretation centre spotlighting Croatica – Croatia’s national collection that the Library preserves and curates – through using the most advanced multimedia, interactive and digital formats to bring it closer to a wide range of audiences. Her work in that capacity was also marked by two major strategic projects – e-Culture, the 2019-2023 project aimed at the digitisation of cultural heritage on the national level and successfully completed in September 2023 after the setting up of the necessary infrastructure for the development of the Croatian Digital Library system, and e-Universities, launched in 2022 and bound to have a substantial impact on NSK and all other libraries in Croatia’s higher education system and research sector and expected to provide stability required for the growth of research and the progress of Croatia’s academic community in a dynamic and unstable digital environment.
Encouraged by the growing number of the Library’s users which after the restrictions in the previous years clearly indicates the Library’s success during Dr Stričević’s first term as the NSK Director General, Dr Stričević remains committed to directing NSK’s work towards higher quality, greater efficiency and sustainability.