Head of the City Library Branch for Children No. 1 of the Boyarka Public Library, Kyiv Region
Since childhood, Maryna Sokolova knew she would dedicate her life to books and reading. So, after graduating from high school, she entered the Kyiv State Institute of Culture and graduated in 1994 with a degree in children’s literature bibliography. Her first job was as a bibliographer at the library of the Mykola Gogol State Institute of Nizhyn. She provided bibliographic references to educators, students, and other staff of the institute, assisted with the selection of literature on versatile topics, as well as kept a file of periodicals. And it so happened that she had to leave her hometown and change jobs. She was given a possibility to return to her favorite job only in 2015, when she secured a position as a librarian at the Boyarka City Library for Children of the Kyiv-Svyatoshyn Centralized Library System.
Working with children is fascinating and informative, and she is delighted with the world of children’s books. Moreover, she is also well versed in children’s literature, for she has a daughter who loves reading and often recommends a lot of truly breathtaking things. Since 2021, she serves as the head of the City Library Branch for Children No. 1 of the Boyarka Public Library.
Her dream is that every library in Ukraine, whether it is a large regional or a small one in some countryside, will boast a sufficient book collection, for the main goal of the library is to meet the reader’s demand for books. We have to raise a new generation that is literate and thoughtful. Therefore, in her work, she aims to promote books and reading in general, as well as to persuade concerned people that it is vital to finance libraries and provide collections with books in the Ukrainian language, since the war did show all of us the significance of the native language.