Inspired By Human Connective Stories Unfolding in Text, Sound, Photographs
Channel: Alan Levine
Date: 2023-10-12

Pre-recorded for the 2023 University Library At A New Stage Of Social Communications Development conference, Dnipro, Ukraine http://conflib.diit.edu.ua/Conf_univ_Library_2023

As someone far from crises like the people of the Ukraine have faced, I have almost no business presenting answers to inspire others, only to share what I have received. My own awareness became more meaningful than what I saw in news and social media, thanks to the individual efforts to share stories at the human level. Through colleagues online I have been fortunate to first read the first hand stories of a USUST librarian living and working through the Russian invasion, and more opportunities to hear more in voice with caring support of a gifted translator (sharing the one Ukrainian expression I know), and to see in photos the people who preserved books,  the inspiration and understanding grows exponentially. Later I can see in the background of one conference video a vase of sunflowers, which I cannot help seeing as a human thread over these distances. Small stories of individual experiences at the human level, unfolding and opening like flowers through multiple forms of media, are what inspire me.

Music credits: 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 ft. airtone by Apoxode Licensed CC BY-NC https://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Apoxode/64769