April 1, 2025
How can high school students better use the physical and digital collections and tech learning options of the library? Students explored this question during today's PreparationTech visit to the Amsterdam Public Library (known in Dutch as OBA Amsterdam) which is one of Europe's largest municipal libraries.
The day started off with an inspiring talk by Patricia Darmin, Program Lead for TUMO Amsterdam, a creative learning center launching later this year that will offer young people aged 12-18 classes in game development, robotics, programming, music production, drawing, film making, animation and 3D modeling. The center provides a hands-on, self-paced learning environment that encourages students to discover their passions and build real-world projects. The center will launch later this year and will be located in Amsterdam Southeast where many PreparationTech students live and attend school.
Patricia's talk was followed by a panel featuring employees from OBA who work in tech. They were:
- Marcel Boontje, OBA's data officer who studied bass guitar (jazz, funk, soul and salsa) at the conservatory and studied Dutch language and literature at university before shifting into technolog
- Joey Flu, Co-Program Lead at TUMO, who is also an AI specialist who helps businesses integrate AI solutions (Joey coached the team which won the day's pitching challenge
- Mark Vos, Digital Innovation Advisor for OBA Next, who spoke about leading OBA's innovation process and developing new AI tools
- Patricia Darmin, Co-Program Lead at TUMO, who is also an AI specialist who helps businesses integrate AI solutions (Patricia was a star, coaching a team which participated in the pitching challenge and recording all pitches for posterity)
Students were treated to a special talk by Arthur Japin, a renowned Dutch author who wrote 'The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi', a historical novel about two Ashanti princes who were taken to the Netherlands in 1837 and used as pawns by the Dutch to extract trade concessions from a Ghanaian king.
Students spent the rest of the day in hands-on activities. They participated in workshops related to learning with VR, testing the Library's new audiovisual AI search tool, and exploring the Library's physical and digital collections.
In the afternoon, they broke into teams and developed ideas for new digital services for the Amsterdam Public Library.
We had initially wondered how interested students would be in learning about tech at the Library. Thankfully, they proved to be very interested. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and several students said they came away with study and learning tips they're going to put to immediate use.