Rochdale libraries are on the move...
Following Rochdale Council's policy of co-locating libraries with other council services, Castleton library has recently moved premises from its original Carnegie building, which was no longer fit for purpose for a modern library service.
Castleton library re-opened on 26th February 2007 in it's new, fully refurbished, light and airy premise in the Community Centre on Manchester Road.
The Centre hosts a whole range of community activities, catering for the very young to the very old with regular fitness and dance, art and craft, and other informal learning and social events. Since opening the library has already increased membership and issue figures and we expect this trend to continue.
A further three co-location moves are planned for the near future at Norden, Langley and Darnhill sites.
World Book Day News
Rochdale libraries took part in the Book Crossing phenomenon on World Book Day, releasing almost 200 books from various libraries throughout the Borough, leaving them in a variety of places, where people who may never think of reading a novel might find them, for example pubs, cafes, hairdressers, health centres, dentist waiting rooms, job centres and information centres. Finders of these books are already logging onto the Book Crossing website.
Also on the day A Grand Reading Group event took place at Alkrington Library to which all reading groups in the Borough, both library based and private were invited. Those interested in attending had been given a copy of 'Small Island' by Andrea Levy to read in advance, kindly donated through Time To Read and the Small Island Reads project. The evening proved extremely popular, the discussions being lively and enhanced by a glass of wine or two. One participant said "Great opportunity to share views and opinions and experiences of reading. Learned a lot about 'Small Island' that I hadn't appreciated through my first reading"
Good Hair Day!
On Saturday 27th January The Wheatsheaf Library hosted an exceptional line-up of writers including Shirley May and Pete Kalu from the new anthology published by Suitcase press, to create and share stories and poetry on the subject of 'Hair'. Hairy tales were created in the morning writing workshop and the afternoon saw some excellent performance poetry and a hair dressing demonstration. People from a range of ethnic backgrounds, both young and old alike enjoyed the event. And in the words of one workshop participant it was 'Brilliant, fun, lots of laughter, inspirational.'
Weave a Rochdale Yarn...
The junior winner of this year's writing competition, organized by the Wheatsheaf Word Weavers Writing group, is a young man from Moorhouse Primary school whose excellent first attempt at writing poetry has inspired Children's Librarian Ray Stearn to 'rap' the poem entitled 'Water' and include it in his repertoire when entertaining children.
The winning entry in the adult prose section was entitled 'The Stool' whilst the adult poetry winner was 'Water of Life'. A presentation ceremony in October saw some excellent performances by entrants of their work. It is planned to run the competition again this summer.
