News from library authorities:
Wirral
Patricia Routledge visited St.James Library in Birkenhead to celebrate its fifth birthday with a fun -filled party that local people will never forget. The library was packed with over 80 people as our local lass hosted a special storytime where she read to children from one of her favourite books - 'The Wind in the Willows'. Local residents also read from books that they have loved in front of interested friends and neighbours.
The library pulled out all the stops with loads of other great activities including belly-dancing (yes, in the library!), face painting, flower arranging and mosaic and children's craft. Many of these events had been organised in partnership with the Cascade project, which has been helping local residents to showcase their hidden talents over the past few months.
Local screen writer and author Marc Gee visited Leasowe library to discuss his debut novel' Autumn Kill' and show the film 'Al's Lad's' with which he had been heavily involved. The event was free of charge and exceptionally well attended by some of our weekly Get into Reading groups. Some of the people who visited came from our outreach groups and had not been into a library before so we were delighted that this event had achieved some our main objectives in trying to appeal to a different kind of audience to attract new people into the library. There were a number of new borrowers as a result and we made sure that there were plenty of copies of Marc's book available for loan. Marc followed it up with a successful question and answer session that went on for nearly an hour.
The staff enjoyed promoting the activity to a targeted audience and we are planning to run regular events of a similar nature to continue our efforts to raise awareness of libraries and reading to audiences that have been traditionally hard to reach.
For futher information contact:
Julie Barkway Tel: 07788 916 871.
