by Amy Hayes, Librarian, Waddesdon C of E School
Since hearing about the grant from Better World Books, [which helped Waddesdon CE School to launch their after-hours Community Library Project] my job at Waddesdon CE School has completely changed. I still get greeted in the morning by smiling faces, I still get to enthuse teens about literature and I even still get to play a weekly game of Scrabble with our KS3 Board Games Club. However, now I see the library from an entirely different perspective and most excitingly, I have been able to fall in love with adult fiction again.
Another wonderful aspect of this project is the people who have been involved. Being a librarian is quite a solitary occupation and yet working on this community library has been just that, a community experience. Not only those (now regular) visitors to the library but people from all areas of the school and the county-bringing their skills and passions together to make this project work.
After some marketing, skill sourcing and a lot of grafting, we officially opened on Monday 1st February with a huge gala event attended by all of those wonderful people, the enthusiasm for such a library was astounding. We also asked Sue Wilkinson MBE from The Reading Agency to open the library and give a short speech celebrating the importance of libraries and community.
As a result of that night the Community Library is growing every week, our most popular evenings are the “secret cinema” events once a month. We also hope to start a book group and a monthly newsletter over this half term.
I can only hope that in time, and via word of mouth, the Waddesdon Community Library will reach every single person in the local community. In the current climate where many communities are having their library services diminished if not completely cut, it’s amazing that we have been able to open one. We are very grateful to Better World Books for the opportunity their grant has given us to start this project.
You can follow Waddesdon Community Library on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WadCommunityLib
Waddesdon C of E School received a Better World Books Literacy Grant last year. Applications for this year’s literacy grants are open from 18th April to 29th July. For more information and to apply visit: http://www.betterworldbooks.co.uk/go/grants
