Library of the month
Each month we will feature a different library that is embracing the Love Libraries campaign. Our current library of the month is Essex Libraries.
Essex Libraries
Essex County Council Libraries are all featuring this month as we celebrate the amazing Essex
Book Festival! With more than 60 events across the county in libraries and partner venues, March
is a very exciting month in Essex!
www.essexcc.gov.uk/libraries
Opening hours:
The majority of Essex libraries are open until at least 7.00pm for at least one day per week, with the
larger libraries having late nights on 4 or 5 days per week. Sixteen Essex libraries are open also on
Sundays.
What’s the best thing about Essex Libraries?
In the last couple of years, 35 of the 73 libraries in Essex have been fitted with self service
machines. We have taken the opportunity to brand our libraries and re-examine our presentation,
resulting in a very modern look appropriate for today.
The Essex Book Festival
We have Bernard Cornwell coming over from America, plus established writers such as Minette Walters, Joanna Trollope, Suzi Quatro, Fay Weldon, Lesley Pearse, Louis de Bernieres and Alan Sillitoe. We also have newer writers such as Xiaolu Guo, Susan Barker and Sam Hayes – and the list goes on. With over 400 reading groups in Essex, authors know they are assured of an excellent event and authors that have appeared in previous Festivals are always keen to return!
Do you hold events or clubs for children and teenagers?
Although March is clearly a very busy month for us in Essex, we have a programme of events
throughout the year for children and families. We create event templates for local libraries so that
they can easily put on events in their area. We also hold much larger events such as the four
Doctor Who events last year (where we liaised closely with Community Police to ensure effective
crowd control!). This year we are going with Dinosaurs (that’s April)! Every library in Essex also
holds regular Baby and Toddler rhyme times with some specifically for Dads and their babies at
weekends. We are also already looking forward to the Summer Reading Challenge, when we are
expecting to repeat last year’s success in reaching 42,000 children with our unique combination
of the national summer reading activity, book sharing activities and our locally developed activites
targeted at young teenagers.
Do you work in partnership with any other service providers in the community?
The Essex Book Festival works with a wide range of partners, which is one of its many strengths.
Current partners include RAD, Macmillan Cancer, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Essex,
secondary schools and the Essex Record Office to name just a few. Very often this results in
further partnership working throughout the year. Other examples outside of the festival include
the Book Prescription scheme, developed in partnership with the Primary Care Trust and Quick
Reads, which was pioneered in Essex in partnership with Adult Community Learning.
Do you support the Love Libraries campaign?
Of course! Love Libraries is a really useful and effective logo which we use on publicity. Currently
it features on the Essex Book Festival publicity, which means the profile of libraries is raised with
the general public and also with our many partners. We also have Love Libraries balloons that
we use at events.
Six of the Famous Love Libraries Champions are visiting Essex as part of the Essex Book Festival. We will be seeing how we can use their endorsements of libraries to further promote library services. Click on the links below to read what they have to say.
Frances Fyfield
Minette Walters
Lesley Pearse
Stella Duffy
Virginia Ironside
Joanna Trollope
Selected events
Paul Barber – One of the nation’s best-loved TV stars
Bernard Cornwell – International bestselling author
Xiaolu Guo – Author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
If you think your local library deserves to be featured as our ‘library of the month’ we want to hear from you! Contact the Love Libraries campaign on 020 7273 1441 or or email info@lovelibraries.co.uk
View previous libraries of the month:
Essex Libraries
Lewes Library, Lewes
Handsworth Community Library, Birmingham
Hoddesdon Library, Hertfordshire
