A Day in the Life of...

Name: Maureen Watson
Role: Library Outreach Worker Bookstart and Early Years

This role is varied and involves working in an outreach capacity plus organising and delivering inhouse Story times and Rhythm and Rhyme sessions.

Currently my activities involve promoting the Library service to families with pre school children in the Rochdale borough. A major part of my role is promoting Bookstart and Bookcrawl. This is outreach work that takes me into many Early Years settings in the borough ie. Nursery Schools, Nursery Classes, Private Nursery provision, Children's Centres and Playgroups.

‘Tell My Story’ Event’

Middleton Library held a ‘Tell My Story’ event on Tuesday 2nd June. We wanted to showcase some of our local studies materials, to encourage people to write down their memories and to have an enjoyable social morning.

• Local residents, Alice Mellalieu-Campbell and Albert Findlow came to talk about their autobiographies.
• We pulled out all the books from our collection which give first hand accounts of people’s lives in Middleton.
• We had representatives of the ‘Middleton Memories’ reminiscence magazine and a member of Langley Library writing group.

All those who attended had a good time and left positive comments.

We were disappointed that we didn’t attract more people. We would have liked to attract some younger people and some who were new to the local studies service. We suspect the theme of the event was a bit off putting (people seem to have thought they would have to contribute).

When we hold similar events in future we will use more publicity and direct it more toward younger people to see if we can encourage them to join in.