Fire safety with Balderstone Library!

Join us at Balderstone Library for a Fire Safety Morning, including:

• A talk and advice on fire safety and prevention from the Fire Service.
  
• Children's crafts and things to do.
  
• Stories for children.

And a visit from the fire engine!

Tuesday 13 April, 1030am to 12 noon.

Balderstone Reading Group

Balderstone Library has a reading group that meets at the library on the first Monday of each month at 2.15pm. New members are always welcome, contact Justine on 01706 640438.

Topics for discussion: 2010 programme
4 January 2010	"Sweet Mandarin" by Helen Tse Where to find copies of "Sweet Mandarin" in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)
1 February 2010	Anna Jacobs Where to find Anna Jacobs' books in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)
1 March 2010	"Snow Falling On Cedars" by David Guterson Where to find copies of "Snow Falling On Cedars" in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)
12 April 2010	"The Constant Gardener" by John Le Carre Where to find copies of "The Constant Gardener" in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)
3 May 2010	"The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night" by Mark Haddon Where to find copies of "The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night" in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)
7 June 2010	"I Capture The Castle" by Dodie Smith Where to find copies of "I Capture The Castle" in our libraries (external link to our Web Catalogue)

Knitting at Balderstone Library

• Do you like to knit?
  
• Would you be interested in coming to a Knitting Club at Balderstone Library?

We have a knitting group starting on Friday 12 Feb at 2pm.

Anyone is welcome, you just have to remember your needles and balls!

Spooks and Books at Balderstone Library

We had an afternoon of scary fun for children and their families this afternoon!
Justine and Maureen organised lots of crafts, games and stories. Children came in fancy dress with lots of witches, wizards, ghosts and ghoulies. And Ray came along to tell them some scary stories.

Two staff from Sandbrook Children's Centre came along to join in the fun and two food workers also came to make spooky sandwiches with the children

Maureen Watson said ' It was lovely to see so many families in the Library having such a good time. The session was really well attended with children, parents and carers making lots of things to take home.

Justine Smith said "I was thrilled with all the children who came in fantastic costumes and how successful the afternoon was."

33 adults and 51 children came to the party. Everyone seemed to have a good time and several people have already asked if we would be doing more sessions in the future.

More Halloween pictures from our libraries

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.

Branch Library Spotlight: Balderstone

Every so often we will feature one of our libraries or services in this blog to give you a bit more detail about what we're doing for our local communities. This time we've asked Balderstone Library to tell us a bit about themselves.

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Balderstone Library always has a friendly welcoming atmosphere, and is situated just inside the entrance to Balderstone Park, off Oldham Road.

The outside of the Library has just been renovated, and has full disabled access and parking.We have a variety of wildlife surrounding the building, and this provides much entertainment for staff and borrowers alike!

The inside of the Library is bright and spacious, and user friendly.

We have:

• 6 PCs available for the public to use free.
• A wide selection of books, and information on everything to do with the local community.
• Featured stock displays, e.g. "quick picks", new books in stock, storysacks for children, and graphic novels.
• An "Author of the Month" promotion.
• Displays of local art and community events.
• Regular visits from local schools, and nurseries, and also well attended under-fives' events on Thursday afternoons, and Friday mornings.

On the first Monday of every month, we have a Reading Group, and this has been running successfully for four years.

The "Friends of Balderstone Library", are a group of people who voluntarily give their time to hold regular events in the Library, e.g.flower arranging, hanging basket demonstrations, watercolour sessions, wildlife talks etc. These are always well attended, and provide support for the Library.

We recently ran a free six week course on "Tracing your Ancestors". This course is run by a local lady who is also a borrower, and is very interesting and highly entertaining! Due to popular demand, we are hoping to repeat this course.

So please feel free to come and visit us, and see the warm friendly atmosphere for yourself. We look forward to seeing you!

Library Tree Party

Balderstone Library's Tree parties were held on 7th and 9th November as part of the Breathing Places campaign.

Twenty-seven adults and thirty-two children attended the two sessions.

The under 5's event included stories, craft and a nature trail.

The Library tree (a beautiful thick card 3D tree from the BBC) has now been decorated with children's art work from the event.

Building works update

Balderstone Library

It will take longer to complete the building work at Balderstone Library than was planned. We have had to extend the closed period to 22nd October.

Some loans will be due back during this period; we have set the circulation system so that closed days are not taken into consideration for fines and charges, so please do not worry about not being able to return items by these due dates. The Library Service would like to apologise to all customers for this unavoidable delay.


Smallbridge Library

Toilet facilities for disabled people are now being installed at Smallbridge Library. The work does not require the library's being closed but there may be some occasional disruption to the library in the process. The Library Service would like to apologise to all customers for any inconvenience.

Balderstone Library

Balderstone Library is closed from today for building work: toilet facilities for disabled people are being installed. The library will re-open on 15th October. We apologise for any inconvenience this will cause.

If you are a member of Balderstone Library you're a member of all the libraries in the Borough; your library card will let you borrow items from any of them. You can also use the Web Catalogue to browse our stock, reserve items and renew your loans.

Building works update

More news on the works that are going to be done in some of our libraries this autumn.

Work will be delayed slightly at Heywood Library. The delay is because of some good news: there are plans for some development in Heywood Town Centre which will definitely involve the library in some way. Details are currently being finalised so we aren't sure precisely how the library fits into the plans so we've decided to hang fire until details are available. We want to avoid going through the expense and disruption of getting work done in the short term that will have to be undone, or which becomes redundant, in a year or so's time. Once these plans have been finalised we'll be able to see what modifications, if any, we have to make to the library's refurbishment plan and, if necessary, get listed building consent for the work to be done. Realistically, the work will be beginning in late autumn rather than at the end of next month as hoped.

The work at Balderstone and Spotland libraries will be going ahead next month as planned. We will also be doing some work on the accessibility of Alkrington Library later this autumn, dates to be confirmed. At this stage we don't know whether or not we will need to close Alkrington Library while the work is going on.

Building works

Services at some of our libraries will be disrupted this autumn due to essential building work:

Balderstone Library will be closed for two weeks from Monday 1st October 2007 while toilet facilities for disabled people are being installed. This will require the temporary removal of the counter and the relocation of the Library Online PCs elsewhere within the building. The library will re-open for business on Monday 15th October.

Heywood Library will be closed from Monday 15th October 2007 for major building work following on from the repairs to the roof earlier this year. The library will re-open in the early Spring of 2008.

We apologise for the inconvenience this will cause to our customers. Please note that all our customers are welcome in any of our libraries. If you've joined any of our libraries your card will let you borrow or reserve items anywhere in the Borough.

An Autumn of upheaval!

It's going to be a busy autumn! We're finalising details of some activities for local and national programmes which we'll be telling you about shortly, as well as providing the "usual" wide range of learning and reading events and activities. On top of all that we're preparing for some major works in some of our libraries:

• We're finishing the preparations for moving Langley Library from its current building into its new home in the nearby Children's Centre.
• Balderstone and Spotland libraries will be having work done to install toilet facilities for disabled people.
• Heywood Library will be closed at the beginning of October for major refurbishment work lasting about six months.

We don't have firm dates for these yet, we'll be letting you know once they're confirmed.