Darnhill disappointment

Disappointing news: our Big Lottery Funding bid for the creation of a new library and learning centre co-located with the clinic and a children's centre has been unsuccessful. By definition a bid process offers no guarantees of success but it still hurts to fail.

What next? Well, we still need to modernise Darnhill Library and we still want to work in partnership with other organisations in the community. We'll be keeping an eye out for opportunities to put some, at least, of the ideas into action in the future, albeit probably on a less ambitious scale. We'll also be reviewing our bid to see what we can learn from the experience that might help our chances in future.

Newspaper Index update

The Newspaper Index is a catalogue of newspaper cuttings and articles held on microfilm in our local studies collections. The Index started as a project in Middleton Library in the 1980s; in the late 1990s we started transferring the data in the old card index to the searchable database that's part of the Community Resources Module of our Dynix library management system. As part of the NOF-funded digitisation project we worked on with Local Studies a few years ago we expanded the remit of the Index to include material from across the Borough and to make a special effort to get most of the original work online. At the moment there are just over eighty thousand entries. There is still a considerable way to go (especially as more articles are being added to the Local Studies collections every week).

The Newspaper Index is available online as part of our Web Catalogue. We've just updated some of the pre-set searches on the "Themes" page. This includes a new list of locality-based searches. These are searches for articles about places around the Borough (as opposed to articles that just mention locations in their text). It's early days yet for parts of the Borough as we're still catching up with 150 years or more of material.

If you're interested in seeing some of the other material derived from the digitisation project, have a look at the Link4Life web site.

Richard & Judy

A few weeks back we were one of the library authorities contacted by somebody from "Richard & Judy" to see if we'd be interested in getting one of our children's book clubs involved in the programme's children's reading promotion. Sadly, in the end the groups we suggested weren't able to get involved but it was nice to be asked and it certainly generated a bit of interest!

Rochdale Readers children's book club has decided to "shadow" the Richard & Judy Book Club by reading and getting back together to discuss the titles in the list. If you want to try it yourself the list's on our Kids' Portal.

European Day of Languages

Today is the European Day of Languages, a Council of Europe initiative, is held annually on the 26 September to celebrate language and cultural diversity.

We hold a wide range of books and audio materials to support people of all ages learning, or brushing up on, languages, European and Asian. We also have literature in foreign languages in our non-fiction collections and also in our Around The World Collection and, of course, the Bengali and Urdu Collections.

And let's not forget British Sign Language and Fingerspelling! (October 1st is the beginning of Learn to Sign Week)

World Heart Day

World Heart Day takes place on Sunday 30 September. It began in 1999 in an effort to create awareness and educate the public about preventative measures to reduce cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Healthy living titles in our libraries include books on preventing heart disease; modifying your diet to reduce the risk of heart disease; and giving up smoking, which can be a major factor in heart disease.