A post from our Service Development Manager, Angela Goreham – about what RBKC Libraries have to offer.
R Research for a project that interests you B Booking a PC, a place at an event K Knowledge as we all need this C Connect (to others in the community and the wide world)
L Lending items for your pleasure or information I Information that will help you with your day to day or forward planning B Baby activities and information to help new parents R Reading – a core skill and past time in any format A Access us at any time and from anywhere R Resources – varied and plentiful, in different formats to suit different needs
Y Young and old – we’re here for everyone
Are you 1 in 840,344? Or maybe you are 1 in 515,004? They’re odd numbers you might say, but the first one is the number of times the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s libraries were visited between April 2017 and March 2018 and the second is how many items were borrowed during the same period – how many did you account for?
104 people from our local communities supported the Library Service by volunteering with us and over 40,000 people came to one of the events that we held.
They are huge numbers but we always want to beat our previous year’s figures so please come along to one of our libraries, find out what we can do for you and you can help us pass last year’s numbers.
There are six libraries within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – find out more about them and what we offer by either visiting us in person or our website or you can call us on 020 7361 3010.
Throughout the year, RBKC libraries welcome a number of volunteers and work experience students from neighbouring secondary schools. For many, it can be their first introduction to the world of work and for us, it’s a great opportunity to reintroduce them to the library service and the vast range of services we now offer.
Library Volunteers were welcomed by the Mayor Councillor Robert Freeman and his wife to the annual ‘Thank You Reception’ event. Held in the Mayor’s Parlour at Kensington Town Hall, this event gives volunteers the chance to meet and talk to others about their volunteering experience.
Group photo of volunteers
The Mayor welcomed them all by saying how important the contribution of volunteers is to the service and how they have helped with a range of activities for children and adults. He also found time to talk to many of the volunteers individually about the libraries they had worked in and the activities they had been involved in.
Councillor Will the Cabinet member for Libraries, also said a few words commenting on the number of hours of volunteering, which was 1,500 over the year. She paid particular attention to the work done by the volunteers in supporting children’s activities through homework clubs and to the 16 volunteers who had supported many of the 983 children participating in the Summer Reading Challenge.
She was also particularly interested in one of the highlights this year which has been the new partnership between Libraries and the homeless charity GlassDoor, which has been made possible through the commitment of one of our volunteers who helps deliver English classes at the Chelsea Methodist Centre .
Gaynor Lynch the librarian at North Kensington Library talked about the value of volunteers in her library. In particular their contribution to the Summer Reading Challenge and the homework clubs, a number of her volunteers were in attendance.
Each volunteer received a certificate from Councillor Will and had their photograph taken with the Mayor.
Volunteer receiving certificate
Volunteers really appreciate this event which is now in its third year and this time we were able to extend the invitation to the volunteers from the Northeastern University in Boston who have spent a few months in the UK and a short time of which was spent assisting us with the homework clubs. The event was a great experience for them and everyone enjoyed it. .
Let’s keep actively recruiting and working with volunteers, so they can make an enormous contribution to the work we do in Libraries.
By Sue Cornish,
Tri Borough Adult Learning Co-ordinator Community Development
This was Annie’s second summer with us at Brompton and we were really pleased to have her back. Annie was eager to learn, easy to get on with, hard-working and enjoyed engaging with the public, especially the kids signing up to the Summer Reading Challenge so we’re sorry to lose her again. Work experience and volunteering can be a very positive experience for both the branch and the volunteer but, as ever, you get out of it as much as you put in and, as you can see from Annie’s blog, she put in a lot!
During my summer holidays, I had the opportunity to do some volunteering at Brompton Library. I had previously completed my work experience there back in 2011 and I loved it so much that I decided to go back there again!
Whilst volunteering at Brompton, it felt like I had never left and had been working there all my life. I was given a range of different tasks which I enjoyed. I was settled in the work room where I was given a list of tasks to do such as stock work, cataloguing, transit boxes, discarding the books, reservation reports, shelving and shelf-checking. The work room was the best place to mingle with other staff which made the job even more entertaining!
My main role at Brompton this time was to help out with The Summer Reading Challenge. I had to socialize with the children and get their parents to sign them up and help them complete their challenge by providing them with their rewards each time they had completed one book.
On Thursdays, the library ran regular iPad sessions, where kids could come in and try out the new Mystical Maze app which would allow them to play games and unlock different mystical characters by scanning posters around the library using the camera on the iPad. I won’t lie to you, I myself had immense fun whilst setting up the apps and testing them!
My time at Brompton has been great. It is such a great place to work, not just for learning new skills and gaining confidence in talking to the public, but also the friendships you gain there is amazing. For every day you work at Brompton, you are never bored and are always entertained. You feel like you’re part of the team. For every task you fulfil, you feel like you have accomplished something and you learn something new every day. You get to interact with different people young and old. It makes you feel more grown up and independent.I highly recommend doing some sort of work experience at Brompton or at any other library because it’s worth it.
Leaving Brompton, I have gained so many different skills and have felt more confident in myself in terms of helping the public. I think in any place you work at, it’s important that you feel happy and feel proud of what you have achieved, and that’s what being at Brompton Library does. The team at Brompton are amazing and are such wonderful people.
Don’t worry, Brompton, I’ll be back in the future!
Here at Kensington & Chelsea libraries, our volunteers do a fantastic job: this is just a quick update on the computer help sessions being run by our amazing helpers!
Volunteers have been running sessions in Kensington Central Library for some time now. As time goes on not only are they able to teach others new skills on computers, but also on a variety of devices: it isn’t just PCs out there any more…
Our volunteers can help you to get to grips with:
Laptops
Phones (e.g iPhones and Android devices)
Tablets (e.g. iPads)
They have also been able to master new skills themselves through the use of these devices, often learning alongside their students. I was able to witness this myself when I had my first go on Windows 8!
If you are a beginner or want to learn more, then feel free to come along to one of our sessions in the community space in Kensington Central Library. You can either come along to one of our drop-in sessions on Saturdays or book a session on Tuesday or Thursday mornings. For times of these sessions and other regular adult events please check our website here.
So a big thank you to our great volunteers for keeping these sessions up and running and being prepared to teach users not just on library computers but much more!
If you are interested in volunteering in Kensington and Chelsea, either in one of our libraries or somewhere else, then please get in touch with the Kensington and Chelsea Volunteer Centre.
At the beginning of the year Brompton library began another collaboration with Celebrate My Library for an inter-generational project called Our Communities, Our Stories. The project aimed to bring together local schoolchildren (largely from our Chatterbooks reading group) and older volunteers (from the Kensington and Chelsea Older Residents Forum) to discuss the differences between being a child now compared with the memories of childhood of their older “buddies”.
In the middle of January we all got together for a supremely well-organised session which had to find time for the discussions to take place, the children to do their creative writing and create the fashion mood-board and then for Hilary and Victoria (who are Celebrate my Library!) to gather it all up so they could produce another of their beautiful books. They discussed six different topics – At Home, Hobbies, Entertainment, Food, Fashion, Days Out and School – then the children drew pictures and wrote about the lives of the buddies when they were young, but I could see it was a learning experience for both groups.
After that session came a nail-biting break of 6 weeks while Hilary and Victoria pulled all the material together (plus some of their own) to create the book.
On March 1st we met up again for the “great reveal” of the book “written by children at Brompton Library inspired by the stories from the residents of Kensington and Chelsea”. The children were shown the book first and loved seeing their names in print! Then they wrapped it in beautiful wrapping paper to present to the buddies. The children read out their work as a performance while the buddies, parents and friends who had also come along enjoyed tea, coffee, juice and choccy biscuits.
Celebrate My Library
Working with Celebrate My Library is always a pleasure. They are passionate about libraries, are wonderfully creative and produce beautiful books but also have an eye for the nitty gritty detail and organisation it takes for the sessions to run smoothly – and all this in their spare time!
Brompton has one copy of the book but you can browse it here. I’m so proud of our Chatterbooks kids and the volunteers from the Kensington and Chelsea Older Residents Forum who gave up three Saturday afternoons for this.
It has been a busy month at Brompton library. We have noted a surge in new members and our books seem to be flying off the shelves as the frosty weather convinces borrowers to stock up on reading material for the festive period. Whether you need some ideas for Christmas recipes or fancy browsing through our brand new crime and romantic fiction titles, sports and celebrity biographies or a fantastic selection of new cookery books we have something for everyone. Why not browse some of our stock through the online catalogue?
Elisabeth impressed us all by making an Advent calendar which stands in the toddlers’ corner of the Children’s area. As someone who can’t cut a straight line, let alone a circle, I’m in awe of people who can do crafts!
Advent calendar
On the first Saturday of each month from 10:30 to 11:30 our story and craft sessions allow young children to participate in reading and small art projects. With just over a week until Christmas, Brompton library has been getting into the spirit with a seasonal craft and story session. Library assistant Rahima and Lisa, our Saturday volunteer, had the kids making lots of Rockin’ Robins! They loved it, and for the tiny tots there are always colouring-in sheets.
The theme of our monthly craft session was based on a story about a generous robin who gave away his seven vests to keep all the other animals he met warm. This story inspired the children to create their own robin. Using paper plates which were folded in half to create a rocking robin; the children sat around the table, colouring pens poised on paper ready to colour. The choice of colour varied as one child confidently says to the other children, “maybe a thousand years ago, there were multicoloured robins”, so with those words of encouragement the children chose their favourite colours. When the power of imagination lets loose our creativity, the end results are that we produce things that are unique; this was evident in this craft session as there were multicoloured, stripy and flowery rocking robins.
Rockin’ robins
Intergenerational project at Brompton
After the success of Brompton’s collaboration with Celebrate My Library on the “Creepy Library” book I‘m very pleased to be working with them again on a project called “Our Community, Our Stories”. This will bring together young people from our Chatterbooks group and older residents from the Kensington and Chelsea Older Residents Forum to explore the differences between life as a child now and life for a child as it was when our older volunteers were young. The children will then do some creative writing around the conversations they’ve had and this will be brought together in book form, again with everyone’s name in print. To get this going, Celebrate my Library (Hilary and Vicky) and I were an agenda item at the forum’s AGM where we explained the project.
Intergenerational volunteers
The happy result was that we signed up at least half a dozen volunteers!
Intergenerational volunteers
Mingling with residents over coffee and cakes – it’s a hard life!
Intergenerational volunteers
We will keep you posted in January on how the project is going.
Library Volunteers Event at Kensington Town Hall – Tuesday 26 November
Volunteers and volunteer mentors met at the Mayor’s Parlour in the Town Hall to recognise and celebrate the wonderful people who help us across our library service. These types of volunteer roles are varied – IT sessions, homework club, summer reading challenge and story-time classes – to name but a few.
Sue Cornish, our Adult Learning Coordinator, did a sterling job in organising the whole event whilst two volunteers (Celia and Mark) and I were invited up to say a few words. Mark was one of the first volunteers to join us – his time with us stems from when he turned 40 and realised that he wanted to give something back to the community. Just as inspiring was Celia – like so many of us as a child spent many happy hours in the library and has for three years been helping us with our summer Reading Challenge at Brompton and Chelsea.
In the Mayor’s Parlour
It was clear from everyone how much of a privilege it is to work with our volunteers and that they too get so much from volunteering their time and effort.
I would like to dedicate our blog to all of our wonderful volunteers: Celia, Jane, Lisa, Raed, Srishti, Megan, Gunjan and Mathilde – we at Brompton all love working with you!
rbkc libraries blog 