The Mobile Library Travellers Project, Essex County Council Libraries - winner
Report by Nicola Baker
Localities Manager, Essex CC Libraries
The Mobile Library Travellers project was set up in 2001 to explore ways in which Essex Libraries could provide a library service to a group of potential customers at risk of social exclusion. They now work on five travellers sites in Essex and with eight primary schools that have a high percentage of traveller children on their roll. The project is primarily a partnership between Essex County Council and Essex Travellers Education Service. It is supported by a range of other partners.
A total of eight mobile libraries provide weekly stops to the sites and primary schools involved. The work is co-ordinated by a project managers funded by the Children's Fund Essex. She works with the various partners to enthuse and encourage children and families, many of whom have never had access to reading material.
Each week a regular core of children and adults come voluntarily to the mobile library. The libraries provide both specialist and mainstream stock, with an emphasis on children's books. Older travellers in particular enjoy looking at well-illustrated Traveller heritage books and reminiscing over and discussing the photographs. The encouragement of reading remains at the heart of this work.
Sarah Harbour and her daughter Lily Rose from Wood Corner Traveller site in Maldon are regular visitors to the library. Sarah says, "I think that the bus is really good for the children. Lily Rose really enjoys stories and it helps her learn. Everyone says how forward she is and I think that's because of the reading. It's helped her talking. Because of the bus, I have read to her since she was born, she loves the touch and feel of books. We now go to the library at Maldon as well because we've used most of the books here!"
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Get a Life! - Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information and Archives
The Get a Life project is an interactive online narrative in which young people get to create their own characters, meet other characters and make up their own stories. This innovative project has been developed by Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information and Archives in partnership with the dramatist in residence from a local Arts Association. Young people aged between 10 and 14 take part in creating a story live online, interacting with other characters and building a new world through the story.
Get a Life channels young people's natural desire to 'chat', explores creative writing in an online environment and adds a fun dimension to gaining an understanding of character, story, plot and theme within fiction. The project also forms part of the libraries' Be Websmart campaign, which promotes safe and responsible use of the internet.
The need for a project such as Get a Life grew from a region wide community consultation. One of the gaps and challenges identified by the consultation was for an increased range of activities aimed at the upper primary and lower secondary age range which would make more use of computers but still be related to books, reading and writing.
The project has proved a success with 89% of children taking part feeling that it helped to build their confidence in their writing ability; 93% saying that the project had enhanced their ICT skills; 97% saying that their understanding of the internet and chat rooms had improved and 96% felt they had established new friendships through the project. In 2003 Dumfries and Galloway Libraries saw an 11% increase in active usage among the 10-14 age-range over figures from 2002.
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Holocaust Remembrance Community Portal Project - East Renfrewshire Libraries
East Renfrewshire, just outside Glasgow, is home to the largest Jewish population in Scotland. As part of their commitment to ethnic diversity in the local community, East Renfrewshire Libraries have created a website and CDROM for holocaust remembrance that allows local survivors to tell their story.
The project aimed to include the Jewish community and educate other residents about the Nazi Holocaust and other genocides. The website features extremely moving personal accounts which affect all who see them. The contributors are in their eighties, and have enabled the portrayal of living history through their testimonies, video interviews, precious personal artefacts and transcripts of their often horrific experiences. Those interviewed found healing through talking about their experiences, and the project has been welcomed by them and the wider Jewish community throughout the world.
Personal testimonies include the story of Ernest Levy who was born in Bratislava in 1925. Following the German invasion of Hungary his family were deported to concentration camps where many of them died. He was in seven concentration camps in all and saw people stripped of their dignity and humanity and treated like animals.
The Holocaust Remembrance project is part of East Renfrewshire's Community Portal Approach which aims to promote ICT as a way of enhancing opportunity and quality of life, to improve access to citizens' information, provide education and learning opportunities and to support a sense of place in communities. The website and CDROM are aimed at the whole community and have been used as an educational tool in libraries and schools across Scotland.
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Updated: 22 November 2004