library service links with Ad Ed learners

Just thought I would share a great afternoon I had with learners yesterday. Following an Ad Ed textiles course, learners have got together on Thursday afternoons in GL14 Meeting Place and share 'textile talk'. They are working together to complete their first community textile which was started on the Ad Ed course. The Cinderford library service is developing a project 'past, present and future' and is working in partnership with GL14 Community Project to encourage local involvement. Catherine Escott Allen from Cinderford Library came along to meet the group and we gathered around the computer to see how easy it was to use the library web site in conjunctioin with Amazon web site to reasearch books and then check information about them on the Amazon web site and then check if they are available to borrow from the County library service. Catherine also explained that the library service in Gloucestersire also networked further afield in the South West area to access books. Catherine also encouraged us to request books to be purchased - no promises but they like to get this feedback from borrowers to know which books would be welcomed on the shelves. We were all truly spoilt by Catherine who brought a great selection of books along and enabled us to borrow them on the spot. Discussions followed and we came up with some great ideas on how we could develop this partnership between Ad Ed learners and the library service further using IT. We all agreed we had learnt a lot and were all inspired by the books to try out more new ideas.