This week, CILIP, the library and information association, proudly hosts Libraries Change Lives Week across the UK. Aimed at illustrating the profound impact of libraries, this initiative features over 150 stories shared by librarians about their contributions to communities in various sectors.
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Libraries Change Lives Week showcases the essential role libraries and their staff play daily. The event presents libraries’ involvement in everything from lifelong learning and health promotion to supporting economic growth and advancing digital literacy.
As libraries face ongoing financial challenges, CILIP is taking this opportunity to demonstrate their value to the public, as well as to national and local governments. An interactive map on CILIP’s website details the transformative stories, showing library professionals aiding in public service access on high streets, supporting NHS clinicians, fostering innovation at universities, and making a difference in prisons.
Specific examples of library initiatives include Todmorden Library’s ‘Borrow the Moon’ programme, which lends out boxes containing Martian rock samples and investigative tools to educational institutions. Meanwhile, the Memory Café in Harwich fosters community connections and supports dementia patients, coinciding with activities for younger generations.
Environmental sustainability efforts are also part of the narrative, with West Sussex County Council’s libraries implementing air source heat pumps and ceiling insulation. While, Guildhall Library’s educational workshops on the Great Plague of 1066 engage local students, linking historical events to recent experiences like the Covid pandemic.
“It was a very positive experience. There was a quietness and calmness in the room – a tribute to the prison library staff and the value given to books and words.”
Simon Armitage
Highlighting another powerful initiative, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s visit to HMP East Sutton Park prison library pointed out the importance of literacy and the arts within the prison system, where many inmates struggle with basic literacy.
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CILIP Chief Executive, Louis Coiffait-Gunn, stressed the strategic significance of this week: “Building on a proposal from Baroness Sanderson’s independent review of public libraries earlier in the year, as the professional association for the library and information sector we wanted to show government at all levels the enormous value of libraries to their communities – locally and nationally – and the huge range of benefits a vibrant, properly-funded sector delivers for the public.”