To say thank you to all of you, we have planned a range of volunteer celebration events in libraries across West Sussex throughout the week. Individual invitations to your local event have been sent out and we hope that you can come along to meet the other volunteers at your library and help us celebrate. 

The week starts off with a Volunteer Coffee morning at Rustington Library on Saturday 1 June 10.30am-12pm with a special visit and talk from Littlehampton Fire and Rescue Crew. We will also be celebrating later in the week with a Volunteer Tea Party at Billingshurst Library on Tuesday 4 June, 2.00pm-5.00pm with library staff, volunteers, local Councillors and the Community Development Team.    

However if the date, time or location of your local event is not convenient, you are very welcome to join us at any of the events happening throughout the week. Please email christine.broggi@westsussex.gov.uk if you would like further details. 

This Volunteers’ Week we will also be saying thank you and celebrating the work of our Worthing Library Local Studies Volunteers, some of whom have been with us for over 11 years.

In 2008 we advertised for volunteers to help with our Walter Gardiner Photograph collection project: over 116,000 images of West Sussex, acquired when the company, trading since 1893, closed their studio.

Volunteers have helped with cleaning glass plate negatives and prints, putting them into archival boxes and sleeves, and recording every item into a spreadsheet. So committed were the volunteers that they dressed up in Victorian costume for the Gardiner launch, then stayed on to support other photograph collections, and their local knowledge has been invaluable in identifying thousands of different images.

As well as our Monday group, volunteers have worked on diverse projects including digitising microfilm, research on World Wars I and II and interviewing veterans. All Worthing local studies volunteering projects are currently on hold as Worthing Library prepares for refurbishment and co-location of additional council services into the building as part of the Community Hub Project. However, you can view some of this tremendous work on our West Sussex Past Pictures, Great War West Sussex and Military Voices websites.

Get involved with the Space Chase

The Summer Reading Challenge 2019 is Space Chase, an out-of-this-world adventure inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. Children taking part in the Challenge will join our super space family, The Rockets, for a thrilling mission to track down books nabbed by mischievous aliens!

The fun starts in your local library from Saturday 13 July and we are looking for volunteers with some spare time this summer to help support the Challenge.

Have you ever wondered what ‘coding’ is? In March we launched a brand new lending service to help staff, volunteers and customers learn the basics with the BBC micro:bit.

The micro:bit is a tiny computer, no bigger than a library card, which can be programmed to do many different things, from displaying a flashing heart to playing a game of Rock Paper Scissors. You can even turn it into a remote control for taking selfies on your phone, or hook it up to a sensor in a plant pot to tell you when the plant needs watering!

micro:bit Starter Kits can be reserved for free from the library or via the online catalogue. Find out more about our micro:bit lending service and look out for the colourful boxes moving between libraries on the van!

If you are interested in supporting a micro:bit/coding workshop at your library in the future, the Digital Access Team would love to hear from you.

New Library Volunteer Webpage  

You may have noticed that some of the links in this newsletter take you to our new
Library Volunteer Webpage. The page is still under development, but we hope that it will provide an additional way for us to communicate with all our library volunteers across West Sussex and help keep you up to date. It will also provide direct access to some useful volunteer information such as back copies of the newsletter, digital skills helpsheets, topic of the month as well as updates from Facebook and Twitter. 

We will be asking the Volunteer Forum about their ideas for content, but we would also like to hear what you think. Please have a look at the new webpage and if you have any ideas or suggestions about what you would find helpful or like us to include please email christine.broggi@westsussex.gov.uk

The new Library Volunteer Webpage now gives volunteers access to a complete list of our helpsheets on a variety of different topics such as Digital Skills, eInformation and eLibrary which can be used to help customers during a Computer Buddy or Learn My Way session.

All Digital Skills helpsheets are available in a print or web version, so please let a member of library staff know if you would like one printed for a customer. 

Each month we will highlight a different topic from the volunteer manual which may be relevant to your volunteer role.

The topic for April is Manual Handling for any volunteers who carry or lift items as part of their volunteer role.

The topic for May is Fire Safety. If you volunteer in a Library building, please make sure that you are aware of the local Fire Evacuation procedures.