All 36 libraries in West Sussex intend to reopen for browsing on Monday 12 April, following government guidance.
We are really looking forward to welcoming you back into our buildings again. Our aim is to gradually increase our services, whilst managing safety measures required for both customers and staff. This includes making sure that everyone in the library has space to move around safely and that returned stock can be quarantined for 72 hours.
Our Select and Collect service will remain in place, so whether you wish to reserve specific items or would like a member of staff to choose for you, your time in the library can be kept to a minimum.
We’ll be sending out a further communication next week with more details about our plans for reopening.
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Over the Easter weekend all our Libraries will be closed on:
Good Friday 2 April Easter Sunday 4 April Bank Holiday Monday 5 April
We will be offering our current service on Saturday 3 April.
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To celebrate Easter we have lots of exciting collect-at-the-door and digital activities for kids at West Sussex Libraries.
This year we are thrilled to be teaming up with UK Harvest, a food rescue and education charity based in West Sussex.
Throughout the holidays UK Harvest will be hosting pop-up walk-by stations at selected libraries, offering expert food and growing advice, food waste tips, vibrant recipe suggestion cards and a range of free tasty giveaways!
Our digital #WSHealthyHoliday events include a special Storytime, Rhyme Time and multi-sensory Story Magic sessions, plus Professor Pete’s ‘science in your kitchen’ experiments. These are all accompanied by fantastic foodie book-themed activity sheets and competitions designed by our lovely library staff!
All activities will be hosted online and via Facebook and Twitter.
No printer? Libraries will have all the activity sheets, plus seeds and pots, bagged up and ready to collect, contact-free, from the front door. Don’t forget to return your competition entries to the library!
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If you haven’t completed your census form, there is still time! West Sussex Libraries are part of the National Census Support Service. Library staff are available to help residents who live in Adur, Worthing, Arun and Chichester to complete their census forms online.
As libraries are currently not open for browsing, until 12 April, we can complete the form for you over the phone. To book an appointment with one of our staff, who are all trained Census Support Advisors, phone 0330 222 3455 between 10.00am – 4.00pm, Monday to Friday.
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Are you fed up of looking at that pile of books that you finished reading ages ago? Why not return them to one of our libraries? Don't forget to check your library opening hours before visiting.
If our current hours are not convenient, don't forget that some of our libraries have larger letterboxes for returning items outside of our opening times.
While we are currently not charging any fees for overdue books, it is still important to us to keep books in circulation and made available to other borrowers.
We know that not everyone will feel able to visit a library at the moment. If this is you then don’t forget that you can renew items online, via the library app, or by phone. It's also a good idea to keep an eye on your library account as we're not currently sending out overdue reminders!
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We are running a business webinar on Tuesday 13 April at 11.00am, looking at COBRA (Complete Business Reference Advisor database) and also Grantfinder, a database for all types of funding including business loans, awards and grants. Both databases are available in all West Sussex Libraries.
Please register to attend this free online webinar.
Also on Wednesday 28 April 2021 from 10:00am – 11:30am, you can join the Business & IP Centre - Brighton and Hove for a morning webinar of highly informative and engaging presentations to help start and build a successful business.
This event is aimed at people thinking of starting a business, having just started a business, or with up to 18 months trading experience.
Register for this free webinar and find out more information.
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We have been celebrating our Library Wellbeing Month throughout March with a great range of online activities, including reminiscence sessions and children’s stories, colouring sheets to pick up with your books and reminders of the ways reading can boost your wellbeing.
Watch our brand-new online Melody for the Mind, especially recorded for Wellbeing Month. Join two of our staff in their submarine and have a good singalong!
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Do you miss singing and reading in the library? Then watch our Baby Rhyme Time, Storytime and Story Magic sessions on our YouTube channel. You can enjoy all these from the comfort of your home.
Do you go to Children and Family Centres to enjoy their sessions as well? If you do then West Sussex County Council would like you to take part in a consultation to help redesign the Early Help service.
The Early Help service provides support to children and families who are facing any number of challenging circumstances, by working to ensure that every child has a safe environment in which to thrive.
The consultation opened on 8 March 2021 and runs until midnight on Monday 17 May 2021.
More information on the proposals, including video explanations and details of how people can take part in the consultation, can be found on the Early Help Redesign project webpage.
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We were delighted to support Crawley Wordfest this year with a digital In Conversation event with William Shaw and Lesley Thomson on 25 March. If you missed it, you can check out the full event video on William’s Facebook page.
And back in February, we had the pleasure of interviewing authors as part of the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World campaign. We had fantastic conversations with Isabel Ashdown, Elly Griffiths and Jane Lythell about their lives in books, as well as talking about their own work. The event with Isabel is available to watch on our YouTube channel.
And there’s more! Such lively discussions made for a great opportunity to launch a brand-new library project which we’re really excited about, the Lend Us Your Ears podcast. For all you audiophiles out there we are releasing the audio recording of our interview with Isabel Ashdown. Why not have a listen and subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes?
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The next episode of West Sussex Unwrapped, brought to you by West Sussex Record Office and Screen Archive South East, launches on 13 April. Exploring the history of Eastergate school, it features footage of the new school building in 1970, whilst the blog showcases a multitude of archives which trace the school back to the 1830s.
You can find more information about West Sussex Unwrapped in the latest post in the West Sussex Record Office blog.
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